Terror victims group petitions court against hostage deal with Hamas

The Almagor Terror Victims Association files a petition to the High Court of Justice against the hostage deal between Israel and Hamas according to which the terror group will release 50 Israeli hostages in return for 150 Palestinian security prisoners.

It requests a delay in the implementation of the deal, claiming it violates the terms of the Shamgar Commission report partially published in 2012 on prisoner swaps, which stipulates that only a small number of prisoners held by Israel can be released per Israeli captive being returned.

Almagor also cites the High Court ruling on petitions against the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, which although it declined to stop the deal said that the most serious objections to it were that the prisoners being released would endanger the security of Israeli civilians in the future.

The organization requests that the court order the government to demonstrate that the current deal does not endanger the lives of Israeli civilians and those of IDF soldiers held captive by Hamas.

It also asks the court to rule that the government “does not have the right to discriminate between blood and blood,” meaning that it does not have the authority to determine that one captive will be released and another captive “will remain in the hands of murderers which are dripping with blood.”

It is widely expected that the petition will be rejected by the High Court, as it has rejected all such petitions in the past, on the grounds that its purview does not extend to matters of security and diplomacy apart from extreme situations.