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JERUSALEM – The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the government to admit an American woman with her student visa, thereby dismissing the Interior Ministry, which had insisted on deporting her as a defender of Palestinian rights. while she was a student at the University of Florida.
Lara Alqasem, 22, was detained in a cell at Ben Gurion Airport for more than two weeks while she was fighting against deportation. She will now be allowed to follow through on her project to enroll at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she hopes to do a master's degree in human rights law.
The Interior Ministry has accused Ms. Alqasem, while she was running a section of the Students for Justice campus in Palestine, of actively supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that is pressuring Israel to take action. 39, it puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank. Israeli officials view the movement as anti-Semitic and want Israel's destruction to the extent that it also promotes the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees in their former homes.
The case cast an uncomfortable light on what has become an acrimonious debate about who should be allowed to enter the country and more generally about the health of Israeli democracy. Alqasem's supporters, and even some right-wing critics, accused the government of overzealous border policy and said it would do more damage to Israel's image abroad than call of any student to a boycott.
In their decision, a panel of three Supreme Court justices took up these concerns. Because Ms. Alqasem had promised not to call for a boycott of Israel, she had left the group a year and a half ago – "an important period" considering her young age – her actions "do not constitute a good cause to ban his entry into Israel, "wrote Judge Anat Baron.
For this reason, Judge Baron continued, "the inevitable impression is that the invalidation of the visa given to it is due to the political views it holds. If this is really the case, then we are talking about an extreme and dangerous step, which could lead to the collapse of the pillars on which democracy in Israel rests. "
Ms. Alqasem's lawyers accused the government of relying on weak evidence, and officials acknowledged that they were based at least in part on Google and the work of a police chief. organization called Canary Mission, which says it "documents hateful people and groups from the United States, Israel and the Jews on North American campuses."
After being denied entry, Ms. Alqasem, who has Palestinian grandparents, appealed to the Tel Aviv District Court. At the request of a judge, she formally declared that she would not participate in any boycott activity during her stay in Israel and that she had no intention of going to the territories. Palestinians, according to his lawyers, Leora Bechor and Yotam Ben-Hillel.
A key issue in Wednesday's Supreme Court litigation was whether Ms. Alqasem remained an activist in the boycott movement or whether, as she stated in the lower court, she was separated from the boycott movement. organization in early 2017.
The government, seeking to refute its testimony, accused the applicant of having clicked on "Participate" on the Facebook page of at least one event related to the movement this year. The judges were not convinced.
His lawyers argued that the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior in the application of the Sanctions Act should be limited, in particular because it restricts freedom of speech. And representatives of the Hebrew University have warned that if students holding a valid visa could be refused upon their arrival in Israel during their militant past, this would have a crippling effect on academic exchanges and rewarded by Israel.
In the past, Israeli officials have stated that the 2017 Membership Act would not penalize people solely for their political views and would only apply to the personalities of the boycott movement.
While the law has so far been used sparingly – only about 15 people have been denied entry so far, officials say – Israel has been subjected to unwelcome scrutiny for hold and interview leading critics at their entry points.
The law of entry itself is disputed in separate disputes. In the Alqasem case, the judges had only to find that she was no longer an activist in the boycott movement, regardless of her past actions or current beliefs, to cancel her deportation.
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