On 10 March 2022, a mere three days before disbanding for a holiday recess, the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) passed the explicitly racist Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order). The Law, approved by a 45-15 majority, reproduces most of the provisions contained in the 2003 Citizenship Law. That law, also originally enacted as a temporary order and renewed annually since 2003, expired on 6 July last year after the Israeli governing coalition had failed to secure the necessary majority to renew it.
Like its predecessor, the 2022 law sweepingly prohibits Palestinian residents of Jerusalem or citizens of the Green line from applying for family unification with their spouses who are Palestinian residents or citizens of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip unless the male spouse is over the age of 35 and the female spouse is over the age of 25. The blanket prohibition also targets residents and/or citizens of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, or Iran, listed as enemy states by the law. Thus, according to Article 3 of the Law, Palestinian women who are under the age of 25 and Palestinian men under the age of 35, are barred from living with their spouses in Jerusalem or the Green Line. Exceptions may be granted by a “humanitarian committee” appointed by the Interior Minister on “humanitarian” grounds, but the quota of requests accepted by that committee should not exceed 58 applications (disregards of the number of applying people), the number of requests accepted in 2018 (Art. 7(g)). Humanitarian grounds may include domestic violence (Art. 7 (c)) or the fact that one of the spouses is a Syrian who is married to a permanent resident of the occupied Golan. (Art. 7(F)(2)). Having children does not qualify as a humanitarian consideration under the law, though (Art.7(F)(1)).
Palestinian men over 35 and women over 25 are allowed a permit to “stay” with their spouses in Jerusalem or the Green Line (Art. 4), but the stay permit has to be annually renewed and grants no social or economic rights or even health insurance.
The new law applies retroactively to the couples who filed for family unification or to promote their status and whose requests had not already been accepted, during the eight months that separated the expiry date of the 2003 law and the passage of the new law. For months after the expiration of the 2003 law, officers of the Israeli ministry of interior had refused, at the orders of Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, to process the thousands of family unification and status promotion requests that were filed by Palestinians, acting as though the law was still standing. That state of affairs was deemed illegal and contrary to administrative law rules by the Israeli High Court in January, which required the Interior Minister to publish a temporary procedure for processing family unification requests. Under that procedure, the Population and Immigration Authority would begin to process residency requests filed by Palestinians who are over fifty and who have had valid stay permits for at least five years. This procedure was only partly integrated into the New Law, allowing Palestinians over the age of fifty and who have valid stay permits for ten years to receive “temporary residency” in Jerusalem or the Green line (Art 5.) That temporary residency must be renewed every two years and allows its holders to receive social and economic rights.
Since the passage of the original iteration of this law in 2003, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), among other human rights organizations, has maintained that the law’s objective is flagrantly racist and demographically motivated. While the Israeli official justification argues that the law was primarily enacted for security purposes, a justification adopted by the Israel High Court on two separate occasions, its promoters have not hidden its demographic, Jewish-supremacist nature. “Democratic and Jewish State 1 - State for all of its citizens 0,” tweeted Israeli interior minister Ayelet Shaked following the enactment of the law. She had stated earlier in February that “there is no need for sugarcoating, the law also has demographic rationales.” Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, described as a centrist, stressed the same point. “We need not shy away from the essence of the Citizenship law,” he told a party congregation last July. “It is one of the instruments designed to secure a Jewish majority in the State of Israel.”
This demographic consideration, often cloaked by an unsubstantiated security claim, was reflected in the objectives of the new law. Article 1 of the law states that the restrictions on citizenship and entry are imposed in light of “the fact that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state and in a way that promotes the preservation of the interests essential to the national security of the state.”
The effect of the new law expires in a year, but its major proponents, led by Ayelet Shaked, stress that it will constitute a major pillar in a permanent Basic Law they intend to enact, known as the Basic Law of Immigration.
In light of its unjustified and unjustifiable violations of Palestinians’ basic rights, JLAC will be filing a petition against the constitutionality of the Citizenship Law before the Israeli High Court. The petition will represent dozens of Palestinian couples who applied for family unification through JLAC after the expiration of the 2003 Law and whose requests were not processed by the Interior Ministry. In addition to challenging the constitutionality of the law’s substantive provisions and restrictions, the petition will also challenge its retroactive application.
JLAC reiterates that the Israeli policy of imposing stringent restrictions on family unification, its ongoing denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, its “law of Return,” (which exclusively applies to Jews all over the world), encapsulate Israel’s institutionalized regime of systematic domination and oppression over the Palestinian people amounting to the crime of apartheid. It also constitutes a grave violation of Palestinians’ right to human dignity, family life, and equality. Further, its retroactive application even violates the tenets of Israel’s own administrative law rules.
Coupled with the systematic threats of residency revocation targeting Jerusalem’s Palestinians, this law deals a particularly tough blow to the rights of Palestinian Jerusalemites, who make up the overwhelming majority of those married to West Bank residents.
The right to live in peace, safety and dignity with one’s own family, to choose the person with whom they wish to form a family, is a fundamental right that Israel continues to strip Palestinian of. It has torn Palestinian families apart, subjecting them to perpetual fear, separation, and uncertainty.