Israeli human rights groups on Thursday petitioned the Supreme Court against a new controversial law aimed at curbing unauthorized immigration to the country.

Approved by the Knesset (parliament) last Monday, the so-called "Anti-Infiltration Law" allows the authorities to detain African asylum seekers for up to 20 months without trail or imprison them in a jail for three months without trail.

Earlier, harsher versions of the law were struck down this year by Israel's Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

According to the petition, signed by many human rights groups, as well as Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers, the new legal text is almost identical to the previous rejected versions.

"The law continues to violate the rights of people who are entitled to international protection and who Israel itself decided it would not deport," the petition said.

"Similarly to the laws that were rejected before it, this law is focused on breaking the spirit, imprisoning and restricting the freedom of (asylum seekers). All this in order to apply pressure on them to leave voluntarily, a goal that the judges described as being an inappropriate purpose," it added.

"The population that this appeal refers to is one of the most reviled and vulnerable groups in Israel," said the petition, adding that "The incitement against them has reached unprecedented levels ... Politicians use them as scapegoats upon which they lay the blame for the genuine distress of other disadvantaged segments of Israeli society."

Currently some 2,000 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea are being held at the southern Holot detention center, out of approximately 48,000 African migrants who entered Israel from Egypt without permits.

The Israeli government considers them as a risk for the identity of a Jewish state. The vast majority of the asylum seekers reside in the crowded, poverty-stricken neighborhoods of southern Tel Aviv, prompting daily clashes with veteran Israelis. Endit

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