Deri floats annulling Israeli IS fighters’ citizenship

In one of his first moves in his second stint as interior minister, Aryeh Deri released a memorandum on Thursday outlining an amendment to the Citizenship Law, which if passed would give him the authority to revoke the citizenship of Israeli citizens who join the Islamic State group.

Under the current law, the interior minister has the power to cancel the citizenship of an Israeli who becomes a citizen of an enemy state or does something constituting a “breach of allegiance” to Israel, or if it becomes clear that the individual acquired Israeli citizenship under false information.

However, the law does not relate to someone meeting the aforementioned criteria who is out of the country at the time of the interior minister’s decision to annul citizenship, thus excluding, according to some estimates, the 100 to 150 Israeli citizens said to have traveled abroad to fight with IS.

Deri’s proposed amendment would change that, allowing him to make the decision for such citizens if they are determined to have breached their allegiance to Israel.

“We are talking about an important amendment to the Citizenship Law because recently we see more and more citizens of the state who take advantage of their Israeli citizenship and plan actions against [Israel],” Deri told the NRG news site.

Six Arab Israelis, four of them teachers, who were arrested by the Shin Bet for supporting the Islamic State (Courtesy/Shin Bet)

A number of politicians have called in recent months for revoking the citizenship of Israeli IS recruits. In a November cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had asked the attorney general “to move ahead with revoking the citizenship of anyone who joins the organization.”

“Whoever joins Islamic State will not be an Israeli citizen, and if he leaves the country’s borders he will not return,” Netanyahu added and noted that the concept of revoking citizenship for those who join IS was becoming more accepted in the international community.

In the wake of the November 13 IS attacks in Paris, the French government has also been pushing to annul the citizenship of convicted terrorists with dual nationality. Several recent polls indicated that 80 to 90 percent of the French are in favor of the measure.

AP contributed to this report.