High Court delays request for ruling on racial profiling at airport

Association for Civil Rights in Israel says airport security humiliates Israeli-Arabs non-stop.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
TRAVELERS WAIT in line at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Let critics come to Israel and see this country’s success and vibrancy for themselves. (photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
TRAVELERS WAIT in line at Ben-Gurion International Airport. Let critics come to Israel and see this country’s success and vibrancy for themselves.
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected, on an interim basis, a petition to immediately declare racial profiling policies for security checks at Ben-Gurion Airport illegal. It postponed the issue until April 30, 2014.
The petitioner, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the court that since the petition was filed in 2007, security at the airport has continued to humiliate Israeli-Arabs nonstop with what it called numerous problematic stories emerging.
Earlier, the court had seemed to suggest that ACRI accept the state’s request to push off a decision on the issue until March 2014, when the state hopes to have a new technological system in place. It hopes it will avoid and alleviate some of the current friction.
But ACRI rejected this suggestion, listing a history of past similar state promises over several years, each of which was broken with a promise about improving things down the road.
The court said it was avoiding immediate intervention as the state’s efforts to improve the situation were still ongoing.
It added that it accepted the state’s argument that the delay was not its fault, but that of a private European company that had failed to meet its contractual commitments.