For Immediate Release
HCJ hearing tomorrow regarding young Palestinian man detained for two and a half years pending deportation
HaMoked: “Israel is punishing him for its own refusal to grant him status in the West Bank”
Tomorrow Israel’s High Court of Justice will hear HaMoked’s petition regarding Ma'an Abu Hafez, a young Palestinian man from Jenin, detained pending deportation since February 2017.
Ma'an was born in Brazil in 1994 to a Palestinian father and a South American mother. His family moved to the West Bank when he was 3 and he has spent his whole life in the Jenin Refugee Camp. But Ma'an has no legal status in the oPt. His family unification request was not considered for years, due to Israel's policy to freeze such requests.
In February 2017, Ma'an was arrested by chance at a checkpoint in the West Bank. He has been detained as an illegal alien by the Interior Ministry ever since, designated for expulsion. This in spite of the fact that Ma'an has no legal status anywhere, and therefore cannot be deported. Brazilian authorities, rightly, refuse to look into his case against his will, to determine whether he could obtain status in Brazil.
Only after his detention, the military agreed to consider his family unification request, which it promptly rejected. In March,
HaMoked petitioned against this decision and the Court will hear this petition tomorrow. HaMoked also continues to contest his detention before the Tribunal for Review of Custody of Illegal Aliens. The Tribunal has
repeatedly rejected HaMoked’s requests for Ma'an’s release, although Israeli law does not allow prolonged detention by the Ministry of Interior.
“My case has gone from one court to another, and each time I got my hopes up,” says Ma'an Abu Hafez. “Now I’ve lost all hope. I’ve been held for two and a half years, and why? Just because I came to Jenin at the age of three.”
“My son is languishing far away from us,” says Ma'an’s mother Iris Abu Hafez. “And just because he doesn’t have the right kind of document. I also don’t have that document, so I can’t even visit him in prison. And we don’t know what will happen next, which makes the situation all the more unbearable.”
"Israel controls the population registry of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," says Advocate Nadia Daqqa of HaMoked. "It froze the registration of children born overseas and of foreign spouses, leaving thousands to live in the West Bank with no status. Now the Israeli authorities are effectively punishing Ma'an for their own failure to legalize his status."
For more details: Adv. Nadia Daqqa, n.dakka@hamoked.org.il, 02-627-1698
