Two of the four Arab notables who were banished from Jerusalem yesterday on charges of “incitement to subversion” against Israel professed their willingness today to cooperate with Israeli authorities. They made their statements in newspaper interviews.
The four were Anwar El Khatib, the former district commissioner of Old Jerusalem under King Hussein of Jordan; Ibrahim Baher, a communist lawyer from Ramallah; Abdel Nuhsein Abumizhar, a former member of the Old Jerusalem Municipal Council and a former leader of the Baath Socialist Party; and Daoud el Husseini, a member of a well-known extremist Palestinian party and onetime leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank section, now under Israeli control. They were ordered “banished under police surveillance” and taken to Safed, Tiberias and Hadera.
Anwar El Khatib told the press that he was a peaceful and moderate man who had from the beginning urged his fellow citizens in Old Jerusalem to keep law and order. He said he had only objected to activities of the Israel Religious Affairs Ministry “interfering” in what he considered the internal affairs of the Moslem clergy in the Old City. Ibrahmim Baher similarly asserted he could not understand why the Israeli authorities had acted against him. He said he had done “nothing illegal.”
The banished notables were given freedom by the authorities to choose their own lodgings and they have freedom of movement within the limits of the towns where they were sent. They must report to the police three times daily.
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