ABSTRACT
In 2012, Israel amended its ‘Law for the Prevention of Infiltration’, initiating a system of immigration detention that targeted only asylum-seekers and was managed by the criminal justice system. This was the first of four amendments to the Law, as human rights’ organizations contested the amendments in the High Court of Justice, leading to constant revisions. The chapter offers a critical analysis of the four versions of the Law, by closely reviewing the legislation, the protocols from the legislation process and the legal documents comprising the extensive litigation. It demonstrates that the litigation resulted in a shift from a ‘state of exception’ model for governing asylum-seekers to a model of governmentality, which adopts techniques of power typical of the society of control and constructs asylum-seekers as ‘permanent strangers’ in Israel.
