MK Awad Abd al-Fatah, secretary-general of Beshara’s faction, Balad, the Arab National Party, claimed in an interview to Quds Press that the Shin Bet is building a dossier against Beshara accusing him of spying for Syria and Hizballah in the 2006 Lebanon War.

This is the first hint of the purported charge which caused the lawmaker to abscond with his family. Al-Fatah said there was no substance to this suspicion. He accused the Shin Beit of trumping up a charge, after failing to compromise Balad on the grounds of its objective to change “the Jewish nature of the Hebrew state.” The Israeli-Arab Knesset member also claimed Israel’s security service’s was determined to disrupt the Israeli Arab faction’s ties with the Arab world.

Azmi Beshara has caused more harm to Jewish-Arab relations than anyone else, said opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday, April 10.

The sooner he quits the Knesset, the better for Israel at large, especially the Arab community, said Netanyahu. Arab sources reported Tuesday that the absentee politician had asked Qatar for asylum after he was offered a job as commentator for the local Al Jazeera Arabic TV. That is only one of the rumors circulating on his whereabouts.

Another opposition lawmaker, NRP leader Zvulun Orlev, tabled a motion Tuesday, April 10, to make any Israeli paying unauthorized visits to an enemy country ineligible for election to parliament. Both spoke after Beshara and his family secretly departed the country some weeks ago under a cloud of suspicion of a grave security offense, whose publication is prevented by a gag order.

As a frequent visitor to Syria and Lebanon and vocal champion of Syrian president Bashara Assad and Hizballah, the Israel-Arab lawmaker has in the past had his immunity temporarily stripped and faced legal action. A Christian Protestant from the Galilee village of Shefaram, the absconding MK has spent his 11-year parliamentary career attacking Israel as a Jewish state.

DEBKAfile’s sources add that the apparent weakness Israel displayed in the Lebanon war of last summer encouraged Azmi Beshara to believe he could get away with heinous offences against state security, and also emboldened major Israeli Arab organizations to launch a strong separatist bid for a revision of the Jewish state’s structure and character, so as to satisfy their national aspirations as a part of the pan-Arab community.

Several radical Israeli Arab organizations are preparing the most extreme showdown ever with the state of Israel and its institutions.

Friday, April 6, Israeli Arab organizations headed by Adala, set up a united front against what they called “Shin Beit incitation against Israel Arabs.” They plan an appeal to the United Nations, foreign governments and diplomats for assistance in combating “Israeli government actions against the Arab minority and Shin Beit operations against the Arab public.”