The Knesset on Monday night approved an amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law, limiting the detention of illegal migrants in the Negev Holot detention facility to a maximum of 12 months. The previous limit of 20 months’ detention, was rejected by Israel’s Supreme Court. The amendment to the law passed by a 55 to 32 majority.
Last August, the Supreme Court ruled jailing illegal migrants at Holot constitutional but insisted the term of up to 20 months was disproportionate. The court ruled that the Knesset must come up with revisions to the bill within six months and temporarily limited the length of detention at Holot to 12 months.
Now, that’s how a court legislates!
The notes accompanying the bill say that “setting a maximum stay of 12 months is in keeping with the court’s ruling and matches the constitutional standard the court adopted in its ruling about the interim period [of detention]. The suggested term … undermines the dignity and freedom of the infiltrator to a lesser extent.”
During the plenum debate before the vote, MK Revital Swid (Zionist Camp) asked, “Why are we investing so much energy in a law instead of dealing with the real issue – what to do about the residents of the south Tel Aviv neighborhoods. How we can improve their lives, which have become a never-ending nightmare?”
“We are babbling about an amendment to the law, but which neighborhood will it save?” Swid continued, “Whom will it help?”
MK Yael German (Yesh Atid) said, “This bill won’t turn south Tel Aviv into a place where it’s nice to live. It won’t remove the refugees and give them a livelihood that might lead them to leave south Tel Aviv.”
German argued that the bill will be used against “people who have done nothing that’s against the law, and who cannot be sent back to their countries of origin because their lives are in danger there. What do we expect from these refugees? That they won’t sleep? That they won’t eat? That they won’t work? The government is turning its back on the call to find a humane solution.”
MK Michal Rozin (Meretz) said, “Government representatives abroad present the rulings of the High Court on asylum seekers as a reflection of Israeli democracy and are proud that the court invalidates laws that are not constitutional and is defending the rights of minority refugees. On the one hand the government criticizes the High Court, and on the other it uses it throughout the world to show how we are such a properly run country.”
“Unfortunately, the policy of abuse of asylum seekers continues in the State of Israel,” Rozin added, “We are once again ignoring the essence of what the High Court was telling us.”
Infiltration by illegal African migrants began in Israel in the mid-1990s and has expanded considerably around 2007. According to the Population and Immigration Authority, as of 2013 some 65,000 people had entered Israel illegally through the Egyptian border. They live in Israel’s poorest neighborhoods where, as in the case of south Tel Aviv, they have turned the lives of local, underprivileged Israelis into a living hell.