Over the past few years, two elements had nearly pushed Israel to the brink of demographic crisis: the first was former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government, which stood idly by as a growing torrent of undocumented African migrants entered Israel; and the second was the eye-rolling snobs of northern Tel Aviv, who decry any attempt by an ultra-Orthodox family to purchase an apartment in their neighborhoods, but promote extreme humanist views when it comes to illegal migrants, at the expense of their own neighbors in southern Tel Aviv. They are oblivious to the plight of many European countries, which opened their gates to African immigrants and are now plagued by a terrorism-prone cultural overload. Unlike Olmert, whose policies on the border fence were reminiscent of a paramedic avoiding using a tourniquet to stem a gushing wound, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stretched a 1.2 billion shekel ($327 million) fence along the Israel-Egypt border; and lo and behold -- the torrent of infiltrators was reduced to a trickle and soon stopped altogether. This achievement was accompanied by considerable efforts by Interior Ministers Eli Yishai and Gideon Sa'ar to convince the infiltrators to return to their countries of origin. The various measures applied to this issue have been able to reduce the infiltrators' population by 6,000 -- or 10 percent -- a year. Human rights groups contested the infiltrators' law twice before the High Court of Justice. The first time, when the court ruled at a three-year administrative detention was illegal, Sa'ar promoted legislation reducing it to a year. The rights groups petitioned the High Court again, and on Monday it annulled the administrative detention article. This was the first time the High Court of Justice had struck down a specific legal article twice. The ruling also significantly reduces the efforts to convince infiltrators to leave Israel of their own accord. The ruling vexed the radical Right and the average Israeli was critical of it as well. The overall sentiment was that the High Court was oblivious to the plight of the residents of southern Tel Aviv. Israel's difficulties in dealing with the illegal migrants issue are being used by its critics as a way to portray it as an apartheid state. Deporting the infiltrators or remanding them to a detention center for a year inflicts serious harm to Israel's international image, especially where the U.S., Europe and Africa are concerned, and it may prove a heavier burden to bear than allowing them to remain here. In this respect, the High Court's ruling will further cement Israel's status as a progressive, enlightened country. The ruling itself is long-winded and cumbersome, and lacking any suggestions as to what would be the proper legal recourse by which to address the illegal migrants problem. Still, the High Court of Justice has once again emerged as a beacon of justice, and from an international standpoint, the ruling's benefits outweigh its detriments. The interior minister is free to continue in his efforts to encourage African migrants to leave Israel. While the leverage of a detention center has been debunked, thus making these efforts less effective, it is still better than pursuing a policy that is detrimental to Israel's image in the long-run, especially now that the fence has all but solved this problem. We must give credit where credit is due -- the High Court's ruling is beneficial to Israel in dealing with a problem that has ceased to exist.
