Residency Rights: Additional Problems

The main address for people who wish to apply for travel abroad or for family reunification is the Interior Ministry. There is only one Interior Ministry office in East Jerusalem, and on a given day lines of waiting people stretch down the street outside. It should be remembered that, in addition to the many hardships that Palestinian families face due to the occupation, bureaucratic ordeals add to the frustration. Applicants are forced to wait in long lines, deal with rude clerks, and to return time and time again with requested, and often unnecessary documentation.

For the procedures, applicants must present a series of documents such as ID cards, birth certificates, passports, and marriage contracts. Sometimes residents are not in possession of these documents, often due to inherent problems of living under occupation, so they must acquire them, which is costly. Furthermore, every application costs what is a prohibitive sum to most families. A family reunification application costs almost 100 dollars, non-refundable if the application is refused. Often, people apply several times for family reunification, and are denied each time. Applicants must wait months, sometimes years, for official responses. Sometimes no official response is ever received.

Ethnic Cleansing Continues in Jerusalem

Israeli efforts to maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem by discriminatory administrative and developmental policies, which force Palestinians out of the city, continued unabated in the second quarter of 1999. These policies include land confiscations, settlement construction, ID card confiscation, home demolition, unequal neighborhood investment, closures etc. Between April and June 1999 at least five Palestinian homes valued over US$ 250,000 were demolished. Settlement construction in key areas in and around Jerusalem, such as Ras al-Amud, Jabel Abu Ghneim, and Ma'aleh Adumim continues to reduce the area available for the natural development of Palestinian neighborhoods while threatening to completely separate Jerusalem from the West Bank.

Since December 1995, the Ministry of the Interior (the Ministry) in East Jerusalem has acted to realize the overall policy of Israel and reduce the number of Palestinians living in the city. As part of this policy, the Ministry employs several measures:

1. Revocation of residency status of East Jerusalem residents who have lived outside of the city for several years. This action is totally contrary to the policy the Ministry implemented for twenty-eight years. As a result, thousands of residents of the East Jerusalem have been required to leave their homes.
2. Revocation of residency is accomplished without giving the resident a meaningful opportunity to appeal the decision. The Ministry grants only a formal right to be heard.
3. Repeated demands to prove to the Ministry clerk in East Jerusalem that the applicant lives in East Jerusalem. The standard of proof required is extremely high, and even persons who have lived their entire life in Jerusalem have difficulty meeting it. The Ministry requires proof even where the resident had submitted proof to the Ministry a short time earlier concerning another request.
4. The refusal to register in the Population Registry children born to residents and to issue identification numbers, even where the Ministry had already recognized that the family lives in Jerusalem.
5. The sweeping refusal to approve requests for family unification. As a result, the Palestinian population in the city is unable to increase beyond the rate of natural growth. The only way currently available to obtain approval of a request for family unification is by petitioning the High Court of Justice.

This policy contravenes a long list of provisions of international law with which Israel undertook to comply. These provisions include the right of persons to exit and return to their country, and the prohibition on arbitrarily revoking the right of movement.

The National Insurance Institute

The NII's implementation of governmental policy in East Jerusalem seriously prejudices the residents and denies them basic rights, among them health insurance. In this way, the NII became an integral part of the "quiet deportation" policy the Ministry implements in East Jerusalem and assists the Ministry in effectuating this policy.

Several major problems characterize the NII's activity in East Jerusalem:

1. The NII is predisposed to suspect that every resident of East Jerusalem applying for an allotment does not actually reside in the city, and is, therefore, not entitled to allotments or health insurance. As a result, in order to determine where the claimant lives, the NII investigates the vast majority of claims submitted by East Jerusalem residents. The claimant does not receive the requested allotment or health insurance until the NII completes its investigation, which takes many months. The NII employs this procedure even though the data indicates that a high percentage of the claims are approved after completion of the investigation and the claimant's right to the entitlement is recognized retroactively.
2. The NII does not conduct the investigations in accordance with proper administration, making only a superficial investigation, and totally disregarding the complexity inherent in the definition of the "center of life" of an individual.
3. The NII also investigates cases where an individual applies for health insurance, even though the law does not authorize it to do so. As a result, thousands of children in East Jerusalem are currently not covered by health insurance.

The manner in which the NII operates in East Jerusalem grossly violates rights secured under international conventions with which Israel undertook to comply. Among these rights are the right to social security and the right to health.

Health Insurance

The Israeli State Health Insurance Law, which took effect on 1 January 1995, changed the method of providing health services in Israel and established that the NII would be responsible for collecting payments for these services. The objective of the law was to provide health insurance to every Israeli resident and to prevent the situation in which a resident of Israel would not be able, for financial reasons, to obtain medical care. The Law also provided, therefore, an explicit provision stipulating that medical treatment is not to be conditioned on the payment of sums owed.

The manner in which the NII performs the functions imposed on under the law is problematic and violates, in part, the Law and its purpose. As a result, many residents do not have State Health Insurance and are dependent on private medical services, whose cost far exceeds the economic means of many residents of East Jerusalem. The main group of persons harmed by this policy is the children of residents of East Jerusalem whom the Ministry did not give identity numbers and the non-resident spouses of East Jerusalem residents.

Physicians for Human Rights estimates that there are some ten thousand Palestinian children in East Jerusalem who are not covered by health insurance.

Conclusion

The Ministry of the Interior and the National Insurance Institute have served an identical objective of Israeli governments since the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967: reducing the number of Palestinians residing in the city and preserving a conclusive Jewish majority, so that it will be impossible to question Israel's sovereignty over all parts of the city. The activities described in this report join a long list of actions taken by the authorities to achieve this objective, among them restrictions on building in East Jerusalem, insufficient allocation of resources to the eastern part of the city, and the poor quality of municipal services provided there.

The consequences of the manner in which the Ministry and the NII act severely harm residents of East Jerusalem. In one day, these residents are liable to lose their basic rights without forewarning. The Ministry's policy is based on the assumption that residents of East Jerusalem are immigrants in their homes, who live in their city as a result of the benevolence of the State of Israel. The NII acts to achieve the same objective: to have residents of East Jerusalem leave the city. In this way, the NII has changed from an entity intended to advance social policy and ensure individuals are covered with health insurance to an entity serving an illegitimate political goal.

The policies of the Ministry and the NII discriminate blatantly between Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and Jews. All Jews, even those who are not Israeli citizens, are entitled to move to the Jewis settlements in the Occupied Territories, without the move affecting their status. They continue to receive allotments and health insurance through the NII, and may, at any time, return to live in Israel. On the other hand, residents of East Jerusalem immediately lose their status as Israeli residents and all their social rights when they move to the Occupied Territories.

see also B'TSELEM, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, who conducted a research on the Quiet Deportation of Palestinians from Jerusalem.