In 1999, RS, a Palestinian from the West Bank, moved to live with her husband in the Gaza Strip, while her family – her elderly parents and ten siblings – continued living in the West Bank. RS was unable to visit them when she chose, because of Israel’s policy effectively separating between the two parts of the OPT; and so, for 13 years since she had moved to Gaza, RS had not visited her family...

In late 2000, HM, a Palestinian woman from Qalqiliya, married a man from the Gaza Strip. The couple lived together in Qalqiliya for a few months, but in late 2001, they moved to Gaza to take care of HM’s ailing mother-in-law. On July 1, 2005, HM traveled to Qalqiliya on a short visit to her ailing father, leaving her four-year-old son and her months-old baby at her home in Gaza. She traveled fr...

SQ, a Palestinian living in Qalqiliya, is married to BM, who has been living in the Gaza Strip since he was forcibly removed there in 2005 – after he had been arrested in Tira inside Israel, where he stayed to earn the family’s living. His attempts to return to his family in the West Bank failed. Since then, the couple has been living apart – she lives with their son in the West Bank, and he li...

At the age of three, MA and his one-year-old sister, SA, were abandoned by their mother. Their father continued raising them in Qalqiliya on his own, and after a while, their paternal grandmother came to live with them to help take care of them, inter alia, during the periods the father was in prison. In 2004, during his last prison term which lasted a year and a half, his elderly mother could ...

For several years, FA, native of the West Bank, divided her life between her parents' home in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to where her husband had been deported following the "Church of the Nativity" barricade in 2002. In May 2009, FA left Gaza with her children to visit her father who had suffered a heart attack and had undergone cardiac catheterization. In August, when she sought to ret...

In August 19, 2009, MK, a resident of Hebron, was arrested at a checkpoint near Ramallah. On the following day, HaMoked learnt that the military was about to deport him to the Gaza Strip within two hours, based on his registered address in Israel's copy of the Palestinian population registry. HaMoked hastened to contact the military in order to have the deportation delayed, and that same day, f...

A'A, a resident of the Gaza Strip, signed a marriage contract with man who lives in the West Bank. The wedding ceremony was to be held in April 2007 in Tulkarm. The bride to be and her family submitted, via the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, applications for transit permits to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, but they were refused by the Israeli military. HaMoked's application on their ...

LR, born in Tulkarm in the West Bank, lives with her husband and their four children in the Gaza Strip. In early September 2008, her mother was hospitalized in critical condition at a hospital in Tulkarm. LR hastened to file an urgent application to the Gaza District Coordination Office (DCO), requesting to travel with her family from Gaza to visit her mother. She received no answer, and two we...

Since the end of September 2000, and against the backdrop of the second intifada, Israel has been blocking almost completely the possibility of entering the Gaza Strip and exiting from it to Israel and the West Bank. As a result, the field researchers of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories were unable to enter Gaza to monitor human rights violat...

In September 2002, both the husband and the father of RA, a resident of Bethlehem, were removed by Israel to the Gaza Strip, at the termination of the incident where wanted Palestinians had barricaded themselves in the Church of the Nativity. A year later, RA moved with her infant daughter to live with her husband in Gaza. In September 2006, RA left Gaza with her two children to visit the famil...

In 2001, MA, a resident of Hebron, married NA, a resident of Gaza. Given the severe restrictions on the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank, imposed by the military since 2000, the couple remained in Gaza, and had their two children there. MA refrained from visiting his family in Hebron for seven years, fearing that otherwise Israel would prevent his return to his wife and chi...

In June 2007, WA, who lives at her parents' home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, signed a marriage contract with her chosen partner, who lives in Al 'Eizariya in the Bethlehem district. At the time, violence was raging in the Gaza Strip, leading Israel to close all Gaza-Israel crossing points. In consideration, WA waited for some eight weeks before appealing to the Palestinian Civilian Co...

On July 25, 2008, Hamas forces raided the Tel al-Hawa quarter in Gaza City, in pursuit of eight local Fatah members. At the end of a battle that lasted all night, and during which their homes were set on fire, the eight men managed to escape and went into hiding in the home of acquaintances. Three days later, fearing they would be found, they were forced to leave the house where they had been h...

In the predawn hours of May 27, 2008, soldiers raided a residential neighborhood in Qalqiliya. They rounded up the men outside their homes and gathered their identification cards. Anyone born Gaza or registered in a Gaza address was arrested. On the following day those registered in a West Bank address, were released, but two, MA and YA, both family men were designated for deportation to Gaza. ...

HF, who is registered in a West Bank address, is married to a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip and lives with him there. After three years of fertility treatments, HF got pregnant with quintuplets. Having miscarried one of them, her pregnancy was classified as high risk pregnancy, and her doctors recommended that she should leave the Gaza Strip for the last months of pregnancy and childbirth. Ul...

In November 2007, HH, who lived in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, signed a married contract with a man who lives in Zurif in the West Bank. A month later, her father applied to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee to arrange for her departure from Gaza to the West Bank for the wedding ceremony. But his request was not transferred to the Israeli side for consideration, as at t...

AA lives in the Gaza Strip and is married to MA, who has been living in West Bank Ramallah since January 2007, for his work in the Palestinian Aviation Ministry. AA suffers from the debilitating Behcet disease, a rare systemic condition for which she requires repeated treatments. Several times, AA applied to the Palestinian District Coordination Office for permits to travel via Israel, to visit...

On February 21, 2005, SW was released from a nine month long administrative detention, as part of Israeli gestures to President Abu Mazen. Despite the fact that SW had been living with his family in West Bank Jenin since 1996 – well known by both the military and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) – the military opted to release him directly to the Gaza Strip, on the grounds that he was registere...

SS used to live with her husband, 'AS, in Bitunya in the district of Ramallah. Both were born in Gaza and lived there in the past, but in 1998 they moved to the West Bank because of 'AS's work. Their address in the Palestinian population register was changed accordingly, but it later turned out that the Israeli side refused to accept the updated address listing, claiming they were still residen...