Professor Aviad Hacohen
Professor Aviad HacohenHezki Baruch

In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Professor Aviad Hacohen spoke about the Supreme Court's decision to limit the steps the State of Israel can take to enforce the law regarding infiltrators.

Professor Hacohen serves as dean of Sha'arei Mishpat College.

"You need to remember that it's not just about a court case - it's about people's lives," Hacohen said. "These are the lives of south Tel Aviv's residents, who suffer from abuse and other difficulties. Only some of the infiltrators arrived as refugees, and cannot be sent back to their home countries both because of international law and because we are commanded 'not to extradite a servant to his master' in the Bible."

"The judges emphasized that we are allowed to deport the infiltrators, and we are allowed to arrest them in order to motivate them to move to a different country. But the agreement that Israel signed with third countries stipulates that the infiltrators will only leave if they agree to do so. This is why the judges insist that until the infiltrators agree, we cannot remove them.

"This stipulation was not made by the judges - it was agreed to by the Israeli government.

"The judges agreed that infiltrators may be arrested, but for no longer than sixty days. Longer periods of arrest contradict the Supreme Court's previous decisions. although unrelated to infiltrators, such as arresting a person who owes money. The second issue is the contract signed between Israel and the other countries, and how it is interpreted internationally. We may find ourselves in a very problematic place if we go against international law, whether we like it or not."

Regarding possible ways to motivate the infiltrators to leave, Hacohen said that "Justice Hanan Meltzer said - and the other judges did not disagree with him - that we can fence in the areas where the infiltrators live, and scatter them in various places throughout the country. The assumption is that when they are not with their social group in the center of Israel, but are in smaller groups in the periphery, they will be much more willing to move to a third country."

Experts have said that since Israel decided where immigrants from North African would live duirng the mass aliyas of the fifties, there is a legal precedent..Other ideas included taking a percentage of infiltrators' wages and setting them aside, to be returned when they leave the country.

According to Hacohen, international law deals with the fact that Israel's African infiltrators are criminals.

"International law deals with this issue, and separates between infiltrators and refugees," Hacohen explained. "Criminals can be tried and imprisoned if necessary, and we need to do that. However, such a step requires a legal process which is not done for most of the infiltrators. We need to figure out why. International law stipulates that even if a person arrives in a country illegally, we cannot always remove him to a country in which his life will be in danger. For this reason, Israel has agreements with two third countries."

"The issue is we're working very slowly. It's an issue of both policy and resources."

Last Monday, Supreme Court ruled that 40,000 African infiltrators cannot be forced to leave, and cannot be imprisoned for refusing to leave, even though there agreements with countries ready to absorb them.