The story of the arrest and trial of Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian parliamentarian representing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has cast an embarrassing and even ridiculous light on the Israeli military justice system. “If it weren’t sad and if it weren’t about my wife, it would be funny,” her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, who has attended all his wife’s legal proceedings at the military courthouse in Camp Ofer, told Al-Monitor. Her attorney, Mahmoud Hassan, said, “It’s a circus, a charade. There’s no other way to describe what has taken place and is still happening.”

A police officer testified at a Nov. 8 hearing that a Palestinian witness had said during a Shin Bet interrogation that the witness had heard Khalida Jarrar call for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers; the witness said this had occurred at an event commemorating the assassination of PLFP leader Abu Ali Mustafa a year earlier. The witness later retracted his testimony, refused to take the stand and was declared a hostile witness. During the hearing, the police officer was asked to provide the court with details about the interrogation and the testimony of that Palestinian witness. At that point, Jarrar’s attorney presented several photos that had been shown to the Palestinian witness from which he had to single out Jarrar. For all intents and purposes, it was a lineup in which seven facial photos were shown. As it turns out, six were male and only one was female, the latter being Jarrar.

“You have a lineup for a woman. You show photos of men [and one woman] and ask the witness to identify a woman,” Hassan told Al-Monitor. “So who do you think he singled out? The short end of it, it’s a travesty. She is obviously being framed.” According to Jarrar’s husband, someone wants to cut her off from her source of power: the voters who put her in the parliament. During our conversation he was unable to hold back his laughter at the scene that unfolded in court. "They brought photos of men — one with a mustache, one bald, another with a long beard and a photo of my wife. … They showed the witness the photos and asked him, 'Who is Jarrar?' It's a charade.''

Khalida Jarrar was arrested April 2, when a military force raided her home in Ramallah and placed her under arrest. Initially, an administrative arrest warrant was issued against her, but in the wake of an international outcry, her administrative detention was shortened and she was court-martialed. The detailed arraignment included 12 criminal charges pertaining to her parliamentary work, participation in demonstrations, a press interview and visiting a released prisoner. But the most serious charge, the one the trial revolves around, is the claim that in August 2012 she had called for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.