by Maayana Miskin
(IsraelNN.com) The Jerusalem Magistrates court ruled Thursday that nationalist activist Noam Federman may return to his home near Hevron. Police had asked the court to extend Federman's remand or - if not - to bar him from entering Judea or Samaria.
Justice Shulamit Dotan rejected the request to extend Federman's remand after hearing that police had failed to provide Federman with a copy of the charges against him. Police had also failed to inform Federman that he had a court hearing on Thursday and had not told him that they were requesting an extension on his remand. Federman told the court that he had first heard about Thursday's hearing from his wife, who called him Wednesday.
"The police officers' behavior is not clear... I do not understand how it occurred to them not to give Federman a copy of the request and of the indictment,” Dotan said. “I do not understand what the police were thinking. That the court sets a time for a hearing so that they can give Federman a copy of the request and indictment in the court's presence? This is the purpose of the hearing the police requested yesterday?”
Federman is charged with assaulting a police officer twelve days ago as police demolished his home near Hevron in a midnight raid. Federman dismissed the charges as “ridiculous,” and said he had been the victim of police violence, but had not retaliated.
Federman described the destruction of his home on the Federman-Tor farm, and said police had destroyed his family's property. Even families of terrorists are allowed to remove their property from their homes before the homes are destroyed, he said. He also charged police with treating his children badly, saying officers had gone so far as to forcibly separate his one-year-old baby from her mother.
Other members of the Federman family have faced detention as well. Federman's wife Elisheva was arrested on Tuesday as she walked to her daughter's daycare center. She was accused of assaulting an officer and was forced to give a DNA sample, which officers took by removing her hair-covering and extracting several hairs. Female residents of Hevron protested the act.
Clashes between police and nationalist activists continued following the first destruction of the farm and Noam Federman's arrest. Dozens of activists have built and rebuilt structures in the area, and police have repeatedly arrived and torn the structures down. The most recent round of demolition and construction took place on Thursday when Border Police destroyed a temporary structure for the fourth time, only to see it rebuilt by nationalist youths just hours later.
Federman said Thursday that leftist politicians were harassing his family in order to appear tough on “nationalist extremists.” The political Left will not last in Israel, he said. Defense Minister Ehud Barak knows his Labor party is diminishing in power, Federman said, and is hoping to impress his voters by targeting nationalists. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is on his way out as well, Federman said.
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