BADIL

“The Minister of Interior, Mr. Eliyahu Suissa, requested that I confirm receipt of your letter of December 16, 1996 and advise you that the Ministry does not revoke residency of permanent residents in general and of East Jerusalem in particular.

Your petition may relate to persons who left Israel and lived elsewhere for seven years or took citizenship of another country. Under these circumstances there is no revocation of residency but rather expiration.

This according to the Law of Entry Into Israel and the regulations pursuant to this law as well as the rulings of the supreme Court of Israel. These rules have been in effect for many years and there have been no recent changes.”

Sincerely,
Tova Elinson (signed)
Spokesperson, Ministry of the Interior
Date: 5-2-1997
 

On 11 December 1996, MK ‘Azmi Bishara (National Democratic Alliance), submitted the following parliamentary questions (# 434) to the Minister of Interior, Eli Suissa:

“Recently, Israeli identity cards and with them the residency rights in the city were taken from many inhabitants of East Jerusalem. I would like to ask:

As in the case of the new Israeli settlement on Abu Ghneim Mountain, the Israeli government is stubbornly ignoring local and international protests in regard to another blatant violation of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, i.e. the confiscation of ID cards from Palestinian residents of the city. The first three months of 1997 were, in fact, characterized not only by Israeli disregard of the growing international criticism, but by the introduction of even more drastic measures against Palestinian residency rights in the city.

Among the new measures is a standard letter addressed to a large number of Jerusalemites living in West Bank communities outside the city, sent via registered mail by the Interior Ministry to inform them that their “permanent residency permit in Israel has expired”; and search-visits to Palestinian homes conducted by investigators of the Israeli National Insurance Institute. Both measures indicate that the Israeli authorities are proceeding from a “passive role”, in which ID cards would be revoked from Palestinian residents who personally approached the Ministry with a specific request (e.g. travel document, family reunification), towards a more active role, in which the Ministry actually initiates ID card confiscations based on its own records and assumptions.
By March 1997, the Interior Ministry was confiscating two or three ID cards per day (see official figures, below), and the future ahead promises worse. The Ministry’s policy of ID card confiscations - unless stopped in time - may develop to unprecedented proportions in the second half of 1997. Then the Ministry will begin to replace all current ID cards in Israel with new versions of magnetic, computerized ID cards. At that point, every Palestinian Jerusalemite will be forced to approach the Population Registry in order to submit his/her application for a new identity card - a unique opportunity for a full-fledged and comprehensive revision of personal files ...

In the meantime, the Interior Ministry continues denying any policy change and claiming that ID card confiscations are “usual and correct bureaucratic procedure.” However, Israeli politicians - questioned for the first time in a major Israeli TV-news program - have taken a much clearer stand. Uri Savir, legal advisor to the prime minister in the former Labor government and architect of the Oslo Accords, agrees with Ehud Olmert, Jerusalem mayor/Likud in that the revocation of Palestinian residency rights in Jerusalem is part and parcel of the Oslo process. Both the Labor and the Likud government have taken concrete measures aimed at establishing the unilaterally defined borders of Israeli sovereignty; and “the division of Palestinian Jerusalemites between those who will be permitted to live in Israel - controlled Jerusalem and those who will not, is a logical consequence of establishing the necessary borders between the Israeli State and the Palestinian entity.” (Uri Savir and Ehud Olmert in Israeli TV-Channel 1, 30-3-1997).

Revocation of Residency via Registered Mail

The following letter is currently being sent to hundreds of Palestinian Jerusalemites who - due to the lack of adequate housing and the denial of family reunification - were forced to live in West Bank communities outside the Israel-defined municipal borders of occupied and annexed East Jerusalem:
 

Date: 
To: [name of East Jerusalem permanent resident] 
       [his/her address in Jerusalem] 

Dear Sir/Mdme, 

re: [name of the above person] ID number __________ 

Expiration of permanent residency permit
We hereby inform you that your permanent residency permit has expired according to the Law of Entry to Israel 1952 and the Entry to Israel Regulations 1974,

due to the fact that you transferred the center of your life outside of Israel.

Moreover, also the residency permit of the following family members has expired:

___________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________

Based on the above, you are requested to return your ID card and your travel document to the office of the population registry in Jerusalem and to leave Israel.

Yours sincerely,
Aharon Louzon [signed]
Director
 

As of now, the Ministry insists that, “We are not spying on East Jerusalem residents, and there are no systematic checks, by means of computers, on who fulfills the criteria and who not ... However, when a person approaches the Population Registry with a request, such as an application for a new ID card, the registration of a newborn child, family reunification, etc., we check if this person really lives in the city” (Malka San/office of the Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Interior to Ha’aretz, 17-3-1997).
However, the Interior Ministry’s spokeswoman admitted that once it is discovered that the residency permit of a Palestinian applicant for one of the Ministry’s services has “expired”, the Ministry now also looks into the legal situation of the rest of his/her family. Once the resident status of a person is doubted by the Ministry, it is upon him/her to refute these doubts. “If you live in the country, you don’t have a problem proving it - you are paying municipal tax, your children are registered in a Jerusalem school, you are entitled to National Insurance, etc. Therefore it seems reasonable to us to raise this demand”, says the Ministry’s spokeswoman (Ha’aretz, 17-3-1997).

Information about recipients of this letter gathered in the framework of legal aid services suggests that the Interior Ministry does not thoroughly check personal records prior to mailing, but sends this letter to everybody who will - according to the Ministry’s assumption - later on have difficulty proving “center of life’ in the city. Thus this letter was received by Palestinian Jerusalemites who had lived abroad in the past, but returned to Jerusalem as many as five years ago, and by persons who never left the city by themselves, but have close relatives living abroad or in the West Bank, outside the city boundaries.

Night-time Raids by National Insurance Investigators

Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem and human rights organizations report that investigators of the National Insurance Institute (NII), accompanied by Israeli Border Police, have been raiding private Palestinian homes in the middle of the night. Such raids were reported from residents of al Ram, located on the northern boundaries of the city, but also from residents living in neighborhoods within the city boundaries (St. Yves Resource and Legal Aid Center, 24-2-1997). NII investigators, hired to determine whether a Palestinian family actually lives in Jerusalem and is thus entitled to state welfare services, function also as major informants to the Interior Ministry. NII investigators, in fact, criticize that the Ministry is slow to take action based on NII field information, and claim that many Palestinian families are issued ID cards, despite NII reports documenting that they live outside the city boundaries (Israeli TV/Channel 1, 30-3-1997).

Case: Faten Ya’qoub Abu Khdeir
Faten is a 24 year old Jerusalemite, born and raised in Jerusalem, living in Shu’fat/Jerusalem with her mother and sisters, and currently working with an international NGO in the city. She has never left the country. In December 1996, she applied for an exit permit at the Interior Ministry in order to travel to Jordan to visit relatives there. At the Ministry, her ID card was confiscated and she was told that she would only receive it back, if she could bring documents proving that she has been living in the city since birth. This, the clerk explained, was necessary because Faten’s father has been living in the United States for more than 15 years and is no longer a permanent resident of Israel. By the end of March 1997, Faten - still without her identity card - had collected all the required documents in order to approach the Ministry another time.

Case: A 17 Year Old Youth, Living and Studying in Jerusalem, Cannot Prove “Center of Life” in the City
Abdel-Hamid Samra is 17 years old and carries a Jerusalem ID card. He lives with his father, a Jerusalem resident, in Kufr Aqab, the northern edge of Jerusalem (outside the al Ram checkpoint, but within the municipal boundaries of the city); since September 1996, he has been studying at Ort College in East Jerusalem/Sheikh Jarrah.
The family had lived in Amman for several years. Abdel Hamid’s father returned to Jerusalem two years ago and has since been working with an Israeli company in Nazareth. His mother and the rest of the family remained in Jordan.
In November 1996, while crossing the al Ram checkpoint into Jerusalem, Abdel Hamid was asked by a soldier to show his ID card. The soldier tore the plastic cover and told him to have his ID renewed at the Interior Ministry. He went to apply for the renewal of his ID on 3 November 1996. He had to hand in his old ID, was given a receipt, and asked to come back after two weeks. Two weeks later, he was told to come back on 12 December 1996. When he went to the Interior Ministry the second time in order to receive his new ID card, he was asked to prove that he lived in Jerusalem by presenting his Arnona (municipal tax) receipts issued on his father’s name and his school certificates. Abdel Hamid cannot present the requested Arnona receipts, because he and his father are living in the home of his grandfather, which is registered on the name of the father’s sister.