Perpetual Limbo, II- Israel's Freeze on Family Reunification
By: btselem
Posted: Oct 30 07
Witnessed: 6281 times
Israel, Palestine
B'Tselem, btselem, Family Unification, freedom of movement, Israel, palestine
Shortly after the outbreak of the second intifada on 29 September 2000, Israel decided not to process requests submitted by Palestinian residents for family unification with their spouses and family members living abroad, and not to issue visitor's permits to these non-residents. Israel has not explained the purpose of the new policy, stating only that, "… because of recent incidents [the outbreak of the second intifada], the handling of requests for family unification in Judea and Samaria has stopped…."
Despite the new policy, the Palestinian Authority continues to receive new requests for family unification and visitor's permits, but Israel refuses to process them. Israel also refuses to approve requests that it received prior to the second intifada, except in exceptional instances that it considers "humanitarian cases."
Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories are married to foreign national non-residents. According to this policy, these residents must file a request for family unification to enable them to live lawfully in the Occupied Territories with their spouses. Since the inception of the freeze policy, the only way for Palestinians to live under one roof with their foreign spouses who are abroad is by emigrating to the spouse's native land. This position is primarily dictated by political considerations whose objective is to change the demographics of the Occupied Territories by blocking the immigration of spouses of residents of the Occupied Territories into the area and by encouraging the emigration of divided Palestinian families.
Israel 's policy totally ignores the social reality existing in the Occupied Territories in which marriage between residents and relatives from outside the area is extremely widespread. In employing this policy, Israel forces residents to make a cruel choice between family separation and leaving their homeland. The Israeli authorities inflict ongoing suffering on hundreds of thousands of persons and force them to live in a new reality. Spouses are unable to live together under one roof. Children grow up in one-parent families. Residents refrain from going abroad for medical treatment out of fear that they will not be allowed to return to their families.
For more information about B'Tselem and Hamoked's recent petition to the High Court on the behalf of several of these families, please visit our website: www.btselem.org
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