Article74 Magazine

With the approach of summer - the period in which Israel sets a quota for Palestinian abroad to visit their homeland - West Bank and East Jerusalem residents are applying to the Civil Administration for visit permits. (Gaza and Jericho residents submit applications at the Palestinian office of the Palestinian-Israeli Liaison Committee for Civil Affairs, after which Israel has the final say over the application). 
Not just any family member can be granted a visit permit for his or her relative abroad. The applicants must be classified by Israel as immediate family members - spouses, parents, siblings or children. Thus only if the “visitors” have close family members who are residents of the West Bank or East Jerusalem will they be allowed through the border. One would think, therefore, that the more family a person has “inside” the stronger that person’s case is for a “visit”. Not for the Civil Administration, though. The following case is representative of the bureaucratic stubbornness with which the Civil Administration deals with Palestinians. 

A man, who is from Bethlehem, went to work in Kuwait in 1965. After the 1967 war he was not allowed to return. He later got married to a cousin, also from Bethlehem. His wife made sure to return to Bethlehem each time she was pregnant so that their children would be born and registered in the West Bank. He now lives in Jordan, while his family is in Bethlehem. The man’s family members have applied many times for a visit permit for him, but have been refused every time. 
They recently applied again at the Bethlehem Civil Administration, paying $ 100 for the application, which was promptly refused. The family then sought help at the AIC Residency and Refugee Rights Project’s legal aid department. The project’s lawyer wrote a letter to the Civil Administration explaining the case, and asking that the application be approved. The lawyer emphasized the fact that all the man’s children were born in Bethlehem, where they currently live along with the rest of his family. The lawyer’s letter also received a negative response. The reason? “We cannot grant the visit because we fear that, because his whole family lives here, he will overstay his visit.” 

The Civil Administration, well known for being a bureaucratic nightmare, even uses its own mistakes, deceit and inefficiency for refusing to allow Palestinians to return to, and live in, their homes, as the following case illustrates. 
Palestinians who left Palestine to live abroad, for studies or whatever other reason, must constantly renew their laissez-passers or exit permits. If they fail to do so, they risk being refused re-entry at all. There is an appeals committee for such cases, ironically known as the “latecomers’ committee”. 
A family writes a letter to the Civil Administration to renew the expired laissez-passer of their son, who has completed his ten years of medical studies in Bulgaria and wants to return home. The Civil Administration recommends that they apply for family reunification, which was not proper bureaucratic procedure. The son is not classified as a non-resident but as a resident who “lost” his ID. The family nevertheless applies for family reunification, which is refused. The project’s lawyer writes the Civil Administration demanding to know: 1. why the first letter was not dealt with through the proper channels; 2. why the civil administration, after recommending a family reunification application, refused it. 
The response: “1. No such letter could have been written since it would have automatically been transferred to the latecomers’ committee, and the committee has no records of such a letter. 2. the civil administration could not have recommended a family reunification application. We know this because the application was refused, and it would have been illogical to recommend an application and then refuse it.”