Jerusalem - On 27 April 2022, the Jerusalem Human Rights Consortium, submitted a petition demanding the annulment of the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law (Temporary Order). The petition was submitted by attorney Sawsan Zaher representing the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) and the Women Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC).
The law was reenacted by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, last March, a mere eight months after its expiration. File on behalf of 16 Palestinian families affected by the law, whose files are followed up by the Jerusalem Legal Aid Center. The petition argues that the sweeping and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinian right to family unification constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and Israeli constitutional norms.
Even though it was originally framed as a “temporary order,” the law has been used to curtail the rights of Palestinians from Jerusalem or the Green line and their spouses from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – and the children of the couples - for nearly two decades. The petition refutes the claim that the law’s objective is security-related, stressing that it is demographically motivated, whose aim is to maintain a Jewish majority by preventing Palestinians from living legally with their spouses in Jerusalem or the Green Line and from acquiring permanent residency. The law treats Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as “enemy aliens,” strips them of any ties to their lands and families in Jerusalem or the Green Line, and attaches to them a collective presumption of dangerousness solely based on national belonging. Such ethnic profiling is both discriminatory and constitutes collective punishment.
The petition particularly highlights the disproportionate and unlawful violations of the rights to family life, equality, and dignity in violation of international law conventions and norms and of Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
The petition cites the recent report written by the outgoing rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Michael Lynk, which concludes that Israel has established an institutionalized regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people, amounting to apartheid. This law, the petition argues, is a pillar in this regime of racial domination and oppression and thus must be repealed.
It is also worth noting that on March 31st and via attorney Zaher, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), has sent multiple legal communiques to the Minister of Interior, the Israeli Government’s Legal Advisor and the Knesset Legal Committee highlighting the illegality of this law and the effects it has on the cases followed by the center and the legal positions of those cases.

To reveiw the petition in Hebrew, press this link.