‘No more terror propaganda’ — Ben-Gvir to limit MK visits to security prisoners

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announces plan to limit lawmakers’ visits to incarcerated terrorists.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is scrapping a previous policy which permitted MKs to visit prisoners incarcerated on terror charges, saying that the visits should be seriously limited because they are used to push pro-terror propaganda.

Lawmakers from the Arab political parties, including the Joint List, have visited convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons in recent years, often promoting the meetings on social media.

“After I have considered and examined the issue, and the position of the Shin Bet and the Shin Bet was brought to my attention, I believe that there are meetings of MKs with security prisoners in order to give [privileges] to those prisoners, and these [meetings] may lead to incitement and the promotion of terrorist propaganda,” Ben-Gvir wrote in a letter about the policy change, published by Israel Hayom.

In 2016, a blanket ban on MKs visiting security prisoners was introduced, after lawmaker Basel Ghattas was caught smuggling cell phones to terrorists incarcerated at Ketziot Prison.

The sweeping ban was challenged in a petition to Israel’s Supreme Court, and in 2019, then-Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan developed an outline which limited visits to terror prisoners to one MK per political party.

That policy was never formally ratified by the Knesset, and an outline created by outgoing Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev allowed an unlimited number of visits between MKs and imprisoned terrorists.

Bar-Lev argued that limiting lawmakers’ visits to terrorists is an unreasonable restriction on their freedom of movement.

Ben-Gvir intends to return to the 2019 policy, which would mean that only one MK from a given political party could visit a security prisoner, and such meetings could occur only once a year.

In January 2021, Ben-Gvir was physically attacked by Joint List Chair Ayman Odeh at Kaplan Medical Center, near the hospital room of hunger-striking Hamas prisoner Miqdad Qawasmeh.