Obstacles to Palestinian Family Unification

Until May 2002, Israeli citizens, including Arabs, married to Palestinians in the Territories could live with their spouses in Israel, after completing a lengthy Ministry of Interior process to OK it. No longer after the government froze the application process and on July 31, 2003 passed the Nationality and Entry into Israel (Temporary Order) Law, 5763 - 2003. Thereafter, it was renewed.

The statute henceforth prohibits Israelis from bringing their Territory spouses into Israel, and children as well are harmed. Those residing in East Jerusalem who were born in the Territories are barred from residency in Israel.

As a result, tens of thousands are affected. Couples violating the law risk serious recriminations if caught, even in East Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza. Without a special permit, Israelis are forbidden to enter Gaza or Area A in the West Bank. However, couples who married before the law's enactment, in cases where Territory spouses hadn't yet received permanent Israeli status, may live together provided the Civil Administration issues a permit, something extremely hard to get and often cancelled.

Israel's "demographic bomb" is the problem - meaning the time when a faster-growing Palestinian population becomes a majority and threatens the Jewish State's character. Israel's solution is repressive laws and violent ethnic cleansing to prevent it, in Israel and the Territories.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, some Knesset members, and couples harmed by the law petitioned the Supreme Court to void it. However, on May 14, 2006, Israel's High Court of Justice upheld it in spite of several UN agencies (UNHRC, UNCERD, and UNCEDAW) and human rights organizations calling for its revocation.

Its opponents call it discriminatory, racist, and in violation of international law for infringing on family life, privacy, dignity, and equality by treating Jews one way and Palestinians another. Various international conventions to which Israel is a signatory prohibit the practice, including the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention for the Rights of the Child. Nonetheless, so far it stands.

Annexation Through One Home Demolition at A Time

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) helps rebuild homes. It also resists "land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " destruction of agricultural land and crops, and the repressive effects of occupation, but its original mission was to oppose and resist house demolitions in the Occupied Territories. 

From 1967 through December 2008, ICAHD estimates that 23,535 Palestinian homes overall have been destroyed from information gotten from the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Civil Administration, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA), other UN sources, Palestinian human rights groups, Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and other sources. It classifies types of demolitions as:

On July 28, 2008, Hiba al-Almi gave this account about her family's dream to buy a home. In 2002, her father spent $200,000 for an apartment, "all his savings. The contractor showed him the building permit he had received" to reassure him. In June 2006, "we moved in. The next day, policemen and Jerusalem Municipality officials came and handed us a demolition order." The building permit apparently wasn't valid.

On October 18, 2006, final demolition orders were posted on the building, "and we began to remove our furniture." With legal help, the order was postponed, and by November her family moved back. In July 2008, "teams of inspectors and Border Police forces came to the house a few times." They photographed the building without explanation.

On July 27 at around 11:30AM, "my parents were abroad and I was home alone. The bell rang and when I opened the door, I saw three Jerusalem Municipality inspectors and a Border Police officer with high ranking insignias on his shoulder." They entered and inspected room to room.

Hiba slept that night at her aunt's house as she didn't want to be at home alone. At around 1AM, a neighbor called, said police might return that night, so "Around 2, I returned home with my aunt....Around 3:30AM, I heard" stun gun grenades exploding, then banging on the door. "When I opened (it), a few policemen burst in with black masks on their faces," accompanied by "five huge dogs...."  

She and her aunt were ordered out of the building "immediately," not allowed to get dressed, sworn at, slapped, hit in the back, threatened by one of the dogs, then grabbed by the hair, thrown to the ground, and kicked. A policeman then pushed her out of the apartment and down the stairs. Other police were in the stairway, and they hit and punched her as well. She begged them to let her go back to retrieve valuables and a school project on her computer. They refused and said everything would be brought out with the furniture.

Her father returned the next day at 11:30AM but was prevented from entering the building. At around 6:30PM, there was a loud explosion after which the "whole building collapsed, and my life was buried with it. All my mementos and pictures of the family were buried in the ruins." All the furniture and much other property and valuables were lost. The family now lives in a rented house, deeply scarred by the incident, that's repeated many times throughout the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Denial of Social Rights to East Jerusalem Palestinians

To receive them, including health coverage, individuals must be an "Israeli resident." East Jerusalem Palestinians are not so are lawfully excluded from entitlements. Especially suspect are East Jerusalemites married to non-resident Palestinians so nearly always allotment request investigations are conducted to check their validity - to verify if applicants live in Jerusalem lawfully. They take months and are often denied in violation of residents' rights. When resident parents want to register children, additional investigations are begun that again take months so that thousands of resident minors end up denied services.

The idea is to toughen policies against East Jerusalem Palestinians and make their lives as harsh as possible toward the goal of reducing their numbers to provide more areas for Jews.

A Final Comment

Early in its history, Zionists chose confrontation over conciliation and used violence to achieve political aims. Thereafter came wars, state-sponsored terrorism, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, land theft, police state justice, and slow motion genocide to rid "Greater Israel" of Arabs and solidify its character as a Jewish state - most of all in Jerusalem, a "sacred city" for Zionists with lots of biblical nonsense and myths for support.

Ever since, Palestinians have suffered grievously for over six decades and under occupation since 1967. Sabbah Haitham's blog says it well:

"YOU take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bomb my country, starve us all, humiliate us all....BUT....I am to blame: I shot a rocket back."

Nothing on the horizon promises Sabbah relief because world leaders, above all in America, exempt Israel from international law and give its government license to plunder, oppress, and terrorize defenseless Palestinians with impunity, separate them in isolated cantons, keep them under military occupation, starve them to death in Gaza under siege and ruthless bombings, and purge them relentlessly from the "sacred city" of Jerusalem.

That's where things stand today under new leadership in Tel Aviv, Washington, and a complicit West Bank coup d'etat Palestinian government serving Israel as its  enforcer and in the process betraying its own people.

When will it end? When people everywhere say enough is enough and join the Global BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) Movement to punish Israel until it complies with international law, recognizes Palestinian self-determination, ends its illegal occupation, disbands its settlements, demolishes the Separation Wall, grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews, recognizes the right of return, and gives Palestinians their legal claim to Jerusalem for their capital. Global grassroots movements are determined to make it happen.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4