HERE is a morality tale for our times and, as you might imagine, it's not particularly edifying. In a country in the Middle East known for its unyielding insistence on facing down terrorists, a young woman is arrested and charged with "aiding an enemy in time of war". Following some unseemly plea-bargaining she takes the guilty route and receives a three-year prison sentence. Much of her incarceration is spent in solitary confinement. Last week she is released and, on her release, reveals to the world that during her interrogation she was handcuffed to her chair and told that her captors were going to teach her to be a "good Jew".

The 30-year-old woman in question is Tali Fahima, an otherwise ordinary Israeli who worked as a legal secretary and voted for the right-wing Likud Party. Opinion is divided between those who say that the Shin Bet security services were overly enthusiastic in their methods while the judiciary over-reacted, and those who believe that Fahima had received her just deserts for making contact with some of Israel's worst enemies.

Her crime was her unexpected friendship with Zakaria Zubeidi, the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a terrorist organisation based in Jenin, and there is a possibility that she passed on information which would have been useful to him. Perhaps she did. When she was arrested, Shin Bet found a translated army order giving details of an operation to arrest Zubeidi and a number of his lieutenants, but this could just as easily have been a lure planted on her. After all, following her trips to Jenin, Fahima became an outspoken critic of Israel's policy of using legitimised assassination against terrorists. For her pains, Shin Bet spread the word that Fahima was having an affair with Zubeidi.

The extraordinary thing is that this ordinary woman did what she did. Having spent most of her life believing that Israel was her country right or wrong and that the Palestinians posed an undeniable threat to its wellbeing, some time in 2003 she decided to try to understand more about why the great divide existed and why it had come into being. Her pilgrimage took her to Jenin, where she came across hundreds of Palestinians, and for the first time in her life she began to understand the difficulties they faced and the sense of dispossession that was their daily lot.

During the course of these exploratory expeditions she met Zubeidi. An encounter of that kind could not go unnoticed by the people who control her country's security forces and, with an inevitability which seems unremarkable but for the fact that it is the way of the world in Israel, Shin Bet picked up Fahima and tried to get her to work for them. She refused the offer and during the subsequent interrogations she turned her face against revealing information which she claimed not to possess.

At this point it is difficult to unravel the absolute truth but it does seem that Fahima was victimised simply because she was an easy touch. As was said at the time of her trial, other Israelis were also in contact with Palestinians who may or may not have been undesirable but they escaped unscathed. It didn't help that Fahima was a woman.

Last week the matter was put to rest when she was released from captivity but her experience leaves a nasty taste. A young Israeli tries to understand why her country cannot live at peace with its nearest neighbours and pays a heavy price for her efforts. What price a peace process when that happens?