Prevention of Infiltration Law - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Prevention of Infiltration Law is an Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i law enacted in 1954, which defines offenses of armed and non-armed infiltration to Israel and from Israel to hostile neighboring countries. The law authorizes the Minister of Defense to order the deportation of an infiltrator before or after conviction.

The purpose of the law was to prevent Palestinian refugees re-entry into Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

and allow for their re-expulsion, and in the case of Palestinians who were internally displaced within what became Israel, to allow for their expulsion from Israel if they attempted to return to their villages and towns.

After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War (known to Israelis as the "War of Independence" and to Palestinians as Al-Nakba, or "The Catastrophe") and the 1948 Palestinian exodus

1948 Palestinian exodus

The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...

, many Palestinians who either fled or were expelled from their towns and villages, whether they had had altogether ventured beyond what became Israel (largely into the neighbouring Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

countries of Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

, Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

) or were internally displaced, tried for many year since then to return

Palestinian right of return

The Palestinian right of return is a political position or principle asserting that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees and their descendants, have a right to return, and a right to the property they or their forebears left or which they were forced to leave in what is now Israel...

to the places they had left. The Israeli Government enacted the Prevention of Infiltration Law in order to forbid and impede, what under the law receives the name of "infiltration", into Israel.

Context

For more information on historical context, see 1948 Palestinian exodus
1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...

, 1948 Arab-Israeli war
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...

, Palestinian immigration (Israel)
Palestinian immigration (Israel)
Palestinian immigration refers to the movement of Palestinians into the territory of Israel. Since 1948, most Palestinians crossing into Israel have come to live, reside and/or work, some of them continuing the lives they lived prior to their displacement in the Palestinian exodus...

and Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...

.

Palestinian infiltration

Palestinian immigration (Israel)

Palestinian immigration refers to the movement of Palestinians into the territory of Israel. Since 1948, most Palestinians crossing into Israel have come to live, reside and/or work, some of them continuing the lives they lived prior to their displacement in the Palestinian exodus...

into Israel first emerged among the Palestinian refugee

Palestinian refugee

Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...

s of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War

1948 Arab-Israeli War

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...

, living in camps in Jordan

Jordan

, Lebanon

Lebanon

, Egypt

Egypt

, and Syria

Syria

. Most of the infiltration at this time was economic in nature, with Palestinians crossing the border seeking food or the recovery of property lost in the 1948 war. Between 1948 and 1955, infiltration by Palestinians into Israel was firmly opposed by Arab governments. The problem of establishing and guarding the demarcation line separating the Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip

thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

from the Israeli-held Negev

Negev

The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...

area, proved a vexing one: largely due to the presence of more than 200,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in this Gaza area. The terms of the Armistice Agreement restricted Egypt’s use and deployment of regular armed forces

Armed forces

The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...

in the Gaza strip. In keeping with this restriction the Egyptian Government’s answer was to form a Palestinian para-military police force. The Palestinian Border police was created in December 1952. The Border police were placed under the command of ‘Abd-al-Man’imi ‘Abd-al-Ra’uf, a former Egyptian air brigade commander, member of the Muslim Brotherhood and member of the Revolutionary Council. 250 Palestinian volunteers started training in March 1953 with further volunteers coming forward for training in May and December 1953. Part of the Border police personnel were attached to the Military Governor’s office and placed under ‘Abd-al-‘Azim al-Saharti to guard public installations in the Gaza strip. It was only after Israel's raid on an Egyptian military

Military of Egypt

The Egyptian Armed Forces are the largest in Africa, and the Arab World, and is the tenth largest in the world, consisting of the Egyptian Army, Egyptian Navy, Egyptian Air Force and Egyptian Air Defense Command....

outpost in Gaza in February 1955, in which 37 Egyptian soldiers were killed, that an Arab government - in this case the Egyptian - began to actively sponsor fedayeen raids into Israel. According to the Jewish Agency for Israel

Jewish Agency for Israel

The Jewish Agency for Israel , also known as the Sochnut or JAFI, served as the organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the Diaspora into the state of Israel.-History:...

between 1951 and 1956, 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded in fedayeen attacks.

From time to time, too, the Israeli authorities arrested groups of Arabs who had stayed in the country without being granted Israeli nationality and pushed them over the frontier. These Arabs would often return and, through their relatives, obtain decisions from the Israeli courts allowing them to stay in Israel.

During the 1949–1956 period the motivation of infiltration was social or economic concerns.

For some time these practices continued to embarrass the Israeli authorities until finally they passed a law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

forbidding Palestinians to return to Israel, those who did so being regarded as "infiltrators.". Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes inside the new Israeli state. Between 30,000 and 90,000 Palestinian refugees returned to Israel as a result. They wanted to return to what were their homes prior to the Arab-Israeli War

1948 Arab-Israeli War

, looking for their lost loved ones, harvesting crops from fields that were confiscated, and to reclaim property other than land. There were also Bedouin to whom the concept of newly established borders were foreign.

Arabs declare the infiltration into Israel's territory to have been a direct consequence to the displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian refugees during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War

1948 Arab-Israeli War

. To Israel, the infiltration was a large problem. Israel's answer to this was to establish new settlements along the border and raze the abandoned Arab villages. A "free fire" policy towards infiltrators was adopted — a policy of shooting those crossing the international armistice line illegally. Eventually, the Israeli leadership came to the conclusion that only retaliatory strikes would be able to create the necessary factor of deterrence

Deterrence theory

Deterrence theory gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons, and features prominently in current United States foreign policy regarding the development of nuclear technology in North Korea and Iran. Deterrence theory however was...

, that would convince the Arab armies to prevent infiltration. Although the strikes were sometimes confined to military targets (particularly, at the later stages of the infiltration), numerous civilians were killed, prompting the question whether the strikes were a form of collective punishment

Collective punishment

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions...

The 'Prevention of Infiltration' Law

The Prevention of Infiltration (Offences and Jurisdiction) Law, 5714-1954 defined as an "infiltrator" anyone who (Article 1 (a)):

...has entered Israel knowingly and unlawfully and who at any time between the 16th Kislev, 3708 (29th November, 1947) and his entry was - a national or citizen of the Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi-Arabia, Trans-Jordan, Iraq or the Yemen ; or a resident or visitor in one of those countries or in any part of Palestine outside Israel ; or a Palestinian citizen or a Palestinian resident without nationality or citizenship or whose nationality or citizenship was doubtful and who, during the said period, left his ordinary place of residence in an area which has become a part of Israel for a place outside Israel.

According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 38), under the Prevention of Infiltration (Offences and Jurisdiction) Law, 5714-1954, the definition of ‘infiltrators’ corresponded closely with that of ‘absentees’. The law established strict penalties for such ‘infiltration’. Under this law, ‘internal refugees’ (Palestinians who were declared absent from their own villages but inside Palestine at the time Israel was created) were also barred from returning to their villages. When caught, these were then expelled from Israel. Over the ensuing years, several thousand internally displaced Palestinians were expelled in this manner, paving the way for Jewish immigration and colonisation of their lands.

According to Kirsbaum over the years, the Israeli Government has continued to cancel and modify some of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, but mostly it has added more as it has continued to extend its declared state of emergency. For example, even though the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954 is not labelled as an official "Emergency Regulation", it extends the applicability of the Defence (Emergency) Regulation 112 of 1945 giving the Minister of Defence extraordinary powers of deportation for accused infiltrators even before they are convicted (Articles 30 & 32), and makes itself subject to cancellation when the Knesset

Knesset

The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...

ends the State of Emergency

State of emergency

A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...

upon which all of the Emergency Regulations are dependent.

According to a Tel-Aviv University document the Law does not consider the motives of the person for crossing the border and entering Israel. It also enables the establishment of Tribunals for the Prevention of Infiltration, in which judges will preside who are military officers (but who do not necessarily possess legal knowledge) and enables the tribunal to deviate from the rules of evidence. The penalties for infiltration are severe - and may reach imprisonment for five years. The author states that in practice, no uniform practice is employed in relation to persons who cross the border and apply for asylum. Some have been held for periods of two or three years in prison, others have been released from prison on various conditions, while others have not been allowed to enter Israel at all and were returned to the place from which they came (in possible breach of the principle of non-refoulement

Non-refoulement

Non-refoulement is a principle in international law, specifically refugee law, that concerns the protection of refugees from being returned to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened...

).

A new government bill, updating the Infiltration Prevention Law, was passed in a vote after the first reading in the last Israeli Knesset term in May 2008, and is being debated in the Committee of Interior in preparation for the second vote and, if this passes, the final vote in the plenum. The bill would allow officers of the Israel Defense Forces to deport asylum seekers, many from Darfur, South Sudan, and Eritrea, back to Egypt. This could be done without providing for a Refugee Status Determination process, as required under in the 1951 Geneva Convention for the protection of Refugees. In the discussions in the Knesset committee, a UNHCR representative emphasized that the international community may criticize Israel if the law did not follow international law.

Context

The 'Prevention of Infiltration' Law

See also