According to PA sources in Gaza, 50,000 Palestinians have entered the autonomous areas on Israeli-issued visit permits between May 17 and April 1995 in order to visit their relatives in Gaza and Jericho. Most of them (35,000) entered the Gaza Strip during summer 1994. After three months, their visit permit expired. The majority of them wished to stay longer and the Palestinian Authority - empowered to do so by the DOP - renewed their permits for an additional four months. Since December 1994, the PA issued visit permits have started to expire, and according to the DOP, a third renewal requires the approval of the Israeli side. 

In April 1995, the Palestinian Liaison Committee for Civil Affairs (PLCCA) reported that all requests for a third extension are being refused, and that Israel has requested all Palestinian visitors to leave the country. In consequent negotiations with the Israeli side, the PLCCA obtained an exceptional arrangement for Palestinian “visitors” who are employed in public institutions of the health and educational sector; the Israeli authorities renewed their permits for one additional year. However, if such a special “visitor” wishes to make a trip abroad, he/she must wait abroad three months before being able to obtain a new reentry permit. According to the PLCCA, the majority of the ordinary “visitors” have left the country in the meantime, except for those who have no place to go (i.e. approximately 6,000 Palestinians who came from Kuwait, Libya and other states, which do not permit non-citizen Palestinians to return to their territory). Israel has its own way for preventing such “hardship cases” from arriving to the autonomous territories in the future: the new Israeli regulations for visit permits provide that, in addition to an application submitted by a “first degree relative” (parent, sibling, child), any Palestinian wishing to enter these areas on a visit permit must be able to prove that a) s/he has permanent residency status in another country, and b) possesses a valid passport of another state. 

The situation regarding family reunifications in the PA-administered areas is also bleak. Between September and December 1994, the PLCCA had collected 2,240 applications for family reunification in the autonomous areas - all of them applications for non-resident spouses. These applications have been handled by the Israeli authorities at an extremely slow pace, so that by April 1995, only 100 family reunifications were approved. The rest have remained unanswered. This ratio appears very similar to the ratio observed by human rights organizations in the occupied West Bank. Following an inquiry by the PLCCA as to how many approvals they could expect annually, the Israelis clarified that 1,200 family reunifications of the annual quota of 2,000 would be reserved for the Gaza Strip, the rest (800) would be granted to families from the West Bank. The PLCCA filed a protest against the quota, which is far too low to meet the needs of the Gazan population, but so far the Israeli side has offered no new compromise.