| Married Women Without Identity Cards By far the largest group of people in the Occupied Territories living without secure residence status are young married women and their children born after 1987. This is not an accident but comes from their having been a relatively protected group until that point.
Following the 1967 census, of all Palestinians actually present in the Occupied Territories the only way Palestinians not registered in the census could enter was either through family `reunification’ or by means of visit permits. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that between 1967 - 1987 there were some 140,000 applications for `family reunification’. Fewer than 20,000 of them were accepted, most within the initial years of the occupation.
As the occupation progressed fewer categories of people were allowed to apply for `family reunification’ for their relatives who did not have residence. At first, applications were restricted to what Israel calls ‘first degree relatives’: parents, siblings, spouses and children. Then they were restricted to spouses; finally only husbands could apply for ‘family reunification’ with any theoretical hope of success.
For most people the hope remained theoretical. A 1987 Israeli High Court decision confirmed what many people already knew: that ‘family reunification’ existed far more on paper than in reality. Among other things the decision stated that “The policy is to grant the minimal number of applications for family reunification and to grant them only in the most exceptional circumstances (or in the interests of the authorities).” (106/86 Jan 27, 1987) This decision was issued in the case of a young woman, whose family was originally from Gaza but who had been born in the Gulf. She had married her cousin and had returned to the Gaza Strip. The High Court application was grounded in the fact that she had a severe heart condition and had just recently given birth. Regardless she was deported to Egypt following the decision.
Another factor was at work in the development of a situation where tens of thousands of women began to live in the territories without any secure residential status. The generation of Palestinians born around 1967 came of age and began to marry. First cousin marriage is normal in the Palestinian community and many of these marriages were made between parts of the family still living in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and parts which had been outside of the territories in 1967 and did not have residence. Here, the restrictions of applications for ‘family reunification’ to husbands only, converged with normal Palestinian practice of living in the husband’s residence. Young women who married their relatives in the territories moved to the territories; young women who married their relatives raised in Jordan or Kuwait moved to Jordan or Kuwait. Whether more people would have moved back to their family homes in the territories had they been able remains a matter for speculation.
Many Palestinians were unaware that ‘family reunification’ existed on paper only. Young people married, the women moved to their family homes in the territories, and the families began to apply for ‘family reunification’. They applied repeatedly, sometimes as many as a dozen times. Normally they were denied. In the meantime the wives would enter the territories on visit permits, remain in the territories as long as the permits lasted, leave, and return when their husbands were able to obtain another permit. In the mid-1980s husbands began to be forced to wait for three or six months before obtaining another permit for wives. Wives, and increasingly children, lived out their married and family lives in three and six month stretches - repeated dislocation and expense became the normal patterns.
There were, of course, many cases of young Palestinian males who went abroad to study or work and returned with foreign wives. For these women and their husbands the chances of family reunification were better, although not good. Social class was also a factor - a young man from Ramallah who went to study in the United States had a far better of obtaining reunification than a young man from a village who went to work in South America. Women who married Palestinian residents and who entered the territories through the airport on foreign passports fared better than those who entered across the bridge from Jordan on visit permits; women in cities fared better than those in villages; the middle class fared better than the poor; Women who were not Palestinian fared better than those who were.
‘Family reunification’ was also made a political tool. When Israel formed the village leagues in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, it gave the league members the power to issue a certain number of ‘family reunifications’. Collaborators outside the village league were also given the authority to give a certain number of reunifications. Palestinians who applied for reunification often found themselves summoned by the Shin Bet and told that the reunification would be made available if they would agree to collaborate with the Israeli military authorities. People who refused often found that their difficulties increased.
Even now, the Israeli military issues reunifications on ‘special occasions’. Following the Gulf War there was also an announcement that Palestinians wishing to return from Kuwait of the Gulf who had extensive capital to invest could apply for reunification. Palestinians who have applied have found that there are still conditions. In one Gaza case, where the man had lost his residence by living in Kuwait, he could not even receive a visit permit to bring the documents proving he had money to invest because members of his family (not the nuclear family he wished to return with but of his extended family) had been in prison. A certain small number of ‘family reunifications’ are normally also issued around major religious holidays: to Christians at Christmas and to Muslims at Aid Al-Fitr.
The last important piece of this picture is the September 1987 military order that children born to marriages where the mother is not a resident could not be registered in their father’s identity cards and thus could not become residents in their turn. Such children were born stateless, without access to school or medical insurance and subject to deportation. Recently Jordan has also been imposing restrictions on these children, who are considered ‘Palestinians’ and not Jordanians.
By the late 1980’s many families, and their resources, were exhausted from the continuous process of living out marriages in three and six month stretches. The women began to remain in the territories after their visit permit expired. With the beginning of the Intifada in December 1987 this increased. Not only was remaining in the territories a practical necessity because of money and conditions, but it corresponded with the ideological structure of what Palestinians believed to be incipient independence. A community striving to free itself of the Israeli civil administration (which handles all essential documentation in the territories accept for marriage contracts) found it appropriate to simply disregard the expiration of civil administration issued visit permits.
In May 1989 the Israeli military began rounding up people without residence permits in the middle of the night and summarily deporting them to Jordan. Most of these people were young married women and children. Even children who were registered in their father’s identity cards, and had the right to remain in the West Bank, were deported along with their mothers. Over 250 people were deported in this way before international outcry halted the policy.
In June 1990 the Israeli High Court issued a ruling whereby women married to residents were to be permitted to remain in the territories; those deported were to be permitted to return; and their unregistered children were to be allowed to attend school. Many women, although not all, were able to return following this ruling. Those who did could be given six month visit permits at a reduced fee. Some of them paid the fees and received the permits. Others, including many who had not been deported simply continued to remain on expired permits. Even the reduced fees were too expensive for some and others were too afraid of deportation to go to the civil administration.
In July 1991 deportations began again. This time it was conducted more quietly. Instead of trucks coming to houses in the middle of the night forcing women and children to pack within 15 minutes, husbands were summoned to civil administrations in Nablus, Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Ramallah and told that their wives had to leave the country in 24 or 48 hours. The target group was people whose visit permits had not been kept up-to-date. Most of them had not been previously deported (the initial deportation campaign was primarily in Ramallah villages). Many of them left not knowing what else to do.
Resistance was also faster, however. The campaign came to the notice of B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), who lodged immediate protests with the Israeli legal advisor and held a press conference. Deportations were suspended until the issues could be worked out.
A month before these deportations began the Israeli legal advisor had issued a ruling that the June 1990 High Court decision was not comprehensive but only applied to women who had been married and resident before the date of issue. All women married after June 1990 were to have no protection for their marriages.
Some of those deported in June 1990 have been able to return, others have not. In addition the families of people entering the territories on visit permits since the Gulf War have been forced to sign an agreement to pay NIS 5,000 (US $ 2,300) should the ‘visitors’ not leave on the scheduled date. Many young women who married after the war have been effectively deported by the threat of the NIS 5,000 fine, which represents a years earnings or more to many people.
The current situation is one of crisis and flux. The High Court is now scheduled to rule May 13, 1992 on the question of women who married after June 1990. People married since then or not resident before then lived live in a state of suspension. Women who were married and living in the territories before June 1990 are in a somewhat more protected condition, they cannot by immediately deported for not having renewed their visit permits. Those who want to bring their visit permits up-to-date must be allowed to do so without penalty (they are to pay the current reduced rate for the permit times each six month period the permit was not renewed). They are also to be allowed to travel for visits outside the territories and return without loosing their protected status (although this has not been tested). In addition, they are to be permitted to work and their children are to be allowed to go to school.
As important as these concessions are, they do not begin to solve the deeper issues of insecurity of tenure and of statelessness. Moreover, as concessions rather than rights, and as matters of policy they are subject to change at any moment and without warning. Such changes have occurred before.
Women married to Palestinians with residence status living in the territories are the largest single group of people whose insecurity of tenure makes it impossible to live any kind of normal life. The Israeli court system cannot be relied upon to provide them with a viable existence; nor can their situation wait for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. It is essential that pressure be brought to bear upon the Israeli government in order to provide these women with at least minimal stability in which to live out their marriages and raise their children. |
