Middle East Desk
Report
TEL AVIV: Thousands of Palestinian families living in Israel, the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip have lost their case for family reunification, resulting in Israeli authorities denying them identity cards.
The move restricts movement, tears families apart and puts them at risk of Israeli persecution and deportation. To recognize the legality of Palestinians’ presence in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel requires that their presence predates the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in June 1967.
Following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994, Israel agreed to the reunification of thousands of Palestinian families. But since 2009, when former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power on a Likud Party ticket, Israel suspended processing family reunification requests.
This limbo continues to cause a great deal of suffering, especially for those in the West Bank who are haunted by the fear of being deported by Israeli forces patrolling the streets who tend to stop anyone without identification. On Oct. 11, Israel agreed to grant family reunification IDs to 442 families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as part of an understanding with the PA in August to approve 5,000 requests.One member of the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, believes the main reason behind Israel’s restriction of Palestinian family reunification requests is informed by its desire to maintain a demographic edge on Palestinians as opposed to security concerns.
“The family reunification law has nothing to do with security. It is related to demography, because Israel, since the nakba (the “catastrophe” in 1948) and its aftermath wants to preserve a Jewish majority, and that is the basis for this racist law,” Ofer Cassif, who belongs to the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, said during an interview with Anadolu Agency (AA). He described attempts by successive Israeli governments to defend the restriction on security grounds as “nonsense,” accusing the Israeli political system of “rampant racism.”
The Israeli Citizenship Law of 2003 prohibits the reunification of Palestinian families where one spouse is an Israeli citizen and the other a resident of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank or Gaza. The ban, according to Adalah, a legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, was extended in 2007 to include citizens of Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Adalah previously rebuffed Israeli claims that the law is motivated by security concerns.
