The Knesset plenum on Thursday approved in a preliminary reading a bill to amend the Prisons Ordinance, titled “Denial of visits from security prisoners belonging to a terrorist organization that holds Israeli prisoners,” submitted by MK Oren Hazan (Likud).
58 supported the bill, 11 abstained and 1 objected. The bill will be transferred to the Interior and Environmental Protection Committee for debate and amendments.
The bill proposes the revocation of visits of security prisoners, except for a visit by an attorney or a representative of the International Red Cross, if said prisoner is a member or identifies with a terrorist organization that prevents a representative of the Israeli Government, a humanitarian organization, or a family member, from visiting a kidnapped Israeli citizen or a prisoner in its possession.
The bill stipulates that the Minister of Public Security has the authority, after consultation with the Minister of Defense, to allow such visits in exceptional cases.
MK Hazan said in a statement: “The insane cost that the state invests in setting up Hamas terrorists in a prison resort village comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket. While there, they are educating for terror and even carrying out terrorist attacks from within the prisons. But what about our brothers in Hamas captivity? No one knows.
“And they (Hamas security prisoners) get visits, full buses coming from Gaza. How can it be that while there are people here who scream about the human rights of murderers, time after time, but do not cry about the human rights of our sons? There can be no reality in which we do not know about the fate of our sons.”
Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan said in a statement: “This bill is intended to provide a response to the appalling lack of comparability between the conditions under which the State of Israel holds those terrorists who wish to destroy the state, and the conditions under which the terrorist organizations hold our soldiers and civilians.
“This proposal is also the closing of a circle for me, since I already submitted a similar proposal in the 17th Knesset, which I was unable to pass because of legal elements who were badly mistaken in their opposition to it.”