Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. Photo: Rafi Kutz.

JNS.org – The Knesset voted Wednesday in favor of an amendment to the law governing Israel’s prisons ordinance, looking to deny visitation rights from security prisoners belonging to terrorist groups that are holding Israelis captive, as a means of pressuring said groups to release the captives and hand over Israeli soldiers’ remains.

The vote was a preliminary one, ahead of three additional votes in a first, second and third reading of the amendment.

According to the legislation’s abstract, “The bill aims to address the disparity between the conditions that Israel provides for terrorists who seek to harm it and the conditions provided by terrorist organizations to Israeli captives.”

Likud MK Oren Hazan, who submitted the bill, said, “It is unthinkable that we don’t know what happened to our boys.”

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan also spoke about the legislation, saying that “The proposal addresses the lack of comparability between the conditions in which the State of Israel holds terrorists that seek to destroy it and the conditions in which terrorist organizations hold our soldiers.”