| Litigation Update ACRI’s litigation concerning family reunification in the Occupied Territories began when it petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice (H.C. 1979/90). The state answered the petition (June 3, 1990) with a commitment to solve the humanitarian issue raised by granting permanently renewable “visitor’ status to the non-resident wives and children of residents of the territories. On June 5, 1990, the High Court decided that the new policy should be tested as it develops in practice, and rejected the petition.
In practice, six month visitor permits were issued at a reduced fee to the wives and minor children of residents, and these specific permits were renewed.
In June 1991 the legal advisor ruled that the above commitment applies only to women who were already married and resident prior to June 1990. In response ACRI again petitioned the High Court (H.C. 4494/91) on behalf of eight families from the territories. In each of these cases the husband is a resident and the wife a former resident of Jordan or Kuwait who married, and entered the territories, after June 1990.
The new petition, like the previous one, asks for recognition of a general right to family reunification for all spouses of residents of the territories and their children, and that they be granted six-month renewable visit permits regardless of the date of marriage and entry.
Tens of similar petitions (albeit more limited in their argumentation), on behalf of well over hundred residents and their spouses, have been brought before the High Court since September 1991. Many of these petitions were filed by advocate Andre Rosenthal formerly of the Hotline for the Defense of the Individual.
In all the pending family reunification petitions, the High Court has granted temporary orders restraining the expulsion of non-resident family members, and from collecting the NIS 5,000 guarantee, until rendering a final decision on the case. These temporary orders are individual: they protect the petitioner and their family members present in the territories. They remain valid until the resolution of the specific petition in which they were granted. Thus, should ACRI’s petition, for example, be rejected, the petitioners in that case (H.C. 4494/91) alone would lose the protection of the temporary restraining order in their case. The temporary restraining orders granted to other family reunification petitions would remain in force, and are formally unaffected by the decision in another case.
In its case ACRI also requested in December 1991, an additional temporary restraining order of general application, preventing the authorities from requiring any non-resident spouse or child of a resident to leave the territories. This request for a general restraining order was not met in December, and is to be heard together with the petition itself on May 13, 1992. It the petition for an order-nisi, requiring the respondent to answer the petition, is answered at the hearing, the court could grant the general restraining order, as requested. However, if the petition for an order-nisi is rejected by the High Court at the above hearing, the request for a general temporary restraining order will become moot.
ACRI is not in a position to speculate as to what the court might or might not decide, nor to speculate as to what the authorities might or might not do in response to the court’s decision. It is therefore the opinion of the IPCCFR alone that should the court reject ACRI’s petition, many families may be faced with deportations (in the near future) and in preparation for this we must mobilize. |
