Israel’s Justice Ministry, in an attempt to prevent parliamentary legislation for an amnesty for all non-violent anti-government protesters against the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, has requested presidential pardons for a small group who have already been convicted and sentenced.  

“We now filed requests for people who have already been tried, convicted and sentenced,” Yoav Sapir, Deputy Chief Public Defender, said. “These people have families, they are minors and first-time offenders and the requests are for the expunging of their criminal records.”  

The government’s move to request pardons from President Shimon Peres for 80 Jewish dissidents, 48 minors and 32 adults, who protested against the government’s expulsion of 10,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in August 2005, comes in the wake of the February 10 national elections and the swearing-in of a new Knesset.  

Officials at the State Prosecutor’s Office said they oppose the legislation because it relates to one sector of society. The list of cases for clemency, which was compiled by head of the Justice Ministry Pardons’ Department, Attorney Inbal Rubinstein, in conjunction with Deputy State Prosecutor for Special Affairs Shai Nitzan, was presented to the president as an alternative to Knesset legislation drafted to pardon all the passive protesters and erase their criminal files. In November 2008, the Knesset passed legislation on the first reading of the law to grant an overall amnesty to “non-violent anti-Disengagement protesters.”

Officials of the Organization for Human Rights in Judea and Samaria, who had lobbied for the legislation, said they expected the new Knesset to pass the second and third readings of the law and to enact the legislation.  

“As long as the initiative of the Public Defender’s Office and the State Prosecutor’s Office will solve the problem of all these demonstrators, it’s a welcome move,” the Organization for Human Rights in Judea and Samaria said. “But if the amnesty will just include those demonstrators whose trial’s have already ended, we will have no choice but to continue the legislative process which aims to correct the discrimination by the law enforcement system against those who were adversely discriminated against.”  

At least 8,000 demonstrators, many of them minors and first-time offenders, were arrested between January and September 2005. More than 1,000 indictments were issued and of those approximately 300 cases are still in judicial proceedings. Criminal charges ranged from disturbing public order, interfering with police work, assaulting a police officer, incitement, racism, insulting a public official and sedition. To date, even in those cases where a magistrate court acquitted the protester, the State Prosecutor’s Office, under the jurisdiction of Nitzan, has appealed the acquittal and the district court has convicted the protester.  

Still, the government made another move towards clemency for the Jewish dissidents on Feb. 26. Justice Minister Daniel Friedman signed a recommendation that Peres pardon another 40 protesters. The recommendation is “based on the understanding that these actions had a unique historical background, and these people are not criminals in essence,” Justice Ministry officials said.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)