RSS Feeds
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it    
Occupation magazine - Life under occupation

Home page  back Print  Send To friend

Restrictions on Palestinians living in Israel with spouses now in its 10th year
Dusan Vranic
The Washington Post
12.6.2013


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/temporary-ban-on-palestinians-living-in-israel-with-spouses-now-in-its-10th-year/2013/06/12/79507158-d328-11e2-b3a2-3bf5eb37b9d0_story_1.html

Israel’s Interior Ministry introduced the restrictions in 2003, saying they were a temporary measure to combat the violent Palestinian uprising against Israel in progress at the time.

Israel’s parliament has renewed the restrictions each year since. The Supreme Court upheld the measure in 2006 and 2012.

The restrictions have been eased in stages, allowing Palestinian men over 35 and women over 25 from the West Bank to apply for temporary permits to live and work in Israel. Even so, they may not drive, access health care, welfare or apply for citizenship.

Palestinians from Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant Hamas, are banned from living in Israel.

The Interior Ministry said 8,000 Palestinian spouses hold temporary permits. It wouldn’t say how many others applied or estimate how many Palestinian spouses are living illegally in Israel.

Those challenging the restrictions say violence was quelled years ago, and the number of Palestinian spouses involved in militant attacks is small. They claim the real aim is preventing Palestinians from obtaining citizenship in a country obsessed with maintaining its Jewish majority.

“The security argument and the term ‘temporary measure’ are merely a deception aimed at ‘koshering’ discriminatory legislation for demographic reasons,” wrote Amos Shocken, publisher of liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, in an April editorial.

Government spokesman Mark Regev insisted security was the only reason. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “The idea that you could have enemy nationals having blanket residency is a bridge too far.”

Few Israeli Arabs want to join spouses in the Palestinian areas, where unemployment is rampant. Israeli law bars its citizens, including Arabs, from living there.

Israeli Arabs continue to bring their spouses home, because many have family relations with Palestinians that predate the Jewish state, particularly in towns like Bartaa that straddle the line with the West Bank. Even so, such marriages are dropping off because of the difficulties involved, residents said.

A Jerusalem taxi driver meets his Palestinian wife from Gaza in neighboring Egypt every few weeks. The couple, both previously divorced, met when the woman came to Jerusalem with an Israeli permit for medical care for her daughter in 2010. They married before she returned to Gaza. Nightly Skype sessions bind their long-distance marriage.

An Israeli Arab woman lives illegally in the West Bank city of Ramallah with her 32-year-old husband and daughter. Her husband is too young to apply for a permit to live in Israel, and she risks losing social welfare benefits if Israel discovers she’s living in a Palestinian city.

They requested anonymity, worried that identification would affect their ability to obtain future permits.

Palestinian Nujoud Kabaha, 32, a mother of three, married her Israeli Arab relative a decade ago, but obtained permission to live in his hometown of Bartaa only in 2011.

In 2009, in labor with her third child, she said a hospital guard tried to evict her from the maternity ward because she didn’t have a permit.

A decade ago, Israeli Arab Rim Badran, 32, of the village of Beir el-Sikkeh married a Palestinian man who worked in her uncle’s restaurant. For the first eight years of their marriage, her husband lived without papers in Israel. He rarely left their home, fearing arrest. He began obtaining permits four years ago, after he turned 35.

“He is scarred from the experience,” Badran said. “To this day he lives in fear.”

rh
Links to the latest articles in this section

Occupation forces injure mourners following funeral of slain infant Mohammad Tamimi
Nabi Saleh village assaulted - toddler shot in the head died in hospital
Palestinians in the snow: thrown from home into the snow, throw snowballs and get arrested