Hamas cabinet ministers seized by Israel troops

Mahmoud Abbas has been running around like a man demented attempting to negotiate a ceasefire between Hamas and Fatah forces and to stop the "absurd" rocket attacks from Palestinian militants on to Israel.

Perhaps, the Israelis are trying to help unite the Palestinians by arresting a Palestinian cabinet minister and 32 other Hamas officials, because that is certainly what they have achieved with even non-Hamas politicians objecting to members of their rivals being subjected to this treatment.

Troops moved into Nablus during the night and took the Palestinian Education minister Naser al-Shaer, three Hamas members of parliament, the pro-Hamas mayor and deputy mayor of the city and other Hamas officials in neighbouring towns and villages.

Mr Shaer's wife, Huda, said soldiers knocked on the door of their home and took him away. The mayors of Qalqiliya and Beita, and the head of the main Islamic charity in Nablus, Fayad al-Arba, were also detained. Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian Information minister and an independent, condemned the seizures as a "very serious escalation and an attack on Palestinian democratic institutions". He called on the international community to protest at what he said was an attack on the Palestinian Authority in breach of the Oslo agreements.

This is exactly what the Israelis did last year after the kidnap of Gilad Shalit and it is, again, being criticised by the international community.

The problem is not the arrest of Palestinian parliamentarians as no-one is arguing that parliamentarians are above the law; the problem is that last year parliamentarians were arrested and, to the best of my knowledge, there were not even any charges brought, let alone trials. This is a form of judicial kidnap, Israel seizing people important to the running of the Palestinian Authority's day to day affairs simply because she can.

The reasons for the arrests given by the Israelis would not stand up in any court of law, which is why they probably never send those arrested before one.

The Israeli military declared: "The Hamas terror organisation is currently involved in enhancing the terror infrastructure in the [West Bank] region, based on the model used in the Gaza Strip. The organisation exploits governmental institutions to encourage and support terrorist activity."

Amir Peretz, the Defence minister, by contrast linked the arrests directly to the continued rocket fire, which killed an Israeli woman in the southern border town of Sderot this week, declaring on Army Radio: "Arrests are better than shooting. The arrest of these Hamas leaders sends a message to the armed organisations that we demand that this firing [of rockets] stop."

You will notice that Peretz actually admits to kidnapping. He doesn't describe any crime that these men are supposed to have committed, but rather admits that they have been arrested because it "sends a message to the armed organisations".

I can't think of any other democracy - apart from Britain and the UK with their bizarre non-democratic reactions to terrorism - where people could be arrested with no charges being brought against them, nor any trial looming. They are arrested simply in the hope that their arrest might send a signal to others.

It's the sort of thing that one might imagine Mugabe doing. Certainly it is the kind of reasoning he might use to justify his actions.

However, even in the US and Britain, the people detained are at least suspected of possible involvement in terrorism, or at least some vague connection to it. I find the British practice of house arrest and the American habit of locking people in Guantanamo deplorable enough, but the Israelis are actually going much further.

They are not even pretending that these men have committed any crime, they are arresting them simply to warn others.

Bush and Blair have often stated that terrorists want to destroy our way of life. But what's really interesting is how quickly - certainly with regard to law and due process - that we, in the west, have abandoned our commitments to certain tenets that we have, until now, used to define ourselves as civilised.

Now Israel leads the way showing us where we might go next. Arrest people who have committed no crimes, because it might send a signal to others.

The people leading us are looking less and less like governments, and more and more like gangs.

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