On Dec. 19, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill that would allow the expulsion of family members of Palestinian assailants from their homes to other locations in the West Bank. The process leading to this approval was not a trivial one; the bill moved forward despite objections from the attorney general’s office and the Shin Bet.

I asked a senior source in the security establishment whether any security figure at all had recommended to the prime minister that families of terrorists be moved from their villages to other villages in the West Bank as a form of punishment to deter future terrorism. Before I finished my question, he burst into uproarious laughter. “It’s an outlandish idea that no security official would recommend to the government and wouldn’t even think of doing so,” he answered, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Not only because it’s nearly impossible to enforce such a decision and make sure families indeed move and settle in a new place, but that these families — if they indeed move — would become symbols of heroism in any Palestinian town they move to. They would be much honored and receive special financial support. Such punishment would do the opposite of deterrence, it would cause unnecessary friction between the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the Palestinian population. If these families don’t leave their homes willingly and force is needed to remove them, it could cause an outbreak of violence. This is the last thing the IDF wants to see. But apparently this doesn’t really matter to government ministers.”

The most right-wing government in the history of Israel sees today in IDF commanders what it once saw in the Supreme Court (until Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked succeeded in replacing a significant part of its judges with conservative religious judges) and what it continues to see in Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, even though he grew up in the Likud, was appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his government secretary and was supported by the prime minister in his current appointment). The Cabinet ministers see the commanders as “gatekeepers” who obstruct the work of the government and the implementation of its policies, and thus the ministers have no problem ignoring their advice.

The night of Dec. 16 was especially tense as the Cabinet convened to debate the bill that proposes moving families of terrorists from their villages, after which a special session of the ministerial committee for legislation was arranged in order to advance the bill should it pass the Cabinet. Mandelblit brought a company of senior officials with him to explain to the Cabinet ministers that the proposal would contravene Israeli as well as international law, and that if the Knesset passed the bill, the ministers and others in the ruling establishment would be vulnerable to prosecution in the International Criminal Court.