Jewish Home vows to advance bill sidestepping High Court on deportations
Legislation, to be pushed ahead next week, will include a clause preventing the top legal body from striking down parts of proposal
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Wednesday said they will advance legislation to deport thousands of African asylum seekers that would include a clause preventing the High Court of Justice from striking down parts of the law, as it has done in the past.
According to Hadashot news, Jewish Home leader Bennett told coalition leaders the legislation will seek to amend Israel’s Basic Law so that the African migrants can be deported under the Prevention of Infiltration Law, without violating a number of High Court rulings that have struck down the plan as unconstitutional.
The top legal body has blocked previous government deportation plans carried out within the framework of the so-called Infiltrators Law that have either included indefinite detention of migrants or their deportation to countries deemed unsafe.
Bennett said that Shaked would convene the Ministerial Committee for Legislation next week in order to advance the proposal.
Explaining the bill, the Jewish Home chairman told his followers on the Telegram messaging app that “this is not a law that bypasses the High Court, but rather a law according to which the people are the sovereign.”
Bennett said the circumventing clause would allow Israel to deport “illegal infiltrators without the High Court disqualifying (the legislation) again and again.”
“I am convinced that all coalition partners will support a quick legislative process,” he added.
Hadashot news reported Tuesday night that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weighing a move to reopen the Holot migrant detention facility in the Negev, which had been shuttered in early March in anticipation of planned deportations.
The prime minister is also planning legislation to bypass the High Court of Justice’s recent ruling blocking deportations. Hadashot reported Monday that demands by the court had scuttled Israel’s deal with Rwanda.
Netanyahu is reportedly applying pressure on his coalition partners, namely Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon, to support the plan. Kahlon has in the past opposed any Knesset bills that clash with court rulings.
However, sources close to Kahlon said Tuesday evening he would back such legislation on the matter of migrants. “If Netanyahu wishes it, we can pass the bill tomorrow,” they said.
Wednesday’s announcement was not the first time the Jewish Home ministers have attempted to advance High Court-sidestepping legislation.
Last October, they unveiled a similar plan to bolster Israel’s constitutional laws at the expense of the High Court. At the time, the two ministers from the Orthodox-nationalist faction said their initiative would “restore the balance” between the legislature and judiciary, while critics charged it would weaken the court, several of whose recent rulings have frustrated the government.
Earlier Wednesday, Israel released 58 African asylum seekers that were being held at the Saharonim Prison in southern Israel in preparation for their forced deportation to Rwanda — a plan that was quashed earlier this week.
The decision to free the migrants followed a High Court petition filed on behalf of a slew of human rights organizations who argued the indefinite imprisonment of the asylum seekers was illegal.
The remaining 212 asylum seekers held in Saharonim Prison will remain in detention for now as Israel is still in talks with an unnamed country — widely believed to be Uganda — to forcibly deport them there.
However, the state informed the court in a Wednesday response to the petition that it will free the remaining Saharonim detainees if that agreement similarly collapses. That deal is also believed to be imperiled as Uganda said Tuesday it will not accept asylum seekers from the Jewish state.
Eitay Mack, the attorney who filed the High Court petition on behalf of the rights groups, told The Times of Israel that he expected the deal with Uganda to break down, similar to the previous one with Rwanda, leaving the government with no choice but to release the remaining asylum seekers at Saharonim.
Nevertheless, Israel is still trying to save the agreement. In its response to the High Court petition, it stated that a special envoy was dispatched to the unnamed “third-party country” that had agreed to accept African asylum seekers from Israel.
The unnamed country was Uganda, according to Hebrew media reports. The special envoy is expected to report back if the agreement with the country still stands, according to the state response.
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will have until Thursday to decide whether the state’s response is sufficient to allow Israel to continue imprisoning the remaining 212 African asylum seekers in Saharonim.
The state response followed a dramatic about-face late Monday evening in which Netanyahu announced he was canceling a new agreement with the UN’s refugee agency that would have seen thousands of African migrants resettled in Western nations and thousands more given temporary status in Israel. The prime minister had frozen the deal mere hours after announcing the plan.
The agreement was designed to end the possibility of forced deportations of thousands of migrants from Israel to Rwanda. Under the agreement, a minimum of 16,250 migrants would have instead been resettled in Western nations.
In return, Israel would grant temporary residency to an equal number of migrants.
The presence of the primarily Sudanese and Eritrean migrants in Israel has become a key political issue.
Israel’s earlier deportation policy to the African countries, which offered each migrant $3,500 and a plane ticket, had been condemned by Israeli activists and the United Nations as chaotic, poorly executed and unsafe.
The Supreme Court froze the deportations in mid-March in response to a petition.
