"Israeli Discriminatory Law Tears Apart Thousands of Families"

[Englander]

Report, HRW/AI/ICJ, 24 May 2005

JERUSALEM -- The Knesset should not extend a discriminatory law, due to expire on May 31, which prevents Israeli citizens and residents from living with their spouses from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists said today in a joint letter to Knesset members.

On May 15, the Israeli Cabinet endorsed a continuation of the law with limited exceptions based on the age and sex of the Palestinian spouse. The three human rights organizations called on Knesset members to reject this amendment, which is currently before the Knesset for a first reading, as insufficient.

“The law blatantly discriminates against Israelis of Palestinian origin and their Palestinian spouses,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Thousands of married couples are forced to live apart, and children are prevented from living with both parents.”

The Israeli government enacted the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) in July 2003, following a May 2002 freeze on applications for family reunification between Israeli citizens and Palestinians from the occupied territories. The law prohibits the granting of residency or citizenship status to Palestinians from the occupied territories who are married to Israeli citizens or permanent residents (such as Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem). According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the law affects between 16,000 and 21,000 families as of 2004.

More at;
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3873.shtml

[Colorado Blue]

1. Wait a second! This new bill actually EASES restrictions...

Knesset approves new citizenship rules for Palestinian spouses

By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent

The Knesset approved the first reading Wednesday of an amendment to the Citizenship Law aimed at making it easier for Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs to receive citizenship.

The bill, which was approved by a vote of 41 to 23, was initiated by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Likud) and approved by the cabinet two weeks ago. It allows Palestinian men over 35 and Palestinian women over 25 who are married to Israeli citizens - usually Israeli Arabs - to request Israeli citizenship on the basis of family unification.

snip

Livni acted quickly to bring the bill before the Knesset because a temporary amendment currently in place will expire Tuesday. She told the Knesset this week that the amendment was adopted during the intifada, after Palestinians with Israeli identity cards were involved in terrorism. She said the new bill was meant to help Palestinians who pose a low security risk and allow them to apply for citizenship.

"The current version of the bill strikes an appropriate and measured balance between Israel's security interests protecting citizens, and the desire of someone who is not an Israeli citizen to enter on the basis of marriage to a citizen of the country," Livni said.

snip

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/580444.html

Granted - this bill is a compromise - like most bills - and like most bills it does not make EVERYBODY happy. The Israeli left doesn't think it goes far enough and obviously, neither will some Arabs.

In view of Israel's acknowledged security problems it's a measure to make life EASIER for Arabian people, while still acknowledging said problems - not HARDER as the posted article loudly implies.

So do we ALWAYS have to look at the blackest, worst possible interpretation of everything that goes on in Israel?

[drdon326]

2. Uhhhhhhh....YES.

EI is legendary for its pos interpretation.

There are SOME who shamelessly pass this rag off as newsworthy.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. The report is from a Human Rights Watch press release

I almost posted it yesterday from the Human Rights Watch website.

The HRW report takes the view that the law is a violation of human rights and that it should be allowed to expire next week.

Here is information on the problem from B'Tselem:

Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories are married to non-residents. According to this policy, these residents must file a request for family unification to enable them to live in the Occupied Territories with their spouses. Over the years, permits for family unification have been granted sparsely and according to unknown criteria. Israel's rigid policy compels the resident spouses to emigrate if they want to live together with their spouses.

Israel refuses to recognize the right of Palestinians to family unification in the Occupied Territories and considers approval of a request for family unification an act of benevolence. This position is dictated by political considerations, whose objective is to change the demographics of the Occupied Territories by blocking immigration of spouses of residents of the Occupied Territories into the area and by encouraging emigration of divided Palestinian families.

Israel's policy totally ignores the social reality existing in the Occupied Territories, in which marriage between residents and relatives from outside the area is extremely widespread. In employing this policy, Israel forces residents to make a cruel choice between family separation and leaving their homeland. The Israeli authorities, supported by the High Court of Justice, inflict ongoing suffering on hundreds of thousands of persons, restrict the development of children by violating their right to live with both their parents, create family instability, and rend the family unit.

Israel offers two possibilities to Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories who are married to non-residents: one, living separately and maintain a truncated family life, meeting with their spouses only during short visits in the Occupied Territories that require obtaining a permit from Israel, and two, moving elsewhere, abandon their homes, family, and homeland.

Read more.

[Englander]

4. To quote MK Ahmed Tibi (Hadash);

"This is one of the blackest bills in the history of the Knesset, an apartheid law that allows a Jew to marry a German woman but prevents Taibeh and Umm al-Fahm residents from marrying someone from Nablus or Tul Karm,"

__________________________

To quote the joint letter,mentioned in the article;

"The law has created an intolerable situation whereby Israeli citizens and permanent residents are forced to choose between living in their country without their spouses and leaving their country to be with their spouses. Furthermore, even those choosing to leave Israel to join their spouses in the OPT face a host of additional, negative legal consequences. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem face a real threat of losing their own permanent residency if they move to the OPT to join their spouses there. Israeli citizens are prohibited from entering Areas A (major Palestinian population centers as defined under the Oslo Accords) of the OPT, and thus have to break Israeli law in order to live with their spouses in the OPT. If spouses from the OPT stay illegally in Israel with their Israeli spouse and children, they often can’t leave the house for fear of arrest and deportation.

While Israeli government officials have traditionally justified the law as necessary for security reasons, the real intent of the law appears to be demographic in nature. As reported by Ha’aretz, during a special meeting to discuss the law on April 4, 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated: "There is no need to hide behind security arguments. There is a need for the existence of a Jewish state." At the same meeting, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Instead of making it easier for Palestinians who want to get citizenship, we should make the process much more difficult, in order to guarantee Israel's security and a Jewish majority in Israel."

Israel's obligations under international human rights law include the obligation to respect the absolute prohibition on discrimination set out in Articles 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and Article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Israel has ratified all of these treaties and is bound to respect their provisions. Under the ICCPR, which Israel ratified in 1991, even "in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation," Israel is prohibited from taking measures that would "involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin."

In addition, Israel is also bound by its obligation to protect the family as a fundamental unit of society, including the establishment of families. These obligations are set out in Article 10 of the ICESCR, Article 23 of the ICCPR, and Articles 7 through 10 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. According to the authoritative commentary of the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, international human rights law “recognizes that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” Furthermore, “the right to found a family implies… the possibility to… live together…Similarly, the possibility to live together implies the adoption of appropriate measures… to ensure the unity or reunification of families, particularly when their members are separated for political, economic or similar reasons” (General Comment 19)."

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/05/23/isrlpa11000.htm

And who tf are "Arabian people"?

:shrug:

[eyl]

5. Well, technically

the law doesn't "involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin", since AFAIK it doesn't apply to any non-Palestinian Arab.

Question (and this isn't a rhetorical question, I honestly don't know the answer): Would a German citizen who married a British subject during WWII be allowed entry into the UK (during the war, obviously)?

[Jack Rabbit]

6. But it is discriminatory

It is aimed at Palestinian Arabs.

The comparison between a German citizen in World War II and a citizen of the UK during the war is not a good one. First all, that was a conventional war between two conventional states. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not.

Technically, there is no war. There is an occupation of land not incorporated as a state that is meeting armed resistance. Since it is an occupation, a comparison of post-war Germany might do better; but there was no resistance to occupation in post-war Germany and, as already mentioned, Germany was a conventional state, even after the war; so that really wouldn't be fair, either.

We know that Palestine is not a conventional state, but is Israel? If so, where is it? Ask some Palestinians and they'll tell you there is no Israel, just an occupied Palestinian nation that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Ask some Israelis, and they'll tell you there's is no occupation, just a Jewish state that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Ask a more sensible person, regardless of his nationality, and he'll state the obvious and tell you that there are two nations there, even if only one is incorporated into a state, with a border that approximates the Green Line.

This law assumes that any Palestinian resident of the Occupied Territories is a potential enemy of Israel and can't be allowed to enter Israel freely, even if married to a resident of Israel. However, this person has no rights as a citizen in his own country, because his own country has no state; he is not a citizen of any nation.
From B'Tselem:

The relationship between the residents of the Occupied Territories and the Occupied Territories is like that between citizens and their country, even though the residents do not have the status of citizens of the Occupied Territories. They were born there or lived there for many years after arriving as refugees; most are not citizens or residents of another state and are not immigrants who came to the Occupied Territories from another country, so they have no other homeland to which they can go to live with their family. Their right to maintain a proper family life in the Occupied Territories is a basic right, which Israel may not deny.

Israel might do well to allow the PA to declare a state in the West Bank and Gaza, but that would require borders to be drawn and agreed upon; gee, that might even commit each side to a two-state solution. Of course, that might get those on either side who think there is only one nation between the River and the Sea real upset. Imagine the reaction of the rabble in Hebron once they're told they've been living in an occupied foreign country all this time (well, they're going to have to be told that sooner or later). Imagine the reaction of bitter-enders among the Palestinians who are told by a Palestinian government that it has no sovereignty over the farm west of Jerusalem from which their grandfather was driven almost 60 years ago.

If it's too much to allow the PA to declare a state, one might look at B'Tselem's suggestion:

Family unification is a purely civil matter, whose handling should be transferred totally to the Palestinian Authority. In establishing and implementing its policy, the PA is obligated to act "with due regard to internationally-accepted norms and principles of human rights and the rule of law," as it undertook in the Oslo Accords.

However, that, too, would entail determining over just what territory the PA and Israel each have authority. And that, again, might entail each side mustering the courage to tell a few extremists in their midst: "Tough shit, you lose."

[eyl]

7. I didn't say it wasn't discriminatory at all,

but that it didn't do so on the basis of race.

We know that Palestine is not a conventional state, but is Israel? If so, where is it? Ask some Palestinians and they'll tell you there is no Israel, just an occupied Palestinian nation that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Ask some Israelis, and they'll tell you there's is no occupation, just a Jewish state that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Ask a more sensible person, regardless of his nationality, and he'll state the obvious and tell you that there are two nations there, even if only one is incorporated into a state, with a border that approximates the Green Line.

Not exactly the same. While not all of Israel's borders are legally finalized, it is a recognized state. Palestine, however, isn't (among other reasons, because the Palestinians haven't declared it yet). So technically, you're correct, there's no state of war, since international law recognizes war as being between states (from several respects, the status of the WB/Gaza falls between the cracks of international law, with each side trying to force it to the poistion more advantegous to it). De facto however, there is a war; this certainly isn't an "internal uprising", and war is the closest fit. So the WWII situation I posited would be instructive, at the least.