Article 74 July 1996, Issue No.16
July 1996, Issue No.16 (11)
Residency, Demography and Zionism
I was recently interviewed by a journalist from abroad about the likely policies of the new government in Israel. Among other topics, I mentioned the issues of East Jerusalem, land confiscation and Palestinian residency rights in the city. “So, do you expect the new government to make any changes in residency policies concerning Palestinians?” asked the journalist. I hesitated for a few seconds, and then answered: “No change whatsoever, for the residency issue is one of the main elements in the political consensus shared by all Zionist governments, whether led by Likud, Labor or even Meretz.”
Zionist residency policy is based on the concept of “demographic danger,” i.e. the constant fear that despite mass expulsions, deportations and transfer, the Palestinians will again become a majority in Palestine, or at least a substantial minority in the Jewish state. Zionism is the project of building a Jewish state in Palestine, not a bi-national state; not a society where a colonialist minority exploits the indigenous population, but, as much as possible, a society based on ethnic homogeneity. Thus, ethnic cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy.
As a derivative of this basic policy, a mass of laws and regulations aimed at reducing the number of “foreign residents,” not only inside the limits of the Jewish state, but in every territory under its control, for they might in the future become part of the State of Israel. Even the most liberal Zionists necessarily support the Israeli Law of Return, which applies to every Jew in the world, while rejecting the Palestinian right of return. Israel’s blatant failure to honor that provision of the Declaration of Principles (Oslo I) which explicitly recognizes the right of 1967 “displaced” Palestinians to come back is another expression of this policy, as are all the laws and regulations hindering Palestinian family reunification.
The latest decision to step up ID card confiscations in cases where the holders allegedly have a “center of life” outside Jerusalem was taken by the previous Labor-Meretz government, not by the Likud. The decision represents the Zionist consensus concerning Palestinian residency in Israel and in territories under Israeli control - for according to Zionism, Palestine belongs to the Jewish people, whereas the Palestinians are “foreigners” in their own homeland. All the Zionist laws, regulations and policies with regard to residency are designed to make these axioms clear to everyone. [Michael Warshawski, Director, AIC]
The Refugees Under the Likud
Of the major three themes that confront the Palestinians in the final status negotiations, the fate of the refugees is the least likely to be effected by the Likud victory. The other two fundamental issues - Jerusalem and settlements - continue to be matters of some dispute between Labor and Likud, although there is a broad consensus between the two main political blocs in Israel here as well. The divergences that do exist emanate from the seeming willingness of both Peres and the late Prime Minister Rabin to consider the possibility of statehood for the Palestinians and Netanyahu’s refusal to concede sovereignty.
However, on the issue of refugees, there seems to be a consensus among both Likud and Labor to reject any substantive concessions towards the Palestinians. One would have thought that Labor would have made a distinction between refugees of 1948 and displaced persons of 1967 since the later would return only to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the course of the negotiations showed that Labor was as inflexible on the issue of displaced persons as they were on refugees. Israeli political strategists, such as Shlomo Gazit, would distinguish between restoring rights of refugees in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 from claims made on properties inside the green line. But many Israeli strategists are afraid that if Israel begins to admit refugees to the PNA areas (i.e. to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), it would open the door to a deluge of historic claims and rights. The Israeli political establishment, in both its Likud and Labor wings, is still reluctant to open this ”pandora’s box,” which touches upon the issue of the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state, which the successive peace agreements do not seem to have resolved ...
I would suggest that in the coming period the issue of refugees will be further marginalized and neglected by the Israeli negotiators until it becomes an explosive and destabilizing issue in the relations between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between the PNA and the Palestinian diaspora. I hope I will be proven wrong.
[Salim Tamari director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, delegate to the Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs; these are excerpts from the postscript to his essay, “The Future of Refugees in the Final Status Negotiations”, published by IPS/Beirut-Washington, forthcoming.]
Palestinian refugees in the Bethlehem District have taken additional steps towards the realization of the independent refugee campaign outlined at the December 1995 al Far’ah conference [see ARTICLE 74/15]. Between July 4 - 14, the Preparatory Refugee Committee is conducting a series of six public workshops with local experts invited to present their views on central issues pertaining to the current debate, i.e. the economic situation of refugees, legal aspects of the refugee question, implications of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements, evaluation of services in refugee camps, the future of UNRWA and strategies for refugee organizing. These workshops will result in recommendations to be discussed by a broad public of refugees at the First Bethlehem Refugee Conference scheduled for summer 1996.
Negotiations Update - The political negotiations in all the forums pertaining to Palestinian refugee rights have remained almost completely paralyzed since March 1996.
Written by Badil-AICThe seventh meeting of the Quadripartite Committee on the 1967 Displaced Persons, scheduled to be held in Bethlehem on March 20, 1996,0 and then canceled by Israel in response to the Hamas bus bombings, has not convened until now; no progress has been made on this level since the sixth meeting held in Cairo in February 1996.
- The Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs has failed so far to renew a regular work schedule - thus continuing the sluggish pace which characterized its work in 1995, when the Working Group met only once. In 1996, the Steering Committee met in Rome to discuss future prospects and one meeting on the technical level was held in Oslo on the issue of data on June 12-13. Neither meeting dealt with substantive issues; it seems that the Multilateral Working Group will remain unable to function and that only a serious move in the final status negotiations on the refugee question could bring about new momentum on this level. [Source: Salim Tamari, Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs]
Do Unregistered Palestinian Children in Jerusalem Enjoy the Right to Life?
Written by Badil-AICThe Israeli Ministry of the Interior has many tools at its disposal to implement the policy of reducing the number of Palestinian residents in Jerusalem. It is not only the case that Palestinian Jerusalemites are liable to lose their residency rights if they travel abroad or have a second home in another part of the West Bank - there are in fact numerous Palestinian Jerusalemites whose residency rights have never been recognized. Since 1982, hospitals in Jerusalem have been under instructions from the Interior Ministry to register data concerning Palestinian children born to non-Jerusalem resident fathers without identification number, even if the child’s mother is an East Jerusalem resident. Such an identification number, which used to be automatically given to children of Jerusalem resident mothers, facilitates registration of the child as a Jerusalem resident. Without it, registration of such children becomes a long, cumberstone process.
Thus, since 1982, a whole set of children, born and raised and living in Jerusalem, has grown up, who are not officially Jerusalem residents. When the first of these children reaches the age of 16, they will have to apply for personal Identity Cards and will probably be unceremoniously expelled from Jerusalem by the Israeli authorities and forced to take up residence in other parts of the West Bank. However, their problems begin long before the fateful moment. Is an unregistered child entitled to go to a state school in Jerusalem? Yes, the Israeli authorities were forced to admit in 1994, after the issue was brought to their attention by local human rights organizations.
Another, even more poignant issue is the right of the unregistered children to medical treatment, which would seem an even more basic right than that to an education. The Association of Israeli and Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights (AIPPHR) has recently become concerned about a number of cases which have come to its attention of such unregistered children being denied free medical treatment in Jerusalem hospitals because they lack the medical insurance automatically provided under law to all Jerusalem residents. The coalition of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations which works around residency rights issues has decided, thanks to the initiative of the AIPPHR to raise the right to medical treatment of unregistered children in all appropriate forums, including the Israeli High Court, if need be.
Last November, the application of the Al Ghoul family, which seeks family reunification in Jerusalem, was formally denied by the Israeli authorities on the grounds of “security”. In May of this year, Attorney Lea Tsemel filed a petition with the Israeli High Court requesting the court to instruct the Ministry of the Interior to explain why Mrs. Al Ghoul should not be granted permanent resident status in Jerusalem immediately.
Amin Al Ghoul is a Jerusalem resident. His wife, Majda, who lives with him in a small apartment in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras Al-Amud is officially registered as a resident of Bethlehem. They have four children. Amin was held in administrative detention in 1989 by the Israeli authorities because of his political activities.
When the couple married, they immediately applied for family reunification. After they submitted their second application in 1991, Mr. Al Ghoul was visited by an agent of the Shabak (the General Security Services), who promised that the application would be approved ... if he agreed to become a collaborator and informer for the Israeli security services. He refused ... and so was the application for family reunification for his wife. The case is particularly distressing, because one of the Al Ghoul’s sons, Ma’en, suffers from a kidney failure. As Majda is not a “legal” resident of Jerusalem, she often experiences difficulties taking her son to the West Jerusalem hospital where he is being treated. Because of the urgent nature of this case, the Al Ghoul family has been “adopted” by the Family Reunification Project of the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago, which has started a public campaign around the issue.
Attorney Tsemel states in the petition that the refusal of the Interior Ministry to grant the application was not based on an independent exercise of discretion, according to the pertinent criteria, but was due to arbitrary, irrelevant and political criteria, under the influence of the Shabak. The Israeli authorities themselves have stated that a “security check” only applies to the one seeking permanent resident status, not to the resident spouse. Unfortunately, this case is not an isolated instance of the arbitrary use of “security” claims to deny family reunification. ARTICLE 74 will keep its readers informed of the disposition of the case before the High Court.
Data on Applications for Family Reunification in Jerusalem
Written by Badil-AICThe following data was provided by the Ministry, in partial response to the petitioner’s demands:
The number of applications submitted by residents of East Jerusalem since 1967 -
The only information refers to the years 1991-1995 and that is partial. The information refers to applicants (on behalf of relatives) who are either permanent residents or Palestinian citizens, without distinguishing between these two categories:
- The total number of family reunification applications submitted in East Jerusalem (including spouses and other relatives) for special humanitarian reasons:
1991: 1054 applications
1992: 1020
1993: 1690
1994: 3470
1995: 2676
- The total number of family reunification applications submitted by permanent residents and citizens living in East Jerusalem for spouses:
1993: 650
1994: 2550
1995: 1800
it should be noted that in March 1994, the then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, decided on a new policy according to which permanent residency status (family reunification) would be granted to spouses of East Jerusalem residents without regard to the previously existing distinctions according to which applications were granted only when it was the husband applying on behalf of his wife, or when it was the wife applying on behalf of her husband and she was a citizen and not merely a permanent resident. After this decision, there was a sharp rise in the number of applications on behalf of spouses as well as in the number of acceptances.
The number of applications in East Jerusalem that were accepted (out of the total accumulation of applications since 1967 - not out the applications submitted in the given year):
1993: 417 wives and 36 husbands;
1994: 95 wives and 250 husbands;
1995: 197 wives and 775 husbands;
Other relatives who were granted permanent resident status for exceptional humanitarian reasons are not included in the above count.
No data concerning the number of applications that were rejected was provided by the Interior Ministry.
Israeli Interior Ministry Continues to “Stonewall” on Crucial Question of Lost Jerusalem Residency Rights
Written by Badil-AICLast year, after extensive correspondence between the Alternative Information Center and the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, in which the former attempted to obtain official data concerning the number of Palestinian Jerusalemites who have been deprived of their residency rights - and after the repeated refusals of the Interior Ministry to divulge the information, the AIC filed a petition in the High Court asking the court to order the Ministry to make the information public. The right of the public to obtain information on the activities of governmental bodies has been recognized by courts in Israel on numerous occasions. The AIC was joined by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and by Yishai Menuhin (on behalf of the Coalition for Freedom of Information) as co-petitioners. The petition also asked for disclosure for information on other issues, such as the number of family reunification applications granted in Jerusalem.
A Portrait of the New Israeli Minister of the Interior:
Written by Badil-AICDemolition of Palestinian Homes is His Baby
With the change of government in Israel, those in the international and local human rights community dealing with Palestinian residency rights issues must get used to a new set of faces on the Israeli side.
The Ministry of the Interior, as that branch of government responsible for maintaining population registries in Israel and for approving or denying applications for family reunification has tremendous influence over residency and demographic policies, both on a long-term and day-to-day basis. The Ministry of the Interior is also closely connected to the town planning process in Israel, another administrative function which has a crucial impact on demographic trends.
Salah and Fatima A. are both residents of East Jerusalem and hold Jerusalem ID cards. Salah could not find work in his hometown, but obtained employment as an engineering counselor in Amman. Thus the couple traveled to Jordan. Two of their three small children are registered as Jerusalem residents in Salah’s ID card. The family kept close ties with their relatives in Jerusalem and visited frequently together with the children. They were careful to always to renew their Israeli exit permits so as not to forfeit their resident status in the city.
On 13 June 1996, the whole family arrived to Jerusalem in order to again live here permanently. At the Jordan bridge crossing, Salah was told that he must go to the Interior Ministry in order to register his youngest son who was born in Amman. At the Interior Ministry, his ID card was taken from him and he was handed a note addressed to the Israeli border police at the Jordan bridge reading, “... the above mentioned have ceased to be residents. Please facilitate their departure.” The family had never been offered an opportunity to present their case or to submit objections.
Confronted with the growing number of ID card confiscations the local human rights organizations have launched an emergency campaign in defense of the residency rights of Palestinian Jerusalemites: briefings of Israeli parliamentarians, foreign embassies and consulates, meetings with the Jordanian and Egyptian ambassador to Israel and public protest activities locally and internationally may tie the hands of the Interior Ministry clerks who daily reach out to grab another ID card, thereby making another Palestinian Jerusalemite and his family homeless.
Please address all forms of protest to:
Eli Suissa, Minister of the Interior, Kiryat Hamemshala, Jerusalem;
Fax: 02-666 368
Réfugiés palestiniens et les déplacés internes (IDP)
Centre d’éducation sur la Nakba en Cours
Mobilisation et Intervention
