(JNi.media) Israel’s Supreme Court, in a nine-Justice panel, ended a five-year struggle over the right of asylum seekers and/or illegal migrant workers to gain entry into the Jewish State.
The law, which was enacted back in 1954, when the fledgling state was combating Arab infiltrators who killed and robbed Jews in distant outposts, was amended in 2010 to prevent entry of tens of thousands of undocumented East Africans, who were fleeing persecution and poverty.
What followed was a five-year war that pitted the suffering of Israel’s underprivileged population, among whom the illegals settled, against the suffering of the infiltrators, as portrayed by the political left. The dispute was born by two appeals of human rights NGOs to the Supreme Court over two separate amendments to the original law.
Each time the court would strike down the newer version of the amended law, the country would erupt in predictable cultural skirmishes, with each side eventually comparing the other to this or that WW2 imagery.
Last night, the High Court finally put an end to this battle—although, Heaven knows many more will take its place in short order—by approving the amended law, with one stipulation.
It is interesting to note that at least two left-of-center media outlets, Ha’aretz and Israel Radio, have presented the decision as the court striking down a fundamental element of the law, although on its face the change appears merely technical.
The African asylum seekers captured by police are sent to a detention facility named Saharonim prison, in the Negev desert, the largest of a planned four camp complex, with a total capacity of 8,000 inmates. They are kept there for a maximum of 90 days for processing, after which they are transferred to a holding facility, where they await a response to their appeal for asylum.
The singular change the court introduced, requiring the Knesset to enact it or give up this latest version of the law as well, was to cut down the asylum seekers’ stay in the holding facility from 20 to 12 months.
As supreme courts often do, the reasoning this court offered for the change, namely that the shorter period is “more proportionate” is not based so much in logic, but is an attempt on the part of the court to paint as logical that which is their purely emotional response.
Both Chief Justice Miriam Naor and Justice Hanan Meltzer mentioned the need for pity in dealing with these runaways, whom Meltzer actually compared with our forefathers who escaped a house of bondage in Egypt and in Europe.
Those are fine sentiments, but even this emotional court had to agree that the expectation that a country of 8 million people be able to take in tens of thousands of destitute, unskilled Africans in a few years is a recipe for social upheaval and economic trouble. So they introduced the concept of proportionality, without spelling out what the 12-months period is proportional to, and how it is more so compared with 20 months.
In reality, the change comes down to the Justice Ministry looking to make the Africans’ stay in Israel too long to bear, so that they would concede to taking the few thousand dollars the state offers them and get on a plane back home or to another, willing African country, such as Uganda.
And the court doesn’t want to see this level of coercion on the part of the legislator, so it cut shorter the stay period.
And since both sides are exhausted by their 5-year battle, it is likely, as Prime Minister Netanyahu stated Tuesday night, that the Knesset will comply with the court’s demand.
