A controversial Jewish peace activist from Brooklyn is about to be booted out of Israel. Adam Shapiro, branded a turncoat by fellow Jews for opposing the occupation of Palestinian territories, was arrested during a demonstration Wednesday.

He's now sitting in a jail packed with common criminals and likely to be sent back to the U.S. on Sunday.

Shapiro's wife, Huwaida Arraf, said she has been barred from seeing her husband and that soldiers roughed him up. She said Shapiro has asthma and needs his medicine.

"I'm worried about him," said Arraf, a Palestinian-American. "The Israelis psychologically mess with peace activists by putting them in cells and telling the criminals they are terrorists."

A police spokeswoman said Shapiro and eight other activists - a group that includes two other Americans - are safe.

Shapiro's lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said there's little she can do to stop the deportation.

"Israeli law gives the minister of the interior wide discretion to issue deportation orders without giving an explanation," Lasky said. The other captured American activists were identified by the International Solidarity Movement as Javier Cortez of Los Angeles and Charles Williams of Illinois.

If the Israelis deport Shapiro, they'll be saving him plane fare home. Arraf said her husband is to begin a graduate program in international studies at American University in Washington next month.

Shapiro, 30, grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His relatives received death threats after he took part in an April protest at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's besieged West Bank headquarters.

The Israelis made no attempt to block Shapiro from returning to Ramallah in June after he and Arraf, 26, were married in her hometown of Detroit.

Protest March

Shapiro was arrested when he and a group of 200 demonstrators protesting the military curfews tried to march on the West Bank city of Nablus.

Arraf said the soldiers fired warning shots over their heads - then attacked the demonstrators with stun grenades and the butts of their rifles.

Louisa Solomon, 20, another Jewish peace activist from Brooklyn, said the soldiers "don't hold back from using force."

"I'm all black and blue," said Solomon, who lives in Williamsburg. "They picked me up and pushed me down."

An army spokesman said the soldiers met force with force and took pains not to hurt the women and children marching "with the foreign radicals."