Knesset Committee to Vote on Terrorist Family Deportation Law this Tuesday

MK Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit) on Sunday tweeted: “Following the wave of attacks carried out on the citizens of the country by terrorists with blue ID cards (meaning Israeli citizens), as I promised, we will vote this coming Tuesday in the Knesset committee in a second and third reading on the Law on Deporting Terrorists’ Families. Immediately afterward, meaning this Wednesday or next Monday, we will vote in the Knesset plenum and the law will be entered into the State of Israel’s book of law.

“Let anyone who plans to harm the citizens of our country know that his family would be expelled from here in disgrace.”

On Sunday, an Israeli Arab from Qalansuwa, an Arab city near Netanya, drove his truck with great force into a bus and a group of elderly passengers who were waiting at a bus stop near Glilot. The attacker was neutralized, but 35 people were injured in the attack, six seriously.

In 2023, the Israeli government approved for submission in the Knesset a bill to deport terrorists allowing the government to revoke the Israeli citizenship or permanent residence in Israel of convicted terrorists who receive compensation from the Palestinian Authority for their acts of terrorism.

An additional item of the same bill permits the deportation of convicted terrorists’ families as a method of deterring terrorists from carrying out attacks.

According to the opinion of Attorneys General Eliakim Rubinstein and Avichai Mandelblit, deporting families of terrorists is contrary to the Geneva Convention. However, Article 78 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (Security measures. Internment and assigned residence. Right of appeal) clearly states:

If the Occupying Power considers it necessary, for imperative reasons of security, to take safety measures concerning protected persons, it may, at the most, subject them to assigned residence or to internment.

Decisions regarding such assigned residence or internment shall be made according to a regular procedure to be prescribed by the Occupying Power in accordance with the provisions of the present Convention. This procedure shall include the right of appeal for the parties concerned. Appeals shall be decided with the least possible delay. In the event of the decision being upheld, it shall be subject to periodical review, if possible, every six months, by a competent body set up by the said Power.

Protected persons made subject to assigned residence and thus required to leave their homes shall enjoy the full benefit of Article 39 of the present Convention.

There’s a glaring problem with the language of Article 78, which requires considering the government of Israel within the “Green Line” an occupying power. But the principle works: the Geneva Convention offers a path to deporting criminals. As to their families – the Israeli legislator will have to be more creative on that one.

Knesset Legal Counsel Sagit Afik told the committee on October 15 regarding the deportation of a terrorist’s family members: “There are problems with the existing text both on the constitutional and the practical side. There is a lack of a clear and orderly position on the part of the government when they are the ones who will have to implement the law. In addition, the violations attributed to family members are at a low penalty level – yet you want to deport them so that in the end the new law is stricter with the relatives than it is with the terrorist himself since the terrorist gets a trial while his relatives do not.”

Attorney Afik also referred to the practical side of the bill: “According to the wording of the law, it is not clear where and how deportations will take place; who is the government agency that will do it; and for how long will they remain deported? The deportation does not include the denial of citizenship, so the relative’s rights apparently remain intact. Without answers to these questions, the implementation of the law will be impossible.”

MK Almog Cohen responded saying the new law had to be unreasonable to achieve its purpose, namely to discourage terrorist acts like Sunday’s Israeli Arab truck driver ramming a bus and 35 passengers.

“We must attack these incidents with tools that are not proportionate, not reasonable,” MK Cohen insisted. “If the High Court of Justice thinks that the law is unconstitutional, we and the public will respond harshly. There is no left and right here, no kibbutzim and cities, this law is anchored in the national consensus… We look at the High Court’s whites of their eyes and say – if you want to have the authority, you must take the responsibility as well.”

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