In an unusual move, the speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein (Likud), has barred a Hadash MK from hosting a conference in the Knesset to mark the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

A few days ago, the office of leading Communist Party of Israel member MK Aida Touma-Sliman’s (Hadash – Joint List) emailed the Knesset visitors’ center reservation department and asked to reserve the Sprinzak Hall for a conference.

MK Touma-Sliman (second from left) with Hadash and Meretz MKs in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, February 2017 (Photo: Zo Haderech)

This was ostensibly a routine procedure, as any Knesset member is entitled to reserve a hall for a conference they are hosting. However, a crucial detail of this email brought the matter to the attention of the parliament’s speaker: Touma-Sliman’s aide wrote, “The meeting is to mark the 50th anniversary of the occupation of ‘67.”

When Edelstein learned of the conference’s purpose, he decided to intervene in the process and refuse Touma-Sliman’s request. “It has come to my attention that you have requested that a conference be held in the Sprinzak Hall entitled ‘Fifty Years since the Occupation of ‘67,'” Edelstein wrote in a letter to Touma-Sliman.

He continued, “I was saddened by this defiant initiative, which brings unnecessary division and tension between parts of the nation, especially in this sensitive and special period of the Israeli calendar, the character of which you must know very well.” The speaker added a personal note, writing, “The attempt to celebrate ‘the occupation’ specifically within the Knesset is not only an insult to a broad public in Israel, but also a personal insult to me.”

It is unusual for the Knesset’s speaker to intervene in MKs’ use of the parliament’s various halls, even for events that are disapproved of by some of the parliamentarians. Two months ago, a day to mark LGBT rights was held, which many of the religious MKs disapproved of. Some of them asked Edelstein to intervene, but he refused. In February, four MKs from Hadash, Meretz and the Labor party co-hosted a conference on the exact same topic without any trouble.

Speaker Edelstein, a former settler in the Palestinian occupied territories, now resides in the wealthy neighborhood of Herzliya Pituach. In June 2016, Edelstein married Irina Nevzlin, the daughter of the Russian oligarch Leonid Borisovich Nevzlin. The Russian-born Israeli businessperson Nevzlin was featured on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s 100 wealthiest people in 2003 and 2004. Nevzlin left Russia for Israel in 2003. In 2004 the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office sought Nevzlin’s extradition over hotly disputed criminal allegations against him related to his tenure at the Yukos Corporation, which was declared bankrupt in August 2006.

The Israeli government rejected the extradition request due to insufficient evidence. Two Israeli citizens petitioned the interior minister to revoke Nevzlin’s Israeli citizenship because it was obtained under false pretenses. Nevzlin was tried in absentia in Russia in March 2008 and was found guilty of several counts of conspiracy to murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Previously, Nevzlin had been awarded the Order of Friendship, one of the Russian Federation’s highest honors, for his efforts in supporting Boris Yeltsin’s reelection campaign in 1996.