Campaign to End ID Card Confiscation and the Israeli Supreme Court
A new forum of resistance or a distraction?
On April 22 the Israeli Supreme Court, under an expanded panel of 5 judges and the scrutiny of 5 international observers including the Chief Justice of India and members of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Committee of the Red Cross, heard the arguments of public petitioners concerning the revocation of residency rights from Palestinian Jerusalemites. The petition, assembled by five human rights NGOs, was probably the last available legal challenge to the Interior Ministry's radical 'center of life' policy which caused an 8 fold increase in ID card confiscation since it was implemented in 1996.
Flanking the lawyers in their bid for an injunction on ID card confiscation was a coalition of 25 Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, and an international observer group. But what message has the campaign actually sent to the Palestinian public at large? Do Palestinians view the issue of ID card confiscation as a civil rights case, as it was presented in the High Court petition, or is it a matter of political rights, in which case -- what are Palestinians doing rallying to hold onto an Israeli ID card?
Legally, the court's decision was, on the whole, positive. The court believed that since the policy change was implemented retroactively, without the knowledge of Palestinian Jerusalemites, an explanation of the Interior Ministry's past policy might impact the court's final decision. Both parties were ordered to categorize and pair-up their arguments for a later court date to be scheduled after August.
Politically, the Campaign's impact is less certain. While some Palestinian members of the Campaign considered the Israeli courts as a forum of resistance, PLO representatives at the Orient House criticized the Campaign for endorsing a tool of the Israeli occupation, the Israeli court system. The main criticism suggested that Campaign members focused too much on the language of the law instead of communicating the broader political message: that Jerusalem is occupied territory and ID card confiscation is a form of ethnic cleansing.
Coalition work, the pressure of public relations exigencies, and the fixation that the Campaign maintain credibility and focus, softened the broader political message that Jerusalem is occupied territory. To acknowledge the reality of the Israeli occupation and the legislative power it uses to cleanse Jerusalem of its Palestinian presence is a necessity, but to become snared in the details of illegitimate Israeli statutes is to renounce Palestinian national rights.
The legitimacy of the Israeli ID card must be undermined, not reinforced. It is not the details of the law that must be discarded, but the very law itself. To confront Israeli law, Palestinian campaigns must clearly define their political statements and objectives. The position of the Palestinian human rights organizations and political groups only weakens when adopting the language of the occupier instead of defining their own terminology.
More important still is the need to create alternative welfare institutions for Palestinian Jerusalemites. Palestinian reliance on Israeli state benefits accorded to those holding Israeli ID cards only serves to legitimize the occupation. Palestinians, moreover, rarely profit from an equal distribution of these benefits. Existing efforts by Palestinian institutions to provide Palestinian Jerusalemites with health care, education and insurance, for example, should be strengthened and expanded. The right to freely live in Jerusalem will be decided in a political settlement but to reach a just settlement a Palestinian national campaign is desperately needed to build adequate Palestinians social institutions in Jerusalem. As in any peace negotiation, a state only succeeds in securing what it has already won on the battlefield.
While coalition campaigns which target Israeli legislation, such
as the current Campaign to End ID Card Confiscation, are important
initiatives in that they help to secure basic Palestinian right in
the short run, Palestinian organizations must be wary of the
implications involved in directly engaging the Israeli Supreme
Court. Moreover, a long-term enterprise involving the arduous work
of institution building must be seriously explored if the Campaign
is to change its name from "Campaign to End ID Card Confiscation"
to "Campaign to End ID Cards."
"If an Israeli Jew travels to California and gets married there,
would it occur to you to strip her of her citizenship? This is a
discriminatory and scandalous policy. It does not comply with any
norm of decency and I ask you to reconsider it."
Supreme Court President Aharon Barak to the Interior Ministry
commenting on the policy of stripping Palestinian women citizen's
of Israel of their citizenship if they marry West Bank or Gaza
residents and move to the territories.
(Ha'aretz, 28/5/99)
Responding to the High Court appeal against ID Card Confiscation, former Interior Minister Eli Suissa appeared to reverse the policy of confiscating ID cards from those Palestinian Jerusalemites living in the immediate area outside of the Israeli determined municipal borders. "In the event that a resident moved to a neighboring settlement very close to the municipal borders of Jerusalem - that is, he lived in greater Jerusalem - and the center of his life in every respect (work, medical treatment, education and so on) continued to be in Israel, then the Interior Ministry would not say that the residency of such people has expired." Israel's National Insurance Institute (NII) thus decided to immediately grant medical benefits to Palestinian who return to live in Jerusalem after residing in nearby West Bank communities apparently changing the policy of past 4 years. Other social benefits still await results of investigation. It remains to be seen, however, whether this change will be implemented on the ground. Suissa's words, it should be noted, are carefully chosen. The former Minister merely stated that the "Ministry would not say that the residency" has expired, rather than stating clearly that residency rights of Palestinians would not be revoked if Palestinians lived outside of Jerusalem.
(Based on a report in Ha'aretz, 11/4/99)