Nearly two years after Israel passed a law allowing the deportation of certain relatives of terrorists, not a single person has been removed under it.
Internal documents, correspondence and transcripts obtained by ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth reveal a prolonged institutional battle involving the police, the Attorney General’s Office, the Interior Ministry and the Shin Bet over whether and how the law can be implemented.
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The law, approved by the Knesset in November 2024, authorizes the interior minister, following a hearing, to order the deportation of a terrorist’s relative who knew in advance about a planned attack, expressed support for terrorism or praised and encouraged an act of terrorism.
It passed despite warnings that it contained serious legal and practical gaps, including uncertainty over where deportees would be sent, whether their citizenship or residency would first have to be revoked and whether the measure could withstand Supreme Court review.
No petitions were filed directly against the law, but legal officials argued that previous rulings permitted revocation of citizenship or residency only in exceptional cases and under clearly defined criteria.
Police built a nationwide list
The effort to implement the law began in the Jerusalem District after the January 2025 release of Ashraf Zgayer, a Hamas terrorist convicted of helping carry out a 2002 suicide bombing on a Tel Aviv bus that killed six people.
Zgayer was welcomed home with Hamas flags and chants. His three brothers attended the celebration but were not charged.
Police officer Udi Ronen added their names to a list of potential deportation cases. He later prepared more than 100 requests involving relatives of terrorists suspected of incitement or support for terrorism.
The initiative eventually expanded into a nationwide police operation.
Investigators compiled a database of terrorists convicted, indicted or held until the end of proceedings since 2015. Police districts were instructed to examine whether their close relatives had praised terrorism, incited attacks or known about an attack plan without attempting to stop it.
Police ultimately collected information on 130 cases and submitted 55 requests to the Interior Ministry. Thirty-five involved online posts that remained publicly accessible after the law took effect.
None resulted in deportation.
Shin Bet warns of security consequences
The first three cases submitted to the Interior Ministry triggered a series of heated meetings in March 2025.
A Shin Bet representative said the agency had not been properly informed and questioned why the three individuals had been selected.
“We did not know about the hearings, and this could harm hostage deals and other matters,” the representative said, warning that an uncoordinated deportation could affect sensitive security priorities.
A police legal adviser disputed that account, saying Shin Bet representatives had regularly participated in district-level discussions.
The disagreement reflected a broader institutional conflict: Police saw the law as a deterrent and argued that they were obligated to identify anyone meeting its conditions. Legal and security officials insisted that each case required careful review because of its potential consequences.
Legal officials cite constitutional problems
Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon criticized the process, saying citizens had received notices about possible deportation before a structured legal assessment had been completed.
“The picture is bleak and highly problematic,” he said during one meeting.
Legal officials raised several issues.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara
Some of the alleged incitement had occurred before the law was passed, raising concerns about retroactive enforcement. Others questioned whether deportation could be imposed for speech that did not meet the criminal threshold for prosecution.
That created what officials described as a legal contradiction: A statement too minor to justify a criminal conviction could nevertheless lead to the much harsher administrative penalty of deportation.
Police argued that the law did not require an indictment or conviction and that officers were responsible only for providing the interior minister with potential cases.
“We read the law, reviewed the Knesset debates to understand the lawmakers’ intent and began checking who met its conditions,” Ronen said.
He acknowledged that deportation severely infringes individual rights but said police had no authority to restrict the law to only the most extreme cases.
Police continued without the attorney general’s knowledge
Following the March meeting, the head of the police investigations and intelligence division ordered the work frozen until instructions were received from the attorney general.
A day later, however, the police commissioner directed officers to continue submitting requests. According to police sources, the change was coordinated internally, but the Attorney General’s Office was not informed.
By July 2025, police had issued their own implementation guidelines and expanded the operation across the country.
The Attorney General’s Office later said it had not known about the police operation and learned of it only through an inquiry from Yedioth Ahronoth.
The Interior Ministry’s legal opinion concluded that the law could apply to expressions of support that remained online after its passage, but only when the comments related to the specific terrorist act committed by the relative.
It also said citizenship or residency would likely have to be revoked before deportation, adding another separate and legally complex procedure.
Political vacancy leaves no one authorized to act
The process was further complicated when Interior Minister Moshe Arbel left the government in July 2025 during a coalition dispute.
Under the law, only the interior minister can approve deportation orders.
Although some ministerial powers were transferred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the position became vacant, authority under the family deportation law was not.
The Interior Ministry eventually determined that only 13 cases met its legal criteria. Those cases remained pending because no authorized minister was in office and the government had not formally transferred the relevant powers.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Netanyahu could act only after the professional review was completed and the statutory authority was legally assigned to him or another minister.
Supreme Court ruling halts monitoring system
A separate court case created another obstacle.
Petitioners challenged the creation of a police incitement unit headed by Ronen, accusing it of monitoring named individuals without concrete suspicion of a crime and searching for incriminating social media posts after the fact.
During a Supreme Court hearing, Justice Alex Stein compared the unit to institutions that operated in the Soviet Union and East Germany.
The court temporarily barred police from proactively monitoring specific individuals for possible incitement offenses without prosecutorial approval.
Although the case did not directly concern the deportation law, it affected the police method used to implement it: identifying relatives of terrorists and then examining their online statements.
Police subsequently instructed districts to stop using that system until the court issued a final decision.
Authorities trade responsibility
The Attorney General’s Office said the interior minister, not the attorney general, was responsible for implementing the law. It noted that the position had been vacant since October 2025 and that the relevant authority had not been transferred.
Police said their role was limited to collecting information and submitting it to the appropriate officials. They denied receiving any direct instruction from the Attorney General’s Office to halt their work.
The Interior Ministry said it had reviewed 23 cases submitted by police and found that roughly half did not satisfy the law’s conditions. The remaining cases were awaiting a decision on how the law should be applied.
For now, the law remains on the books but unused.
Since its passage in 2024, no relative of a terrorist has been deported under it.