Center for the Defence of the Individual - HaMoked to HCJ: Instruct the Ministry of Interior to grant status to a West Bank woman whose husband married a second wife, and confine yearly re-examination of the family unification procedure to security issues alone, as security is the basis for the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law
العربية HE wheel chair icon
חזרה לעמוד הקודם
06.01.2015

HaMoked to HCJ: Instruct the Ministry of Interior to grant status to a West Bank woman whose husband married a second wife, and confine yearly re-examination of the family unification procedure to security issues alone, as security is the basis for the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law

In 1997 a man from East Jerusalem married a West Bank resident. A year later, their application for family unification was approved. Under the family unification procedure in effect at the time, the wife should have received permanent status five years after that, in 2003, but the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law was passed that year and the wife could not obtain status. Over the years the couple had four children, all of whom are Israeli permanent residents.

In 2005, the man married a second wife. The first wife was naturally powerless to stop this. After his second marriage, the husband stopped the family unification process with his first wife, as the Ministry of Interior does not approve family unification applications when the applicant has more than one spouse. After the second wedding, the first wife left the family home and the husband moved with the children and his new wife to a different house. When the first wife found out that her children were mistreated by the second wife, and after her husband threated that he would have her custody of the children taken away, she moved back in with her husband for a while, during which she became pregnant and had a fifth child. The husband renewed the family unification procedure with her. The Ministry of Interior rejected the application.

On March 5, 2013, HaMoked filed an application to the humanitarian committee, asking it to grant status to the first wife, who, in the meantime, had been abandoned by her husband and was raising their five children on her own, without financial assistance. HaMoked asked the committee to grant the wife status on a humanitarian basis, explaining that she and her children had serious financial difficulties and that they had no support in the West Bank.

On December 2, 2014, the humanitarian committee rejected the application, again because the husband had a second wife. The committee’s session transcripts indicate that the members thought the woman’s story was “an ordinary family unification application, which, does not, in itself, constitute humanitarian grounds”.

On January 1, 2015, HaMoked petitioned the HCJ to instruct the Ministry of Interior to grant the woman status in Israel. HaMoked argued that the refusal of the woman’s status application was unreasonable and that it violated her and her children’s right to family unification, and the principle of the child’s best interest.

As a rule, when a couple is going through a family unification process, there is set period of time during which the Ministry of Interior examines whether or not the marriage is genuine, whether there are security or criminal background issues and whether the couple actually reside in Israel. At the end of a graduated procedure, when the foreign spouse receives permanent status in Israel, the examinations conducted by the Ministry of Interior come to an end. Even if the spouses get divorced after the process is completed, or one of them enters a polygamous marriage, the permanent status given to the foreign spouse is not revoked. However, in cases where the foreign spouse is an OPT resident, and therefore subject to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), the family unification procedure never actually ends. The foreign spouses have to renew their Israeli stay permits year in and year out and the Ministry of Interior continues its examination into whether or not the couple complies with all the conditions stipulated in the family unification procedure – even after the point at which their probationary period would have ended and they would have received status, had it not been for the temporary order. These couples are under endless probation.

In the petition, HaMoked made a general principled argument that a resident of the OPT who receives Israeli stay permits as part of the family unification procedure and has completed what would have been the probationary period were it not for the temporary order, should stop receiving stay permits only if there are security reasons for withholding them. This is the case of the petitioner. The polygamous marriage, the reason for the rejection of her application, took place a few years after she would have completed the graduated procedure, but she was unable to complete it because of the temporary order. HaMoked argued that the Ministry of Interior should not have considered the polygamous marriage as grounds for not granting the woman permits. Given that the state claims the temporary order was enacted for security reasons, it cannot use non-security arguments to refuse to extend a stay permit given to a person who completed the usual family unification probationary period.