Israel regards Palestinians living in the west Bank whose registered address is in Gaza as foreigners who have no right to live in their home, unless they obtain a special military-issued permit for residence in the West Bank. Despite
Israel’s undertaking – achieved in the framework of HCJ 4019/10 – to stop deporting back to Gaza people who had relocated from Gaza to the West Bank before 2005, Israel has been refusing for years to update in the population registry the correct addresses of these people, and continues to view them effectively as “illegal aliens” in the West Bank.
Thus now in the case of a 22-year-old Palestinian who was born in the Gaza Strip and moved with his family to the West Bank as an infant. The youth, who is soon to be released from Israeli prison, has been informed by the state authorities that he would not be allowed to return to his home and family in the West Bank, and that Israel intends to deport him to Gaza upon his release from prison, based on his registered address in the population registry.
Thereupon
HaMoked petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) on June 8, 2017 on the youth’s behalf. HaMoked asserted that when he was one-year-old, in 1996, the youth and his family had left the Gaza Strip and moved to live in the West Bank – following the signing of the Oslo Accords and before the second intifada – at a time when Israel fully acknowledged that the West bank and the Gaza Strip were two integral parts of a single entity. HaMoked also argued that this step contradicts Israel’s undertaking not to deport Palestinians who had relocated to the West Bank before September 2005.
HaMoked assets that it is unacceptable for a person to be deported from his home and torn apart from his family based on a technicality – his formal address in the population registry, which Israel effectively controls by systematically refusing to faithfully update the addresses of Palestinians who have moved years ago from Gaza to the West Bank. Such a draconian step would critically infringe on all the youth’s basic rights and it must not be allowed to happen.
