The Knesset ethics committee voted on Monday to ban 42-year-old Hanin Zoabi, a fierce critic of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, from taking part in parliamentary debates until the end of the current Knesset session next month, although she will still be allowed to vote.
Hanin Zoabi joined hundreds of international activists last May aboard the flotilla's flagship vessel, Mavi Marmara, which was intercepted by Israeli commandos in the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in the death of 9 Turkish activists.
Last year, after complaints were received from right-wing parliamentarians and members of the public, the Knesset took away Zoabi's diplomatic passport and barred her from visiting countries which have no diplomatic ties with Israel.
She criticised the latest Knesset restrictions as a political witch hunt. "I exercised my right for political action and freedom of speech and did not break the law", she said. "An automatic right-wing majority should not be permitted to punish me for my political views."
Last week Zoabi was expelled from the Knesset plenum after heckling Prime Minister Netanyahu, and was forced to apologise after pushing a Knesset usher on her way out.
Knesset member Michael Ben Ari, from the right-wing National Union party, welcomed the ethics committee decision. "This is only the first step in expelling the enemy from the Knesset and the state of Israel. This is how we will act against those who fight against Israeli soldiers and the state."
The current Knesset has been criticised for passing a string of legislation which opponents claim is part of a campaign to restrict democratic dissent, including last week's 'boycott bill' which made it an offence to support any boycott of Israel or West Bank settlements.
"It takes a man of vision to write on water," says one line.
One part of that vision - Palm Jumeirah - is pretty much complete. The others
have been beset by difficulties.
The other two Palms, Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira, lie unfinished:
construction work has stopped. The Waterfront and The Universe hardly even
began.
The World is there, written on the water. But it has been cursed by
ill-fortune, the islands themselves having just been completed just as the
financial crisis hit.
Many developers who had bought the islands could no longer find financing to
build on them - or decided that with property prices falling there was no
point, at least for now.
For some, The World was the least of their problems. John O'Dolan, whose
Galway-based property firm had announced the purchase of Ireland on St
Patrick's Day 2007, committed suicide as his business empire collapsed back
home.
Safi Qurashi, a London businessman who had bought the island of Britain, was
jailed last year for seven years for bouncing cheques. He is claiming he is
victim of a miscarriage of justice, saying the cheques were security for a
debt that had already been paid off.
Nakheel has won the latest round in the legal battle to prove The World is
still a going concern, despite the doubters. But they must be hoping its own
lawyer's admission that the development is "in a coma" does not
mean the writing is on the wall.
