Ministers Mull Bill Barring Welfare Payments to Freed Security Prisoners

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation will vote Sunday on whether to support a bill barring released security prisoners with Israeli citizenship from receiving national insurance benefits for the period they had been sentenced to.

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The bill refers to security prisoners released in prisoner exchanges or as part of peace negotiations. It refers to welfare payments as well as national insurance benefits.

In addition, such prisoners would be barred from receiving such funds even if they had been pardoned. The bill was proposed by coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud), Pnina Tamano-Shata (Yesh Atid) and Elazar Stern (Hatnuah).

“A situation in which a security prisoner is released before completing his term, in deals made with terror groups, and receives benefits and money from the state coffers is absurd and unacceptable,” the lawmakers wrote in their explanatory notes on the bill.

“The bill will regulate this situation by denying the eligibility of a released security prisoner to receive compensation for the period in which he was to have been serving his term.”

According to the authors, the bill will “correct to a small extent the injustice caused by the early release of such prisoners.” According to the bill, there is no justification for such prisoners to receive payments in cases where “if it were up to the state authorities alone, they would continue serving their term.”