Center for the Defence of the Individual - Israel continues to abstract Palestinians from the OPT population registry: a human error or a policy?
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
14.08.2011

Israel continues to abstract Palestinians from the OPT population registry: a human error or a policy?

On October 11, 2010, a Palestinian living in Jordan arrived at the Allenby Bridge border crossing to enter his country. The Israeli soldiers on duty refused to allow him to enter the West Bank, telling him, to his surprise, that his name "does not appear in the Palestinian population registry" as a resident of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

He was surprised, knowing that in already 1980, at the age of one, his mother, a Hebron resident, registered him in the OPT population registry and he was issued an identity number. Later on, he entered the West Bank several times with official military documents bearing his identity number.

In April 2011, HaMoked applied to the complaints officer at the civil administration regarding the removal of the man's details from the population registry, demanding to reinstate his registration as an OPT resident. The civil administration replied that the man was indeed not listed in the population registry and claimed "this may be a case of human error or a technical failure".

After bureaucratic procedures, the man entered the West Bank, and was listed in the OPT population registry under the identity number he had from childhood – and received an identity card.

HaMoked – handling many such cases throughout the years – once again hopes this is a case of "human error" and not a deliberate action – as part of a general Israeli policy – to abstract Palestinians from the OPT population registry.

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