Center for the Defence of the Individual - New report by HaMoked: Temporary Order? Life in East Jerusalem under the Shadow of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
08.12.2014

New report by HaMoked: Temporary Order? Life in East Jerusalem under the Shadow of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law

For more than a decade, Israel’s law books have been marred by a particularly racist law – the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) 5763-2003. This Law restricts – and in many cases entirely denies – family unification of Israeli citizens and residents with Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Law also denies many children who have one parent who is a permanent Israeli resident and another who is an OPT resident the possibility of receiving status in Israel.

As a result, many couples are forced to separate; in other cases, the spouses from the OPT live in Israel with nothing but periodic stay permits, without social security rights or certainty as to their future. Additionally, in June 2008, the government decreed that Gaza residents would no longer be allowed under any circumstances to live with their Israeli spouses in Israel.

The Law was passed as a provisional, “temporary” order, but it has since been extended 15 times (!) with no end in sight. The arrangement that was meant to be temporary has long since become a permanent arrangement that is just another aspect of Israel’s long-pursued racist policy aimed at ensuring a Jewish majority in the country, especially in Jerusalem.

The report illustrates the Law's dire consequences for the lives of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, their spouses from the OPT and their shared children, focusing on the daily bureaucratic burden imposed on these families by the Israeli authorities.


Executive summary

Full report