Hostility and Drama Swamp Palestinian's Hearing
The second court appearance in three weeks by Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian leader to be put on trial by Israel, proved even more tempestuous than the first today, with his children struggling to reach him while Israelis who lost relatives in suicide attacks shouted in rage.

Mr. Barghouti largely stole the show last month at his first appearance in a Tel Aviv courtroom by shouting in Hebrew that he wanted to present his own charges against Israel. The Israeli government tried to head off a repeat this time by widely publicizing its case and by allowing several families of victims of suicide bombings to attend.

The shouting and pushing that ensued in the cramped courtroom and in the halls outside, Mr. Barghouti's refusal to recognize the proceedings as legitimate, and the competing news briefings afterward all indicated that the actual trial is certain to be even more politically charged once it starts.

The appearance by three of Mr. Barghouti's children, who said they talked their way through Israeli checkpoints by claiming they were on their way to school, gave a new dimension to the drama. After talking with Israeli officials, Mr. Barghouti's daughter, Ruba, 15, and his sons, Arab, 12, and Sharaf, 13, were allowed into the courtroom.

When Mr. Barghouti was led in at 11:40 a.m., the two boys, who last saw their father seven months ago, tried to get to him, shouting, "Abba! Abba!" — father, father. Sharaf leaped across the benches toward his father, but was stopped by a guard. As his son began to cry, Mr. Barghouti called out, "Habibi!" — darling. "They are children, only children," he said, "let them through."

Outside the courtroom, Jews and Arabs shouted fiercely at one another. At one point, a man identified as Itamal Ben-Gvi, a member of the Jewish radical group Kach, tried to assail Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, and was dragged off by guards.

Mr. Barghouti was not allowed to read out a statement in court. Instead, it was read outside by a Palestinian-American lawyer, Michael Tarazi, who said he was there as a spokesman for the Barghouti family.

The Israeli spokesman in the case, Daniel Taub, repeatedly insisted that the case was not about Mr. Barghouti's political views, but about the killings. "What is important to us is to ensure that the world understands what it is to be a democracy fighting terrorism," he said outside the courtroom after the session.

But Israeli newspapers have been increasingly questioning the government's wisdom in putting Mr. Barghouti on public trial, because until the current uprising the popular West Bank leader was accepted in Israel as a political moderate, a staunch supporter of the Oslo peace agreements, and as a potential successor to Yasir Arafat.

"It should be hoped that those who decided to capture Barghouti, to bring him to Israel and to put him on trial, carefully weighed this move," wrote Nahman Shai in the newspaper Maariv. "Because if not, this trial, being a public and open trial in a civilian court, is liable to turn into the central stage on which the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue will be held, not necessarily to Israel's benefit."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/06/international/middleeast/06MIDE.html