Residency Rights & Confiscation of ID Cards

Israeli demographic strategies vis-`a-vis Palestinian Jerusalemites - such as restrictive residency and housing policies –aim at both separating them from the Palestinians in the West Bank and driving them out of the city in order to secure a long-term Jewish majority. Until this day, any Palestinian who is not classified by the Israeli government as a permanent resident of East Jerusalem –incl. spouses, children and other relatives of East Jerusalem permanent residents – must apply for family reunification to reside legally there. The decision to grant or deny these applications is according to Israel Law, ultimately at the discretion of the interior Minister, who is not required to justify refusal.

Israel applies a number of discriminatory methods to control the number of Palestinians who legally reside in the city. The confiscation of ID cards under bureaucratic pretexts is one of these. Instrumental in this are the 1952 Law of Entry to Israel and the 1974 Entry to Israel Regulation, both of which regulate residence in Israel. The following restrictive provisions do not apply to Jewish permanent residents or Israeli citizens but only to Palestinian Jerusalemites. Those who:

• Wish to travel abroad must obtain an Israeli re-entry visa; otherwise, they lose their right of return.
• Hold or apply for residency/citizenship elsewhere lose their residency right in Jerusalem; this policy relates to a ‘regulation’ the Israeli government introduced in 1994, according to which Palestinian Jerusalemites must prove that their ‘center of life’ is within the municipal boundaries.
• Live abroad for more than seven year lose their residency rights; in 19966, the Israeli government decided that any Jerusalemites who lives in the ‘territory’ (West Bank) more than seven years, would also crease to be an Israeli resident (of those 788 ID cards confiscated in 1998, for example, 618 were revoked because the holder had moved abroad; and 170 because he had moved to the WBGS).
• Marry non-resident spouses (from the WBGS or abroad) must apply for family reunification in order to live legally with their spouses in Jerusalem. Most of these applications are turned down, with no need to justify (in 1994, for example, 109 out of 136 were rejected). Female applicants were rejected until 1994 on the grounds that an Arab woman should live with her husband’s family.
• Want to register their children as Jerusalem residents can do so only if the father holds a valid Jerusalem ID card; as a consequence, there are countless cases of ‘unregistered’ children of couples living ‘illegally’ in Jerusalem – who are denied access to the city’s educational and health services- and of Jerusalemite women who were forced to leave the city.

Due to a fear of having their ID cards revoked, Palestinian Jerusalemites avoid approaching the Ministry of Interior, except in real emergency situations. Whether the recent (18 Oct. 1999) announcement of Israeli Interior Min. Natan Sharansky that Israel would be ending its policy of revoking identity cards of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem really marks a change in this policy remains to be seen.

The Israeli policy of ‘quiet deportation’ in East Jerusalem – through court judgments, legal and administrative tactics- resulted in the revocation of 5890 ID cards from Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem since 1967; this number dose not include the dependent children of those who lost their ID cards.

Source: Palestinian Academic Society for the Studies of International Affairs. (PASSIA )