Mandelblit said the bill would utterly break with the foundations underlying Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
A Knesset bill due to be discussed by the government’s ministers on Sunday – which would effectively remove the migrants issue from the High Court of Justice’s authority – would create a black hole in Israel’s legal system, said Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit in a preemptive strike against the initiative.
In a statement confirming his “vehement opposition” to the bill, he said the idea of stating that laws relating to migrants can violate the constitutional rules of proportionality and rationality has another name: eliminating individual rights for migrants.
While Mandelblit has supported other initiatives to further the government’s goal of getting most of the remaining 35,000-plus African migrants (down from 60,000) to leave, he said this bill went way too far and would be a slippery slope to permitting the government to isolate specific groups as having no rights.
He said the bill would utterly break with the foundations underlying Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Furthermore, he said that the bill would violate Israel’s commitments to international treaties dealing with refugees and bring down unprecedented criticism by fellow democracies.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post