Israeli Government to Vote on Extension of the Law Banning Family Unification
On Sunday 18 July 2004, the Israeli government will vote on a one-year extension of the “Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) – 2003,” which prohibits the granting of any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who are married to Israeli citizens, thereby banning family unification. The law was enacted by the Knesset, as a temporary order for one year on 31 July 2003, and affects thousands of families, comprised of tens of thousands of individuals.
There are seven petitions currently pending before the Supreme Court against the law. The petitions were filed by Adalah, in its own name and on behalf of two families, the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel, and Arab MKs; the Meretz political party; the Association for Civil Rights in Israel; and by private lawyers on behalf of individual families against the Minister of Interior and the Attorney General. The Supreme Court has joined these petitions for hearings and decision.
Adalah's main argument against the new law, as set forth in the petition filed on 4 August 2003, is that it violates the constitutionally-protected rights to equality, personal liberty to maintain a family life, privacy, and dignity. The law limits the ability of Israeli citizens, namely Arab citizens of Israel – the overwhelming majority of the citizens who marry Palestinians from the Occupied Territories – to exercise these rights based solely on the ethnicity of their spouses. Further, the law is discriminatory as it applies only to Palestinians; family unification and naturalization remain available to all other foreign spouses of Israeli citizens. Thus, the law does not merely discriminate on the basis of nationality or ethnicity; it is blatantly racist. As for the security claims put forward by the government to justify the new law, Adalah emphasized that the data provided to support these sweeping claims is insufficient, inconsistent, and even if reliable, completely disproportionate.
A three-judge panel of the Supreme Court held a hearing on the petitions in 11/03. A second hearing on the petitions was held in 1/04, challenging the constitutionality of the law before an enlarged panel of 13 justices. The state has claimed that that the ban on family unification was necessary and directed against all Palestinians, as they all support the resistance against Israel, and thus are all potential terrorists. Adalah has stated that the law and the Attorney General's position that three million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza all constitute a danger to the state is racist and indefensible, as asserting that all Palestinians are potential terrorists, defames and vilifies the entire Palestinian nation. The Court has issued an order nisi and injunctions preventing the deportation of three Palestinian spouses married to Arab citizens of Israel, until a final judgment is delivered. The Court rejected the petitioners' request for an injunction to freeze the implementation of the law while the case is pending.
On 14 July 2004, Adalah Attorney Orna Kohn sent a letter to all Israeli cabinet members, calling on them to object to the extension of the law, on the grounds that it is severely unconstitutional. The letter further contends that since the enactment of the law, thousands of families have been gravely affected by it. “Extending the law will further exacerbate the infringement upon the[ir] basic constitutional rights for the mere fact that the longer the infringement goes on, the harsher the damage inflicted, since forced separation between a parent and child, man and wife, becomes harder to bear the longer it continues,” Adalah argued in the letter.
UN committees, Israeli and international human rights organizations and legal academics have all called on Israel to revoke the ban on family unification.
For more information, see Adalah's Special Report on Family Unification.
