Israel’s parliament passed a law on Thursday allowing the deportation of family members of Palestinian attackers, including its own citizens, to the war-torn Gaza Strip or other places.
Israel passed a law allowing the deportation of families of Palestinians
The law, favoured by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and its far-right allies, passed by a 61-41 vote but is likely to be challenged in court.
It applies to Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of annexed East Jerusalem who had advance knowledge of the attacks on their family members or “express support for or identify with a terrorist act.”
They will be deported to the Gaza Strip or elsewhere for between 7 and 20 years. The war between Israel and Hamas is still ongoing in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and the majority of the population has been forced to flee their homes, often repeatedly.
It is unclear whether the law would apply in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has long had a policy of demolishing the family homes of attackers. Palestinians have carried out dozens of knife attacks, gun attacks and car accidents against Israelis in recent years.
Dr. Eran Shamir-Borer, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former international law expert in the Israeli military, believes that if the law goes before the Supreme Court, it is likely to be overturned based on previous Israeli deportation cases. Shamir-Borer said:
“The bottom line is this is completely non-constitutional and a clear conflict to Israel´s core values.”
Start of the occupation
Israel seized Gaza, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, territories that Palestinians want to use for their future state. Tel Aviv withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, but re-occupied parts of the territory after a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 triggered the war.
Israel has annexed East Jerusalem, which is not recognised by most of the international community. Palestinians are permanent residents there and can apply for citizenship, but most choose not to, and those who do face a number of obstacles.
Palestinians living in Israel make up about 20 per cent of the country’s population. They have citizenship and the right to vote, but face widespread discrimination. Many also have close family ties to residents of the territories, and most sympathise with the Palestinian cause.
Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon killed dozens of people
Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed 40 people near the eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, the country’s health ministry said, while more strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut at dusk.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire in parallel with the war in Gaza for more than a year, but fighting has escalated since late September, with Israeli troops stepping up bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon and ground incursions into border villages.
Israeli strikes on Baalbek and the Bekaa Valley killed 40 people and wounded 53, the health ministry said. The Israeli military did not comment.
Israeli strikes also hit Hezbollah strongholds in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut. At least four strikes hit the area on Wednesday after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate several locations. There were no reports of casualties or details of what was hit.
The attack came shortly after Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said he did not believe political action would lead to an end to hostilities.
If Israel stopped its attacks, he said, it would be possible to move to indirect negotiations. Qassem said:
“When the enemy decides to stop the aggression, there is a path for negotiations that we have clearly defined – indirect negotiations through the Lebanese state and speaker (of parliament Nabih) Berri.”
Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 3,000 people over the past year, most of them in the past six weeks.
Lebanese rescuers surveyed a destroyed apartment block in the town of Barja, south of Beirut, searching for bodies of the dead and survivors of an Israeli strike Tuesday night that killed 20 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said. It was unclear whether the strike targeted Hezbollah members. There was no evacuation warning before the airstrike.
Hezbollah launches first airstrikes on Israeli military bases near Tel Aviv and Haifa
Hezbollah announced late Wednesday night that it carried out its first airstrikes on two Israeli military bases: the Belo Base near Tel Aviv and the Haifa naval base in Haifa Bay.
According to the statement, Belo Base, affiliated with the Israeli Army’s 98th Paratrooper Reserve Brigade, was the target of the new escalation near Tel Aviv.
The group also reported an attack on the Haifa naval base, where a fleet of Israeli Navy missile boats and submarines are based.
