Taking over responsibility for the handling of residency affairs has not only been an easy job for the new Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The first two months (December 1995 - January 1996) were characterized by the frenzy of the preparations for the first Palestinian elections and the registration of new, eligible voters had to be accomplished in a very short time (see ARTICLE 74/14). 
The population was confused and had difficulty in finding the Palestinian or Israeli offices which would actually handle their requests regarding residency matters. The practical division of tasks revealed itself to be much more confusing than one would have surmised from what was written in the texts of the political agreements. The Israeli MATAK (new version of the former Civil Administration located outside the Palestinian population centers) continues to handle some types of requests (e.g. entry permits to Jerusalem) while others must be submitted to the PA; persons living in areas B and C would sometimes succeed in filing their applications with the local Palestinian Coordination Office, in other cases the Israeli side would refuse to receive their applications via the PA and demanded that they be submitted directly to the Israeli offices. 
Traveling abroad with the new Palestinian passports caused trouble too; many of those arriving to the border crossings were turned back by the Israeli border personnel, because their passport data had not yet been registered in the Israeli computers. 
The procedure of family reunification - handled by Israel very bureaucratically, slowly, but systematically - got out of control, to the disadvantage of persons who had submitted their application prior to the Israeli redeployment. The PA Civil Affairs Committee (CAC) is supposed to handle applications for family reunification in the framework of the annual quota of 2,000 cases and to process them according to their submission date. However, the CAC has been unable to do so, because even in the Gaza Strip, where the PA is almost two years old, Israel has not yet transferred the lists of pending applications, but continues to handle them alone. Thus the CAC is not aware of those who applied in the past and simply raises to its Israeli counterparts the new requests collected after the redeployment. 
At the same time, the so-called Israeli-Palestinian “stamp dispute” paralyzed the new PA Interior Ministry offices. Israeli and Palestinian officials could not agree on the fees to be charged for applications such as family reunification, child registration and the issuing of ID cards. The Israeli side claimed that due to the fact that the PA Interior Ministry was not yet technically prepared to print official forms or documents, they had to be printed by Israel as in the past. Therefore, Israel would have the right to demand the same fees as in the past, which are higher than those proposed by the PA. Only when the PA would take over the production of these documents, would it have the right to set its own fees (as provided by the Taba Agreement). This dispute led to the total breakdown of services at the offices of the PA Interior Ministry; more than 10,000 ID cards could not be issued, parents were unable to register their newborn children and applications for family reunification could not be submitted. While the “stamp dispute” was still awaiting a solution, Israel announced the military closure of the Palestinian areas in response to the Hamas attack in Israel. 
The month of March was overshadowed by the total cantonization of the 1967 occupied territories, as all movement between Palestinian communities and access to/exit from the Gaza Strip was prohibited, all Israel entry permits were suspended and all border crossings were closed for Palestinians. 
The Palestinian Authority handles residency matters through two ministries, the Ministry of the Interior headed by Yasser Arafat and the Civil Affairs Committee headed by Jamil Tarifi. Although the exact division of tasks between the two is not always clear, it appears that the Interior Ministry is handling the population registry (receiving applications, handing out documents after approval) while the CAC is responsible for the processing of applications and for raising them to the Israeli side. Moreover, the CAC is the body responsible for the ongoing negotiations on residency affairs with Israel. 

Despite the problems described above, the CAC has made some piecemeal progress by: 

- establishing a special Population Committee which is authorized to design the new PA residency policies based on the political agreements with Israel; 

- recognizing its responsibility for the unresolved issue of ID cards revoked from Palestinian residents in Israel. The Population Committee was authorized to study this matter, to design tools for the registration of the estimated 100,000 cases of “lost IDs” and to prepare a Palestinian strategy for raising this issue in the framework of the joint Israeli-Palestinian committee (which has not yet been established). 

NGO cooperation with the CAC has been productive and focuses on the design strategies and methods of work for the repatriation of all those whose ID cards were revoked in the past. However, NGO ability to influence PA negotiators shaping the framework of future Palestinian residency rights, has remained minimal. NGO experts and lawyers therefore find themselves mainly trying to make the best out of political agreements and mechanisms which remain short of protecting Palestinian residency rights.