Family Reunification, Citizenship and the Jewish State
UN Treaty Bodies Call Upon Israel to Revoke New Laws
In July 2003 the Israeli government adopted a temporary law
prohibiting family reunification for Palestinians married to
Palestinian spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The decision
followed a previous decision taken earlier in May 2003 (Decision
1813).
International human rights organizations, including Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch sent a joint letter to the
Knesset, Israel's parliament, urging members to reject the bill.
"The draft law barring family reunification for Palestinian spouses
of Israeli citizens is profoundly discriminatory," stated Amnesty.
"A law permitting such blatant racial discrimination, on grounds of
ethnicity or nationality, would clearly violate international human
rights law and treaties which clearly violate international human
rights law and treaties which Israel has ratified and pledged to
uphold." B'tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, was
equally critical of the law. "This is a racist law that decides who
can live here according to racist criteria."
On 5 August 2003 The International Federation for Human Rights and its affiliate and partner organizations in Israel, ACRI - The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, HaMoked, the Mosawa Center - the Advocacy Center for Arab Palestinian Citizens of Israel, requested that CERD consider a new Israeli law adopted on July 31, 2003 and entitled, "Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) - 2003" for an urgent procedure. On August 14 2003 the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD/C/63/Misc.11/Rev.1, 14 August 2003) called upon Israel to 'revoke' the new ban on family unification law, and to 'reconsider its policy with a vew to facilitating family unification on a non-discriminatory basis.
Concluding Observations of
the UN Human Rights Committee
The Committee is concerned about
Israel's temporary suspension order of May 2002, enacted into law
as the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) on
31 July 2003, which suspends for a renewable one-year period, the
possibility of family reunification, subject to limited and
subjective exceptions especially in the cases of marriages between
an Israeli citizen and a person residing in the West Bank and in
Gaza. The Committee notes with concern that the suspension order of
May 2002 has already adversely affected thousands of families and
marriages.
The State party should revoke the
Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) of 31 July
2003, which raises serious issues under articles 17, 23 and 26 of
the Covenant. The State party should reconsider its policy with a
view to facilitating family reunification of all citizens and
permanent residents. It should provide detailed statistics on
this issue, covering the period since the examination of the
initial report.
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It's not the current number of
requests that matters, but rather the potential size of the breach:
Even if the government adamantly stands its ground, saying that no
right of return will ever be honoured (and there already have been
proposals, of differing levels of sophistication, to allow a
limited, regulated law of return), the continuation of family
reunification trends is liable to change Israel's character.
Preventing the right of
citizenship to Palestinians who marry and Israeli citizen
constitutes an infringement of principles of democracy and equal
rights. But these must be balanced against the basic right enjoyed
by members of the Jewish majority of the country to preserve the
state's character, which is defined as a Jewish state in the
country's founding declarations and whose status as a state for the
Jewish nation has been supported via the legislation of the law of
return. Under this law, the state has the right to limit entry into
it under criteria selected to protect its national-cultural
character, along with its public order and security.
Avraham Tal, "A Legal Fence for
the State," Ha'aretz, 11 August 2003.
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