The Knesset on Monday voted as expected, passing a second and third readings of a bill to erase the criminal records of expulsion ‘criminals’, the approximately 400 people who were arrested in various acts of protest against the government’s 2005 Disengagement Plan.

About 80 people arrested and charged during the expulsion summer will not have their files cleared, since officials report the charges against them are not for minor offenses, but in some cases, endangering lives.

The bill to assist the expulsion defendants was initiated by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. The bill was passed into law in a 51-9 vote, give it solid backing.

Rivlin spoke of the “national trauma” caused by the implementation of the plan, the unprecedented emotional scar that it left, and the need for the nation to heal.

In actuality, many more were arrested, minors in a great deal of cases, and the cases have since been dismissed since they addressed minor infractions of the law, part of the protest against the forced expulsion of Jews from their Gaza and northern Shomron homes.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)