Article74 Magazine

- The “Hard Facts of Law and Life” presented in the Knesset Committee for Interior Affairs to Israeli lawyers and human rights activists (from the protocol of a meeting with ACRI, B’tselem, Moked, and human rights lawyers, 11-12-1996) 

Sarit Dana, Legal Advisor to the Interior Ministry, on ID card confiscations: 
“The law includes rules for the revocation or residency, this issue is not at the discretion of the Interior Ministry. A clerk who discovers, while handling any kind of request, that the conditions for the revocation of residency are met, is obliged to cancel [the applicant’s] resident status.” 

“A person’s resident status ends when s/he is not present in the country for seven years, or when her/his center of life was transferred outside of Israel, also if this happened less than seven years ago.” 

Sarit Dana on Family Reunification: “Today, we have many more applications. There is a phenomenon of migration. We are not dealing here with a humanitarian problem. According to international law, a person is not entitled to unification with a spouse necessarily in his/her place of residence. They can unit in the place of the other spouse.” 

“Entitlement of a person is checked according to several criteria: 1.Security screening of both the [resident] applicant and the requested person; 2.Validity of the marriage; 3.Correctness of documents to make sure they were not false; 4. the applicant’s entitlement to residency, to make sure it is still valid. Neither procedures nor criteria have been changed. The only change introduced is the fact that an application by itself is no longer sufficient reason for receiving an entry permit to the country.” 

Yosef Tov, Director of Population Registry, Interior Ministry on Family Reunification: “In the past years, we have witnessed a phenomenon of massive migration and very many fake marriages. This is a general phenomenon, not only concerning Palestinians. Today we have 7,000 family reunification applications in the Interior Ministry. In our East Jerusalem office, we have four persons dealing with these applications.” 

- The Sly Denial for Outside Consumption: 

Interior Ministry response to US Consulate statement (al Quds, 11-12-96) on behalf of Palestinians, nationals of the United States: “Interior Ministry spokeswoman Tova Ellinson denied Israel had asked residents to give up American citizenship, saying Israel allows people with residency permits to hold citizenship of another country. she said there have been cases in which people lost their residency permits under Israeli law because they were out of the country for more than seven years. Ellinson said that US Ambassador Martin Indyk met with Interior Minister Eli Suissa on the issue and the two agreed that Indyk would present specific cases for the Interior Ministry to study” (Jerusalem Post, 11-12-96) 

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a standard letter prepared for Israeli missions abroad - Israel claims that Palestinian Jerusalemites are unprotected residents by their own choice: “Palestinian residents of Jerusalem may take Israeli citizenship and as Israeli citizens they may live anywhere without subsequently prejudicing their right to reside in Jerusalem. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who chose not to take Israeli citizenship may continue to reside in Jerusalem for however long they wish. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who subsequently take up residence elsewhere forfeit their right to residency in Jerusalem. Citizens may reside wherever they wish; residents can only reside in one place at one time. One can be a citizen of Israel and reside in France or be a French citizen and reside in Israel; but one cannot be a resident of Israel and reside elsewhere.”