The Knesset plenum approved a bill to ban family visits to certain security prisoners in its first reading Wednesday.
The bill applies to prisoners who are members of terrorist organizations that deny visits to kidnapped Israeli civilians and soldiers.
According to the bill submitted by MK Oren Hazan (Likud), the Minister of Public Security will have the authority, after consultation with the Minister of Defense, to permit visits in exceptional cases.
"The State of Israel is dealing with terrorist organizations that threaten to harm its citizens at any time and place, because it is an advanced democracy committed to international human rights laws and conventions to which the terrorist organizations are not committed, an intolerable situation has arisen that the terrorist organizations, as a strategy, abduct and hold Israeli citizens without regard to their conditions and without allowing them to be visited, which greatly harms the morale and the national strength of the State of Israel," Hazan said.
"On the other hand, the State of Israel also allows visits to security prisoners who are members of terrorist organizations. The bill is intended to address the lack of compatibility between the conditions under which the State of Israel holds the terrorists who harm it, and the conditions under which the terrorist organizations hold the Israeli hostages: Abra Mengistu, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.
MK Hazan said, "The insane cost that the state invests in putting Hamas terrorists in a prison resort comes from our pocket. At this time they are educating terror and even carrying out terrorist attacks from within the prisons. But what about our brothers in Hamas captivity? No one knows."
"They get visits, full buses coming from Gaza. How can it be that while there are people here who shout about the human rights of murderers time after time, but do not cry about the human rights of our children.? There can be no reality in which we do not know about our sons."