Article 74 April 1996, Issue No.15
April 1996, Issue No.15 (9)
ID Card Confiscations from Palestinian Jerusalemites Living Outside the City Borders
In the period of this month, the Alternative Information Center (AIC) has observed that the Israeli Interior Ministry located in East Jerusalem is stepping up its policy of ID card confiscation and cancellation of resident status from Palestinian Jerusalemites living outside the city borders or abroad. The office of Atty Lea Tsemel was informed by Shlomo Matanya, director of the Interior Ministry, that this policy is based on instructions issued by the Ministry’s legal advisor to cancel the resident status of all those registered residents of East Jerusalem whose “center of life” is not in the city. Mr. Matanya, however, was not ready to provide further details in regards of these instructions and he rejected the lawyer’s request for an official announcement of this new policy prior to implementation.
Palestinian immigrants to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are both 1948 refugees and 1967 Displaced Persons. Only the latter thus realize “return” in the historical meaning of the term. For the first category, immigration to the PA administered areas simply represents taking another chance for starting a new life - this time in a Palestinian context.
Only persons who still have a close relative (parent, spouse, child) in the 1967 occupied territories are able to obtain residency status via regular family reunification (2). Upon their arrival, they are usually supported by their families. Many are integrated into family enterprises (buisnesses, small farms, etc.), although unemployment - as for everybody else - is a major problem. This category includes un- and semiskilled workers, as well as professionals. The latter encounter major difficulties in finding a job in their profession. The situation is similar for returning deportees (5) and “illegal immigrants” (1), although the latter also have to face a permanent threat of eviction hanging over their heads. Living in Palestine without valid documents makes it almost impossible to move and to find employment.
Persons obtaining residency status in the areas via approval obtained from Israel by the PA (“national number”) are mainly PLO army personnel, political functionaries and professionals and their families (6,7). They are usually employed in PA institutions and suffer from the low level of PA salaries (US $ 200 - 1,500). They have serious difficulties in finding affordable housing for their families and in obtaining adequate medical services. Their problems are aggravated by the fact that many of them are persons without close family ties in the area; the weak social security and health system established by the PA is still unable to provide support.
The educational system existing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is becoming less and less capable of absorbing returnee/immigrant children. Moreover, the situation of overall economic crisis has given rise to social tensions based on the historical distinction between “those from inside” and “those arriving from outside”.
The Silent Migration to 1967 Occupied Palestine
Written by Badil-AICThe uncompromising Israeli stand in the political negotiations on Palestinian repatriation (Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs, Quadripartite Committee on the 1967 Displaced Persons) has prevented Palestinian political achievements since the 1991 Madrid Conference. However, Israel appears less reluctant to compromise on Palestinian immigration to the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority if this happens by means of bureaucratic procedures which are unspectacular and hidden from the media and Israeli public opinion. Thus Palestinian migration to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the 1993 Oslo Accords has been based on individual applications requiring Israeli approval and not on a right based on criteria defined in the negotiations.
The Silent Migration (1994 - March 1996)
1. Persons entering on visitor’s permit and staying after expiry 15,000
West Bank: 10,000; Gaza: 5,000
2. Persons granted residency via regular family reunification 12,000
West Bank: 2,400 cases/7,200 persons; Gaza: 1,600 cases/4,800 persons
3. Spouses granted residency based on November 1992 High Court Agreement 3,000
(1,000 cases)
4. Persons granted residency based on the Election Agreement/Taba Agreement 3,000
5. Palestinian Deportees permitted return 326 (978 incl. families)
88: collective return, Israeli gesture; April `93 - May `94
141: individual return as functionaries on PA lists; Sept. `93 - January `96
72: individual return via legal procedures; Sept `93 - January `96
25: return in the framework of the PNC, January - March `96
6. PNC members permitted return 167
(501 incl. families)
7. Persons entering with PA “national numbers 50,000-60,000
(incl. families)
(Police, military personnel and civilians)
Total (1 - 7) 84,000 - 94,000
Notes: This is an estimate, no survey is available. Figures do not include Israel-annexed East Jerusalem.
ad 1. Persons overstaying their visitor’s permit in the Gaza Strip are mainly those who are not permitted re-entry to the country of their previous domicile (Libya, Kuwait); in the West Bank these are mainly persons who have failed to obtain family reunification and now, after the Israeli redeployment, are willing to take the risk of staying on “illegally”. Since Israel has been pressuring the PA to make these persons leave, the PA started a survey in order to establish accurate figures. [Source: Interior Ministry/Gaza, CAC-Gaza, CAC-Ramallah]
ad 2. The Israeli quota for family reunification set prior to the Oslo Accords and valid since then is 2,000 cases (6,000 persons) annually; 1,200 of these are allocated for the West Bank, 800 for the Gaza Strip. Two thirds of those granted family reunification are non-resident spouses of Palestinian residents and their minor children. [Source: official Israeli data]
ad 3. Based on a 1993 Israeli policy decision and the November 1992 High Court Agreement, spouses of Palestinian residents who entered the country between 1990 and 31 August 1992 are entitled to family reunification (2,000 cases/6,000 persons). It is estimated that approximately one half of this protected population has realized their residency right. An unknown number of these spouses are taking advantage of the Taba Agreement to legalize their status (see 4. below).
ad 4. Annex 1/1/1g of the Taba Agreement provides that any individual able to document three years (if above the age of 40) or four years (if below the age of 40) of presence in the country was entitled to an ID card if s/he filed an application during the period of registration for the Palestinian elections. Due to the short application period and poor public information, only a minority of the estimated 20,000 - 30,000 eligible persons profited from the chance to legalize their status. Persons belonging to category 3 and 4 have actually been living in the country for years and are thus not immigrants. [Source: CAC-Ramallah]
ad 5. Between 1967 and 1992, Israel deported 1,657 Palestinians from the 1967 occupied territories, among them temporarily 385 alleged Hamas and Jihad Islami activists (1992). Five of the 72 deportees returned via legal procedures prior to the Oslo Accords, one of them in the framework of an Israeli-Palestinian exchange agreement. [Source: Palestinian Deportees Committee/Amman]
ad 6. In January 1996, the Israeli government declared that all 482 PNC members will be permitted to reside in the West Bank/Gaza Strip in order to participate in the vote over the change of the Palestinian Charter. By March 1996, 167 had been issued permits. 85 PNC members had returned earlier via the PA (see 7. below), 25 PNC members are deportees listed in point 5. above. [Source: Bilal Shakhsheer/PNC}
ad 7. Based on an agreement between Israel and the PA, the latter can submit lists of names to the Israeli side. If approved, these persons are issued a “national number”. They must arrive at one of the border crossings within six months. Upon their arrival at the border, they are handed a form which contains their future ID number. They must present this form to the Coordination Office at their place of domicile in Palestine; the CO then submits a request for an ID card to the Israeli authorities. This procedure also applies to deportees and PNC members permitted to return via the PA (listed in 5 and 6). [CAC-Ramallah, Interior Ministry Gaza
Looking Back on the First Three Months of PA Activity
Taking over responsibility for the handling of residency affairs has not only been an easy job for the new Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The first two months (December 1995 - January 1996) were characterized by the frenzy of the preparations for the first Palestinian elections and the registration of new, eligible voters had to be accomplished in a very short time (see ARTICLE 74/14).
The population was confused and had difficulty in finding the Palestinian or Israeli offices which would actually handle their requests regarding residency matters. The practical division of tasks revealed itself to be much more confusing than one would have surmised from what was written in the texts of the political agreements. The Israeli MATAK (new version of the former Civil Administration located outside the Palestinian population centers) continues to handle some types of requests (e.g. entry permits to Jerusalem) while others must be submitted to the PA; persons living in areas B and C would sometimes succeed in filing their applications with the local Palestinian Coordination Office, in other cases the Israeli side would refuse to receive their applications via the PA and demanded that they be submitted directly to the Israeli offices.
1967 Displaced Persons
Palestinian officials evaluated the sixth meeting of the quadripartite committee on the 1967 Displaced Persons with a modicum of optimism. In this meeting, held in Cairo on 14 February 1996, the delegates of the four parties (Israel, PLO, Egypt, Jordan) succeeded in overcoming the deadlock of previous sessions by shifting the agenda of the negotiations: it was decided to suspend the futile debate about who is a Displaced Person and to focus from now on the modalities of repatriation. Six existing records were identified to serve as the basis for defining the population of the 1967 Displaced Persons, among them UNRWA records, the Egyptian population registry for Palestinian refugees after 1967 and the records of the Jordanian Department of Palestinian Affairs. The seventh meeting was scheduled to be held in Bethlehem on March 20, 1996, but was canceled due to the Hamas operations in Israel. [Salim Tamari/Palestinian delegation]
"Examining the Experience of the Past to Learn for the Future”
Two workshops conducted by the SHAML Diaspora and Refugee Studies Center in March 1996 examined historical plans of refugee resettlement and compensation, i.e. approaches to the solution of the Palestinian refugee question traditionally favored by the opponents of the right of return.
Israeli Resettlement Plans 1949 - 1972
From the early 1950s on, Israel pursued the twin aims of resettling Palestinian refugees in Arab countries far from the Israeli borders and of preventing their return across the 1948 borders of Israel. This was in order to use the abandoned refugee property for the absorption of Jewish immigrants and to establish a stable Jewish majority in the new state. The key Israeli slogan coined at that time was “if you can’t solve it [the refugee problem], dissolve it”, i.e. to disperse the Palestinian refugees by means of resettlement and economic projects which would eventually lead to their integration into the economics of the host countries. This Israeli policy was based both on the deep Israeli fear of refugee return, and on the political calculation that once the refugee problem was removed from the heart of the Palestinian question, the conflict could be solved.
Regional NGO Conference on the Palestinian Refugee Question
Written by Badil-AICCyprus, March 15-16, 1996)
This conference, launched by an initiative of CEAD - Alternatives (Canadian NGO) and preceded by a regional preparatory meeting in Amman in March 1995, was perhaps the first time that Palestinian NGOs working in the Arab region met explicitly to evaluate the status quo of the Palestinian refugee question and to discuss a platform for coordinated action.
NGOs Joining the Refugee Initiative in the West Bank -
Written by Badil-AICA Startup Program for a Community Based, Independent Campaign in Defense of Refugee Rights
Local mobilization for a strong and independent refugee lobby in Palestine:
- a survey of refugee attitudes and demands conducted by the Union of Youth Centers in cooperation with experts;
- a series of local conferences and workshops to mobilize for a national refugee conference in Palestine organized by the elected preparatory committees;
“The Right of Return is the Red Line that Must Not Be Crossed!”
Written by Badil-AIC“The Right of Return is the Red Line that Must Not Be Crossed!”
The Union of Youth Centers (UYC), operating under the umbrella of UNRWA in 16 West Bank refugee camps since 1992, was the first to take the initiative towards building an independent and authentic refugee campaign to defend refugee rights in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories. Refugee, activists of the UYC, who in the past worked exclusively to improve social and cultural services in the camps, were the main organizers of the first refugee conference held on the premises of the former Israeli prison al Far’ah on December 12, 1995.
Réfugiés palestiniens et les déplacés internes (IDP)
Centre d’éducation sur la Nakba en Cours
Mobilisation et Intervention
