After a year and seven months, the Cabinet Ministerial Committee for the Treatment of Prisoners and Missing Persons has not convened, held discussions, or made decisions. The family of IDF officer Hadar Goldin, whose body is held by Hamas in Gaza, petitioned the Supreme Court this morning against Prime Minister Netanyahu and the political-security cabinet.
The family says the committee dealing with the matter has not met since January 2017 and has not met and updated Leah and Simha Goldin since November 2016.
In the petition, the family notes that the Ministerial Committee for the Treatment of Prisoners and Missing Persons was established by the Cabinet more than two years ago at a meeting held on June 30, 2016, as part of the approved agreement signed between the Israeli and Turkish governments. This committee recommended that the political-security cabinet adopt a series of resolutions in January 2017 aimed at pressuring Hamas.
The Goldin family asks the Supreme Court to issue an interim order preventing any action promoting an agreement with Hamas in Gaza before the Ministerial Committee for Prisoners convenes and discusses the issue of the return of IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.
"The petition isn't directed at any political decision, but rather only at the Prime Minister's intentional disengagement from the committee's meeting, which was meant to discuss life-and-death matters. The Israeli government turned the prisoner's committee into a bluff committee," they said.
"We learned recently that in the framework of the hollow statements that the government is doing everything in its power to bring back the boys from Gaza, even the special committee appointed by the cabinet headed by Netanyahu has stopped its activity. Another proof that the cabinet decided to betray the values of the IDF and continue to abandon the soldiers in Gaza."