At the outset, I will address the Authority's arguments regarding the redundancy of the proceeding, and later I will address the breaches of the Authority's duties and the implications thereof for the best interests of the children.
Redundancy of the procedure
- The Authority first filed, in lieu of the summaries ordered by the court, a motion to delete the proceeding, which was rejected. In its summary, the Authority reiterated that the process was redundant and that it should be deleted, and that the Authority should be allowed to rule on the humanitarian request. This argument should not be accepted.
First, because, as I noted, the circumstances under which the Authority claims that the appeal is redundant have been known for years. The appellants were released from custody on 19 September 2019 and the humanitarian request was submitted a few days earlier. The Authority's announcement that it was willing to reconsider the humanitarian request was given the force of a judgment in the decision of the Appeals Tribunal on 24 January 2021. Thus, at the time of the filing of the motion to dismiss the proceeding, which was filed in March 2024 and contrary to the court's decision in the proceeding before me, these facts had been known for years.
Second, the arguments of the Authority, which currently claims to support this argument that: "It has made it clear that it does not intend to enforce removal orders issued in the past, until a decision is made on the application for status on humanitarian grounds." The Authority did not announce, even as part of the summaries, that it was canceling the restraining orders. Moreover, since August 2019, the authority has left the restraining orders pending. Thus, in response to the appellants' request, the Authority noted (para. 4 of the Authority's response of August 4, 2022) that: "For the sake of completeness, the Applicants were issued, as stated, restraining orders and custody orders. The custody orders were revoked upon release from custody, but the removal orders are still pending." In other words, the Authority itself, when it reviews the sequence of events back in August 2022, emphasizes that the restraining orders are in effect, and does not state that it is not insisting on implementing them. In addition, throughout the long period during which the humanitarian request is pending before the Authority, the Authority continued to act steadily to remove the appellants from Israel, inter alia by summoning appellant 1 to a hearing for the purpose of "promoting an exit from Israel", the last of which was in February 2024. The appellant and her children were not removed except because of the temporary relief given by the court. I will emphasize that although the Authority is not entitled to remove the appellants in light of orders issued by the court, it continues to act consistently for this purpose.
- The Authority further argued in this regard (in paragraph 56 of its summaries) that if the humanitarian request is granted, the removal orders that are the subject of this proceeding will be revoked, while if the request is rejected, it will be necessary to make a new decision regarding the appellants' departure from Israel, but this argument is contradicted by the Authority's own words. If the orders are not valid, they will not need to be revoked if the humanitarian request is granted; And if the orders are valid, there will be no need for new orders or a new decision if the humanitarian request is rejected.
In light of all of the above, the decision on this appeal on its merits is not superfluous.