It was explained above that when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza it took a census, created new population registries for the West Bank and Gaza and issued new identity cards to those who were physically present in the newly occupied territories, given that they were not displaced during or shortly after the war.58 The refugees who were displaced during the war as well as those who were for any purpose abroad during the war (between quarter to one third of the population of the West Bank and Gaza),59 were not counted in the census, not considered as residents and denied right to return and reside in the OPT.60 In the early stages of its occupation, Israel opened a small window known as “family unification” to add unregistered people to the population registry and
58
See section 3.2 above.
59 Badil, Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Survey of Palestinian
Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2010-2012 (Beithlehem: BADIL, 2012), xxvi; Al-Haq, “Right to Unite,” Palestine Yearbook of International Law 6 (1991 1990): 237. For more information about the 1967 refugees, see Chapter 2 above.
60
John Quigley, “Family Reunion and the Right to Return to Occupied Territory,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 6 (1992): 223–227.
89 give them the right to reside.61 In this procedure, the military authorities in the West Bank and Gaza had a wide discretion on family residency and no recognition of the right of return and the right to unite was granted as such.62 The Israeli government in several occasions announced that family unification was “not a vested right, but a special benevolent act of the Israeli authorities,”63 and that Israel aims at accepting “the minimum possible number of applications.”64 In addition to being the only available window for the war refugees to return, this procedure was also the only way whose residencies had been revoked to return, as well as the way to invite a foreign spouse or other family members to reside in the OPT with their resident relative.65
In the early stages of the occupation, applications were allowed to be submitted on behalf of first degree relatives only, as long as the requested relative was not a male between the ages of 16 and 60.66 Israel implemented this policy for a period of five years during which it reportedly rejected or refrained from processing most of the applications and approved some.67
In 1973, Israel decided to further restrict family unifications by applying undeclared new criteria.68 The new military order was never published, but its effect was
61 Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 20; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual
Limbo, 8.
62
Quigley, “Family Reunion and the Right to Return to Occupied Territory,” 223–229.
63 HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9. 64
Riziq Shuqair and Randa Siniora, Application Denied: Separated Palestinian Families Tell Their Stories (Al-Haq, 1991), 3, http://www.alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/application-denied- separated-palestinian-families-tell-their-stories.
65
Al-Haq, “Right to Unite,” 244–5.
66
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9.
67 Exact numbers of applications submitted, accepted, and denied are not known to the best of the
knowledge of the current author. Al-Haq has indicated that the vagueness in statistics seems to be
intentional on the part of the Israeli authorities. See, Rubā Sālim, Al-Haq: 25 Years Defending Human Rights (1979-2004): Waiting for Justice (Al-Haq, 2005), 208; HaMoked and B’Tselem in two of their reports estimated that in the first five years Israel approved to add around 45,000- 50,000 displaced Palestinians into the population registry, out of a total number of 140,000 applications. HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied Territories, 30; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9; Human Rights Watch mentioned that by the end of the 1970s, Israel granted 50,000 applications, with 150,000 additional applications still pending. Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 6.
68 HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied
Territories, 30; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9; Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 7.
90 noticed and documented as the number of approved applications dropped dramatically until 1983,69 the year in which the Israeli military authorities re-evaluated their family unification policy and again created new restrictions in order to limit the number of approved applications. Between 1983 and 1993, the numbers of approved family unification applications dropped dramatically, and approval of such application was very rare and exceptional.70 The cases that were approved for family reunification in that period were (1) cases of “administrative considerations,” or “governmental interest,” which mainly referred to allowing families of those who collaborate with the occupation forces to get a residency status, and a few cases of big Palestinian investors who intended to invest in the occupied territories; or (2) cases with “exceptional humanitarian considerations,” a term that was not defined and could not really be used as a basis of family unification.71 In addition to these restrictions, the military government created a new requirement in 1985 according to which those family members who were the subject of the family unification application could not reside in the occupied territory until a final decision was taken on the application.72 Several families ignored this prohibition and faced deportation as a result.73
In 1995, the Palestinian Authority was established in parts of the occupied territory as a result of the Oslo Peace agreement which allowed the Palestinian Authority to assume some limited responsibility over the Palestinian Population Registry in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza.74 In relation to family unifications, the agreement stated:
69
It was estimated that Israel approved approximately 1000 applications per year during those years. HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9; Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 7.
70 HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied
Territories, 31; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 9–10; Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 7.
71 HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied
Territories, 31–2; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 10; Al-Haq, “Right to Unite,” 239–40.
72
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 10–1.
73 Ibid., 11–12. 74
Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization, “Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”
91 To reflect the spirit of the peace process, the Palestinian side has the right, with the prior approval of Israel, to grant permanent residency in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to:
investors, for the purpose of encouraging investment; spouses and children of Palestinian residents, and
other persons, for humanitarian reasons, in order to promote and upgrade family reunification.75
In practice, the Palestinian authority served as a messenger between the Palestinian population and Israel that had no authority to approve applications, but that was allowed to reject them.76 The procedure was that the family unification applications are filed to the PA, which sends them to the Israeli military authorities to be processed and informs the applicant of the answer if and when it is issued.77 Israel processed applications according to a quota of maximum 2,000 persons per year, which fell far below the needs of the Palestinian population.78 This quota rose to 3,000 in 1998 and to 4,000 in early 2000.79
In the year 2000, when the second Palestinian Intifada started, Israel decided suddenly not to process any applications related with the Palestinian population registry with the exception of child registration (with restrictions explained below). Israel did not publish any military order or other type of regulation that explains the new reality.80 In relation to family unification applications, this freeze meant that Israel refused to process any such applications.81 The only interruptions of this freeze were related to (1) undefined
75
Ibid., Annex III, Article 28 (11).
76
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied Territories, 77–8.
77
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 12.
78
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Families Torn Apart: Separation of Palestinian Families in the Occupied Territories, 51, 80–1; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 12.
79
HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 12.
80
Amnesty International, Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories: Right to Family Life Denied: Foreign Spouses of Palestinians Barred (Amnesty International, March 21, 2007),
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/018/2007/en; Amnesty International, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Torn Apart: Families Split by Discriminatory Policies (Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 2004), 15.
81 Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him, He’s Not Here, 40–1; Amnesty International, Right to
Family Life Denied; Amnesty International, Torn Apart, 14–5; Asem Khalil, “Family Unification of Residents in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” European University Institute Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies CARIM Analytic & Synthetic Notes no. 2009/19 (2009): 9–11,
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/11216/CARIM_AS?sequence=1; HaMoked and B’Tselem, Perpetual Limbo, 17.
92 “exceptional humanitarian cases” that Israel agreed to process; and (2) what Israel called a “political gesture” to the chairman of the Palestinian authority in 2008, in which it promised to process 50,000 applications of which 32,000 applications were approved.82 It was estimated in 2006 that the freeze had caused the accumulation of more than 120,000 family unification applications, which, as the Hamoked and B'Tselem report noticed, would take more than 30 years to be processed if Israel decided to return to process such applications according to the highest quota of 4,000 applications a year.83 To make things even worse, Israel also stopped giving visitor permits to those invited by Palestinians to temporarily visit the OPT, practically making it impossible for separated families to unite in the OPT even temporarily.84
Clearly, this makes the stability of many families impossible and keeps them the only option of living together abroad, or living separated. When Israel started to implement this policy, several families were already living together in the West Bank and Gaza waiting for their applications to be processed. Suddenly, these persons became illegally residing in the OPT and were unable to move around freely fearing that they would be deported.85 Until the time of writing this thesis, the total freeze on family unification for Palestinians continues. Finally, it is important to mention that all these restrictions are only applicable to the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The Jewish colonists who reside therein do not need any special permits to enter the West Bank, live in it or bring their family members to reside with them.86
3.4.2 Family Unification in East Jerusalem and other areas under Israeli civil