Palestinian Residency in the PA Areas in the Seventh Year of Partial Self-Rule
Selected issues based on an interview with Ghazi Gheith, legal advisor to the PA Interior Ministry in Bethlehem
Even in the Homeland: Palestinians - a people without proper personal documents:
Ignorance and negligence in regards to registration of what was
perceived as petty details by the foreign rulers of the Palestinian
people and their bureaucracies have resulted in a situation where
thousands of Palestinian inhabitants in the PA areas hold personal
documents with misspelled or completely wrong names and false birth
dates. Mistakes in the registration of personal data can be traced
back to the time of the British Mandate. Most of the mistakes,
however, occurred during the 28 years of Israeli military
occupation, under which indifference to the Palestinian individual
was the norm. Missing birth certificates are common, others are
holding proper birth certificates, but the clerks of the military
occupation forgot to enter the data into the computerized
database.
Today, when personal documents of the Palestinian population living in the PA areas are issued via a complex procedure involving both the PA and the Israeli military government, the computerized population register held by Israel is the crucial tool which determines a person's name, birth date, and even legal existence. Thus thousands of people fill in official forms and requests by deliberately misspelling their names, stating their father's name as Ahmad (although it is Amjad), and putting a birth date which is not theirs - just in order to avoid a bureaucratic nightmare with the Israeli authorities. Fixing the personal documents of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and obtaining birth certificates for those who never had one, represents a considerable part of the daily work of the Palestinian Interior Ministry today. Any major change in the old documents requires the approval of a Palestinian court as well as notification of and approval by the Israeli authorities.
Family Reunification
In 1999, the Israeli family reunification quota was raised from
2,000 to 3,000 annually (1,800 for the West Bank; 1,200 for the
Gaza Strip). For a people characterized by exile and dispersion,
however, the quota remains way below the need. Delays in the
processing of applications by the Israelis - a result of the
Israeli habit of using the family reunification procedure as a tool
for exerting political pressure on the PA - is the main cause for
the long waiting periods experienced by applicants. Newly-wed
Palestinian couples, fiancées and spouses-in-spe are expected to
wait three to six years until they can finally live together
legally.
According to the current quota system, the Bethlehem district is entitled to some 200 family reunifications annually. In early 1998, the Ministry submitted a package of all applications collected until 31 December 1997 (some 800 cases). By September 1999, Israel had responded to 150 of these cases, i.e. less than a one-year's quota. Moreover, Israel has not yet completed the handling of applications submitted before 1995; 50 responses to such cases were recently received by the Bethlehem Ministry. The Ministry abstained from submitting new applications (1998, 1999), in order to give priority to the numerous applications for "internal family reunification" (registration of previously unregistered residents and registration of children of returnees above the age of 16). Referring to the common public complaint about the role of wasta (bribes, connections) in changing the ranking of applications to be submitted to the Israeli side, the legal advisor of the Bethlehem Ministry emphasized that all cases are handled according to the date of application and transferred in this order to the CAC (Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee) in Ramallah.
Visit Permits
The shortage of visit permits remains dramatic. During the months
of summer 1999, the Bethlehem ministry collected some 2,000
applications of people who wished to obtain permits for their
relatives abroad. Only 120 permits monthly were issued. Israel has
developed an extremely restrictive policy in regards to visit
permits all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip: no more than 120
permits per month to each district, no visit permits to persons
below the age of 35, no permits - for security reasons - to any
person born in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. People who enter the country
on a visit permit and overstay the permitted period (maximum 7
months) are fined and not permitted re-entry for three to four
years. This policy results in extremely inhumane conditions, with
fiancées and wives having to leave behind their husbands and
children, not knowing when they will be permitted to come back.
Jerusalem ID Card Confiscations - the other side of the coin
A considerable number of Palestinian Jerusalemites, unable to live
in the city for economic reasons, or due to fact that part of their
family was denied a blue Jerusalem ID card by the Israeli
occupation, have made a home in the nearby Bethlehem district. Many
of them have become victims of the Israeli policy of ID card
confiscation from Palestinian Jerusalemites living outside the
Israeli-defined city borders. The Palestinian Interior Ministry has
adopted a policy of not accepting applications for a green West
Bank ID card by Palestinian Jerusalemites whose ID card was
confiscated. While this decision is to be supported politically, it
creates tremendous and yet unresolved hardships for all those who
remain without a valid personal document required for travel,
university registration, and legal transactions.
Changing one's Address from Gaza to West Bank remains an almost
impossible enterprise even in the seventh year of partial
Palestinian self-rule.
Thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank with ID cards
issued in the Gaza Strip are forced to do so "illegally", simply
because the Israeli occupation authorities refuse to approve
requests for address changes. Among those most strongly effected
are PA personnel stationed in the West Bank who originally entered
the country via the Gaza Strip, Gaza students at West Bank
universities, as well as numerous individuals married or working in
the West Bank. The Israeli refusal of address changes between Gaza
and the West Bank represents a gross violation of the principle of
territorial integrity of the areas handed over to the Palestinian
Authority, a principle, which was established in the Oslo
Accords.