Article74 Magazine

Issued by the Alternative Information Center/Project for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Jerusalem - Bethlehem, November 1995  

1. The current registration for the Palestinian election registry in NOT simply a registration for the elections to the Palestinian Council. It represents the first Palestinian effort to register the adult population of the 1967 occupied territories, parallel to the population registry handled by the Israeli civil administration and the Israeli interior ministry (East Jerusalem). 

2. If the elections will be held on the scheduled date (January 20, 1996), we must expect that this population registration will only be partial:  

2.1 A major portion of the estimated 20,000 - 30,000 persons without prior legal resident status will not be able to obtain resident status, although they are eligible according to Article II/1/g. The absence of decentralized registration offices in the rural areas, as well as the lack of systematic information and guidance to master the detailed registration forms (in three languages) threaten to again exclude the weak strata of the society, especially rural women, who represent the largest group among the unregistered population. 

2.2 Non-resident spouses of Palestinian residents who entered the country after August 31, 1993 are not protected by previous decisions of the Israeli High Court. Hundreds, if not thousands of such spouses are currently considered illegally present in the country. They remain unprotected by Article II/1/g of the new agreement as well, because they cannot present the required proof of three - four years’ presence in Palestine. Thus Article II/1/g conveys resident status only to those spouses already protected by the Israeli High Court and offers no solution to the unprotected group composed mainly of young couples. 

2.3 Approximately 100,000 persons who were residents of the 1967 occupied territories until Israel revoked their status (“lost IDs”) will remain unregistered. Although the Taba Agreement (Article 28/3) states that their problem will be solved by a Joint Committee, no such committee has yet been established and this group will have to forfeit their right to participate in the elections. 

3. Due to the ongoing Israeli claim to sole sovereignty over East Jerusalem, population registration in the city is an even more complex and sensitive matter.  

3.1 The current Palestinian registration conducted among East Jerusalemites aims to expose the Israeli demographic data as partial. Its results will represent a major bargaining tool in the future political negotiations with Israel. Since the Taba Agreement provides that Palestinian Jerusalemites living outside city boundaries are not registered at their place of residence, it must be expected that people will be reluctant to register for fear of loosing their Jerusalem resident status. This especially since, according to Article II/2/g, all data gathered must be transferred to the Israeli side (which holds the right to compare them with the data in the Israeli population registry). 

3.2 Article II/1/g obviously doesn’t include the inhabitants of East Jerusalem. Therefore, persons living in the city without Israel-issued ID cards will not be allowed to register in the Palestinian census, even if they prove that they have lived in the city for three of four years respectively. 

3.3 The situation of “lost IDs” in East Jerusalem is even more difficult than that of persons originating from other parts of the West Bank. This is because the Joint Committee charged with solving the issue of “lost IDs” according to the Taba Agreement (Article 28/3), will not be authorized to handle cases from East Jerusalem. 

4. The issue of Palestinian refugees living in the refugee camps of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: unless Israel and the international community provide guarantees, the registration in the PA population registry will question their special status and may be later used to exclude them from future political agreements [see below].