| Political Prisoners' Right to Family Reunification While Israeli-Palestinian negotiations about control of the borders to Jordan and Egypt are still going on,
While we are still waiting for a major breakthrough on the issues of family reunification and lost IDs,
While we are witnessing first efforts by the Palestinian leadership to establish a “Jerusalem Task Force” which should put the issue of occupied Jerusalem on the agenda of the peace negotiations,
And - following an Israeli commitment to the universality and geographic non-separation of the right to family reunification (Refugee Working Group, Tunis, October 14, 1993) - WE DEMAND
Palestinian Jerusalem on the Agenda NOW!
- AND WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN A FIRST AND CONCRETE CAMPAIGN:
Support Political Prisoners’ Right to Residency and Family Reunification in Jerusalem Background of the Problem
Restrictions on Palestinian Residency in Jerusalem: During the 26 years of occupation, the Israeli authorities have carried out a policy of gradually separating East Jerusalem and its Palestinian residents from the surrounding West Bank on the one hand, and intensive efforts towards the “Judaization” of the occupied city on the other. This policy has expressed itself through the immediate annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, followed by the confiscation of Palestinian owned lands and property, by the massive construction of new Jewish neighborhoods, and by the establishment of a system of infrastructure and municipal services, which clearly discriminated against the city’s Palestinian residents and encouraged them to make their homes outside the city boundaries.
The 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem also laid the foundation for the legal separation between East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Territories. Since then, Palestinian residents of the city have been subject to Israeli laws and policies administered by the Interior Ministry while their relatives and co-patriots living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, defined as “foreigners” according to this Israeli law, have been ruled by orders and regulations issued by the Military Governor and the Civil Administrations. For some time it appeared that the blue Israeli ID cards would convey a privileged position to the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem: they had access to Israeli welfare services, they were harassed much less at the army checkpoints than West Bank residents easily identified by their orange ID cards, and they were not victim to the daily repression of the military occupation.
Very soon, however, the disadvantages of Jerusalem permanent residency became apparent. Israeli law classifies the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem as permanent residents, and as such they do not have inalienable residency rights in their hometown; as with residents of the rest of the Occupied Territories, Israeli authorities regularly refuse to re-entry to East Jerusalem residents who have stayed abroad for purposes of study or work. Moreover, since Israeli law defines Palestinian residents of Jerusalem as “permanent residents of Israel” and Palestinians residing outside the city as “foreigners”, many families cannot live united in Jerusalem, unless they are granted Family Reunification by the Interior Ministry. Even visits by relatives from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip present a problem: since the Gulf War, these relatives have had to obtain entry permits to Jerusalem and they are not allowed to stay overnight in the city.
In the first stage, Israeli policy regarding family reunification in Jerusalem was guided by the same principles as in the West Bank an the Gaza Strip, i.e. to limit the number of new Palestinian residents as much as possible, with one significant difference: The Jerusalem Interior Ministry has practiced a policy of gender discrimination; while male Palestinian residents of Jerusalem have a good chance of being granted family reunification for their non-resident wives, applications submitted by female Palestinian residents are always refused. The Interior Ministry has cynically argued that Palestinian social and cultural norms require a married woman to go to live with her husband so that a woman’s application for her husband to come to live with her in Jerusalem is not justified.
Developments in the recent past have highlighted the negative effects of the forced separation of Jerusalem from the rest of the Occupied Territories. Due to the pressure caused by the Intifada, the increased local and international attention to human rights in the Occupied Territories, and the peace negotiations, Israel has been ready for some concessions regarding Palestinian residency in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem residents, however, have remained excluded: Jerusalem residents are not included in the November 1992 agreement which grants six-month renewable visit permits to spouses and minor children of Palestinian residents in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, if they entered the country before August 31, 1992. Jerusalem residents are not included in the new policy declared in August 1993, according to which permanent residency will be granted to those covered by the November 1992 Agreement (approximately 6,000), and an annual quota of 5,000 persons (spouses, children, special humanitarian cases) will be granted family reunification in the future.
The fact that in the Declaration of Principles signed with the PLO in Washington Israel succeeded in obtaining another three years of moratorium before the issue of Jerusalem will be raised, suggests that the gap between the legal realities in Jerusalem and the future autonomous territories will widen, and that we will be confronted with the perpetuation, or even an increase, of the violations of Palestinian residency rights in Jerusalem. Living in Jerusalem with a “security record”
The Israeli efforts to destroy the Palestinian character of East Jerusalem have not succeeded in severing the city’s social and political ties from its environment. Jerusalem became the social and political center of the Palestinian uprising, and the number of Jerusalem residents arrested for political activities is not significantly lower than in other areas of the Occupied Territories (50,000 out of 700,000 since 1967 according to PLO figures). Although Israeli law protects Jerusalem residents from administrative detention and deportation, many Jerusalem activists have become victims of these measures if they lived or were involved in activities in the West Bank. Once a political prisoner is released, punishment may continue: border police stationed in the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are usually familiar with ex-political prisoners and they stop them in the street to question and the harass them; ex-political prisoners have difficulties in obtaining travel permits from the Interior Ministry; they are frequently placed under house or town arrest; others have been temporarily barred from entering the city by a “town-ban” which forces them to live with relatives in the West Bank. Denial of family reunification is part of the continuing punishment of Jerusalem political prisoners after their release. This practice amounts to collective punishment, because it prevents wives and children of former political prisoners from living united in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Interior Ministry has systematically refused applications of ex-political prisoners for their wives; this contradicts the Ministry’s standard practice of permitting non-resident wives of male Jerusalem residents to live in the city.
Despite the attempts by the Israeli government to separate these families and to push them out of Jerusalem, in most cases the non-resident women have decided to illegally live with their husbands in the city. In doing so, however, they encounter numerous difficulties. Although since November 1993 women from the West Bank no longer need special entry permits to Jerusalem, holders of West Bank IDs are not allowed in the city after 7 p.m. Thus these women are virtually sentenced to house arrest in the evening because going out of their homes means taking the risk of being stopped by soldiers, of paying a heavy fine, and of expulsion from the city. Even a day-time visit by the women to their parents or relatives in the West Bank involves the risk that, in the late afternoon, the women might not be allowed to pass the checkpoints surrounding Jerusalem, and might not be able to return to their husbands and children. Since ex-prisoners’ wives can only live in Jerusalem illegally, they require a permit to work in Jerusalem, and Israeli social security institutions do not consider them entitled to services, facts which severely reduce the family income. |
