Israeli Gov't to support bill on revoking citizenship for disloyalty to state

Last update - 22:16 07/01/2007


Gov't to support bill on revoking citizenship for disloyalty to state

By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

The government intends to support a bill that would allow courts to strip Israelis of their citizenship for committing "an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the State of Israel."

The ministerial committee on legislation approved the bill Sunday, which was proposed by Likud MK Gilad Erdan.

The committee also decided that, once Erdan's bill is passed in by the Knesset plenum in a preliminary reading, the bill will be frozen until the Justice Ministry formulates a comprehensive government bill that will be attached to the private bill.

The bill does not provide a clear definition of what constitutes a breach of loyalty, but determines that visiting an enemy country or acquiring citizenship of an enemy country would be considered a breach of loyalty that would serve as a basis for revoking Israeli citizenship.

The bill "will allow the rational revoking of citizenship in order to protect the state from those who wish it harm," said Erdan.

The bill transfers the authority to revoke citizenship from the interior minister to district court panels that deal with administrative issues. Requests to revoke an individual's citizenship will be filed by the attorney general.

While the interior minister currently has the authority to revoke citizenship, this is a step that is rarely taken. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz himself ruled 12 years ago that: "As a rule the revoking of citizenship on the basis of breach of loyalty should be avoided, and the authority to revoke citizenship from an Israeli citizen should not be used, unless he possesses another citizenship."

Israeli citizenship has only been revoked for breach of loyalty in two cases. In September 2002, the citizenship of Kais Obeid was revoked due to the fact that Obeid was a senior Hezbollah militant in Lebanon and involved in the abduction of Israeli businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum. In November 2002, the Tul Karm resident Nihad Abu-Kishak was stripped of his citizenship for being a senior member of Hamas' military wing.

The ministerial committee decided, on the basis of the professional opinion of the Justice Ministry, that the bill should include a solution for situations in which the revoking of an individual's citizenship would leave the individual without citizenship from of country. International law prohibits countries from revoking citizenship from those who as a result would be left without any citizenship.

According to Erdan, "Terrorists and their supporters use all the rights and freedoms provided by a democratic state in order to harm that state and its citizens."

"Israel is faced with such terror from the dawn of its existence and if it is interested in survival, it must act on the basis of the idea of a democracy that is defending itself," continued Erdan. "It must defend itself against those that seek to destroy it, [some of] whom are unfortunately also its residents. One cannot be the citizen of a country he seeks to destroy."