Following a
petition to the High Court of Justice (HCJ), filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and other human rights organizations, on August 1, 2016,
national health insurance regulations were applied also to Palestinians living in Israel with just stay permits, who are ineligible to receive an upgrade to Israeli status because of the prohibition set in the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order). The health insurance arrangement, formulated in the framework of the petition, allows holders of Israeli stay permits to register to one of the health funds and receive health services similar in scope to those available to Israeli residents and citizens. However, the condition for the
compulsory inclusion in the arrangement is the payment of a one-time high “entrance fee”, in addition to the regular monthly payments. And so, even a person who is entitled to join the arrangement but does not wish to register to a health fund – because they cannot afford the fees or for any other reason – would be registered automatically and accumulate a debt to the health fund.
On August 11, 2016,
HaMoked requested the Ministry of Health not to apply the health regulations to a specific group of some 2,000 Palestinians living in Israel for years with just stay permits, in the framework of the family unification procedure. Recently, the
Minister of Interior has announced that those belonging to this defined group are to receive Israeli identity cards by March 2017 – which would afford them social security rights
including national health insurance. Therefore, stressed HaMoked, it is unjustified to apply the regulations to them and compel them to join the expensive insurance, intended strictly for stay permit holders. Those who are interested in insuring themselves for the brief period until they receive an identity card must be allowed to do so, but they
should not be compelled to join the arrangement at this stage.
