http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.619393
Gideon Sa'ar: Israel mustn't give up on detention center for illegal immigrants
Outgoing interior minister says won’t heed court ruling against detention for asylum seekers in Holot.
By Ilan Lior | Oct. 6, 2014 | 12:48 PM
Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Monday he would not accept the High Court of Justice’s overturning of legislation that allowed asylum seekers who entered Israel illegally to be incarcerated without trial for up to a year.
He also criticized a second component of the court’s overturning of an amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law: the closure of the Holot detention facility in the south.
Sa’ar, however, is about step down – last month he announced that he would take a “time-out” from political life after the Jewish holidays that end in mid-October.
“I do not accept this as the end of the story. The government and the Knesset cannot accept it,” Sa’ar told the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee, adding that Israel needed “red lines that we must stand for in any legislation [including] detention for everyone who enters” the country illegally.
He said that “without the punishment of imprisonment, I will not bring the law to the cabinet,” adding that Israel’s fence on the Sinai border was not enough.
“Many other Western nations give the punishment of detention .... This is necessary for deterrence, alongside the physical barrier of the fence. It exists in Australia, Italy, in Greece.”
Based on the High Court’s ruling last month, the Holot detention center would be closed within 90 days.
“The Holot facility was built to reduce the concentrations of infiltrators in city centers .... Holot made a decisive contribution to the infiltrators leaving of their own free will, not just from city centers but from the country in general,” Sa’ar said. “If there is no Holot what will become of them? They will be in the streets.”
As the situation stands now, the authorities will be permitted to detain asylum seekers for up to 60 days, as stipulated in the Entry into Israel Law. The nine-justice bench decided to close Holot by a 7-2 vote, and to overturn the provision allowing asylum seekers to be jailed for up to a year by a 6-3 vote.
The panel had already struck down a previous version of the law, which allowed asylum seekers to be jailed for three years without trial. It was the first time the High Court had overturned two versions of the same law.
An estimated 2,200 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan are still being detained at Holot.
Received on Mon Oct 06 2014 - 06:07:17 EDT