The citizens said that if they could not vote in the embassy, a polling station should travel between cities abroad to enable voting by citizens like them who are prevented from entering Israel by the closure of Ben-Gurion Airport.
But the committee, led by Supreme Court Judge Uzi Vogelman, said both requests were beyond the committee’s jurisdiction. He stressed that he does not have the authority to allow exceptions to the law nor to provide measures to allow Israelis abroad to vote.
The committee decided that the citizens do not have the “right by law” to vote in the Israeli embassy. Only a civil servant or an employee of the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund or Keren Hayesod who are abroad due to their work are allowed to vote in Israeli embassies. The spouses and children of such employees under the age of 20 are allowed to vote at embassies as well.
Voting for such emissaries abroad and their families will begin on March 10 at the Israeli embassy in Wellington, New Zealand and end two days later at the consulate in Los Angeles. There will be 100 embassies and consulates facilitating voting, including for the first time, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) submitted an opinion to Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri, asserting that setting sweeping restrictions on Israeli citizens’ ability to return to the country from overseas is extremely problematic from a constitutional perspective and is without parallel in the democratic world.
The opinion also stated that restrictions on entry by citizens and permanent residents at this time could infringe on the right to vote in the upcoming elections as Israelis must be present in the country in order to cast their ballot.
The authors of the opinion, Prof. Yuval Shany, Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, Dr. Amir Fuchs, Dr. Guy Lurie, and Nadiv Mordechai, called on the government to end without delay the ban on citizens’ entry, or at the very least to decide that the current severe restrictions on their return to Israel will not be extended beyond their current expiration date.
An international comparison conducted by IDI found that other democracies combatting the COVID-19 crisis have not imposed a blanket prohibition on their citizen’s entry and that the Israeli ban is highly exceptional. For example, other countries that have imposed restrictions on foreigners entering their territory such as Australia, the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, Russia, Sweden, and New Zealand are allowing their own citizens to enter the country, even in these perilous times, although some of them do impose limits on the ability to leave the country
The opinion begins by noting that “in view of every person’s constitutional right to leave Israel and every citizen’s right to re-enter the country, a general prohibition on entry and exit is not in the spirit of the provisions of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. There is a concern that the erosion of the rights affected is not proportionate, but rather extreme, even in view of the current health challenge.”
The authors add, “This mechanism has been implemented following the State’s inability to effectively enforce a quarantine on those returning to Israel. This failure has led to the adoption of an approach that provides greater harm to the rights of citizens than quarantine and has left many Israelis as exiles abroad during a global health crisis.”
The authors concluded by writing that “the extreme changes in policy—from one of a fully open airport, to a complete closure without warning, catching unawares citizens who traveled abroad lawfully, with the full expectation that they would be able to return, and without giving them a chance to prepare accordingly—creates intolerable human situations. The state must find an answer that is epidemiologically sound and constitutionally proportionate and must permit citizens to…
Read More: Cabinet to vote on reopening airport to allow Israelis to vote