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“You’re
Either With Us or Against Us”
Israel
Bans Family Reunification for Palestinian Spouses of Israeli
Citizens
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Eli
Yishai, the driving force behind the new legislation, left,
with Shas’ Rabbi Ovadia Yosef |
And
I thought getting married was easy. Well, for me it was relatively
so. Sure, I had to arrange for my husband’s relatives to fly from
Cairo to the UK, and run around ordering clothes and food, but I had
no problems with either Egyptian or British authorities. After all,
I am a nice white English woman with the all-important British
passport. And after initial rudeness, the British Embassy staff had
to accept that my Egyptian family had every right to come and visit
me. And there was no problem over me joining him to live in Cairo.
However,
in Nazareth where I used to live, marriage just got a whole lot
harder for Palestinian citizens of Israel - at least, if they want
to marry another Palestinian a few miles away on the other side of
the 1967 border. On July 31 2003, the Israeli Knesset passed “The
Nationality and Entry into Israel Law”, which prohibits
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from marrying Palestinians of
the West Bank and Gaza, that is, if they want to bring their spouse
home. (The Israeli government would no doubt be more than happy if
any Palestinian citizens of Israel want to renounce their rights and
leave to the West Bank or Gaza).
This
law does not just apply to the future, but affects all those couples
that have been waiting through the lengthy process of having their
spouse’s citizenship legalized by the Israeli Interior Ministry.
Some have waited for several years, in an application queue that was
completely frozen in May 2002. Even prior to the new law, Israeli
citizenship for a Palestinian married to an Israeli was by no means
guaranteed. This law, of course, only applies to Palestinians. But
it is important to note that other women, of non-Israeli
nationality, also have many bureaucratic obstacles put in their way
if they try to marry a Palestinian citizen of Israel.
Opportunity
for such racist legislation came following the bombing of a Haifa
restaurant by a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. |
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This
new apartheid law affects thousands of families, and an estimated
tens of thousands of individuals, many of whom are from the same
extended families or villages, artificially divided across Israel
occupation lines. While this law largely affects the Palestinians
inside Israel, Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, highlighted the case
of a Jewish woman married to a Palestinian man with West Bank papers
whom she had met in Europe. Even her first class Jewish Israeli
citizenship did not give her the power to arrange the appropriate
papers to legalize her West-Bank-born husband’s status in Israel.
In
its appeal to the Supreme Court, Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab
Minority Rights in Israel, focused on two specific cases. One is a
case of from among its own staff. Attorney Morad El-Sana, an Arab
citizen of Israel living in the Negev town of Lakiyya, married
around 6 months ago to a woman he met on an MA program in Canada.
The catch is that Mrs Abeer El-Sana, is from Bethlehem. El-Sana, a
social worker and lecturer at Al Quds University, East Jerusalem,
cannot go and live with her husband in the Negev, because of her
West Bank identity.
It
is difficult to assess just how many thousands of couples this law
affects, as many are living in secret, hoping that the security
forces will never come knocking at the door. This is a particular
problem for people living along the Green Line in the Little
Triangle area, where until the recent enforcement of the 1967 line,
family life and friendships between villages on both sides went on
as if there was no dividing line.
“Security”
Rhetoric Fails to Hide Racist Demographic Agenda
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Scenes
from the Haifa restaurant blast in March 2002, touted as
justification for the controversial new law |
This
latest piece of discriminatory legislation originates with former
Shas Interior Minister Eli Yishai. In February 2002, he told Israeli
daily newspaper Ha’aretz that “through the back door of the
State of Israel, the right of return [of the Palestinians] is being
realized. The statistics are frightening and a cause for concern,
and threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel.” As
Ha’aretz notes later, he initially made no mention of security
issues, but was open about Zionist demographic concerns about the
ethnic makeup of the Jewish state.
Yishai’s
opportunity to package such racist legislation to the Israeli public
came following the suicide bombing of a Haifa restaurant by a
Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. While a resident of Jenin, the
bomber was able to travel freely in Israel because his mother was
born in the 1948 areas and had passed on citizenship to him. Yishai
and his successor at the Ministry, Avraham Poraz, have continued to
mention the killing of 15 Israelis by this man to engender support
for this new law on the back of a wave of fear stirred within the
population.
Aside
from the whole question of the Palestinians’ legal right of
resistance to occupation, the legal team fighting this law has
questioned the Israeli concern over security within this specific
case. Adalah challenged the state’s argument regarding acts of
violent resistance against Israel in the case of Palestinians who
obtained Israeli citizenship through reunification. Lawyers for the
state could only produce six cases out of many thousands who
benefited from the reunification law, hardly proof of the Israeli
claim of “security issues.”
Case
for International Spotlight on Israeli Racism
Even
the US State Department said it was considering whether Israel had
overstepped the mark with this discriminatory law. |
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In
the four years that I have been closely following international
media coverage of (or the lack thereof) Palestinian citizens of
Israel, this case has received the most attention in the
international public arena. The British Independent daily newspaper
gave the issue front-page coverage, and the BBC also followed the
case. The law has been condemned as discriminatory by such prominent
rights groups as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International,
who wrote a joint letter to the Knesset before the vote, condemning
the law as “profoundly discriminatory… blatant racial
discrimination.” “It’s scandalous that the Government has
presented this bill, and it’s shocking that the Knesset is rushing
it through,” said Hanny Megally of HRW. Surprisingly, even the
American Zionist lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
expressed concern that Israel would be able to review the law in the
future.
In
response to an urgent action petition from the International
Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the UN Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination demanded, in a statement of
August 14, 2003, that the ban on family reunification should be
“revoked” immediately. The Committee stated that the law raises
serious issues under the International Convention on the Elimination
of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) to which Israel has
been party since 1979. This announcement followed the August 6, 2003
declaration of the UN Human Rights Committee, which having listened
to presentations in Geneva by attorneys from both sides, urged
Israel to revoke the law.
The
European Union also expressed opposition, suggesting that Israel may
face problems in joining the Wider Europe initiative. The EU
ambassador to Israel, Giancarlo Chevallard, said that such a law
established “a discriminatory regime,” and stressed that
"Israeli respect for human rights constitutes an essential
element of Israel's relationship with the EU." Israel is
currently seeking closer cooperation with Europe. Even the US State
Department said it was considering whether its Israeli ally had this
time overstepped the mark on discriminatory law.
And
Israel Replies…
Israel’s
Ambassador to the UN Yaakov Levy, heading an Israeli delegation of
attorneys from various government ministries in Geneva, said the
resolution showed “a biased approach which singles out Israel.”
Sure, Israel isn’t the only country in the Middle East with
discriminatory citizenship laws. But it is the only one that the
West pretends is a democracy.
Israel
isn’t the only country in the Middle East with discriminatory
citizenship laws, but it is the only one the West pretends is a
democracy. |
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There
were of course Israeli Knesset members who opposed the law, voiced
objections, or tried to postpone the vote. But when it came down to
it, the law was passed easily by 53 votes to 25, with one
abstention. Even Poraz, the Interior Minister himself, had expressed
his concerns about the necessity of such a law. Ha’aretz
commentator Lily Galili remarked, July 9, that in the past Israel
had the Labor left’s “shoot and cry” policy, but that now it
has the “legislate and cry” action.
Others,
of course had no tears to waste. Yuval Steinitz, a Likud
parliamentary leader, told the International Herald Tribune (August
1, 2003) that he accused the Palestinian Authority of encouraging
Palestinians to marry Israeli Arabs and move to Israel. “A
deliberate strategy,” he said, “to change the demographic
balance in Israel in order to destroy us.” MK Nissan Slomiansky of
the National Religious Party, (Ha’aretz, August 9), “said aloud
what others prefer to whisper.” “They say outright that they
want a state… a security element also means changing the
demographics. When there’s a group that is knowingly and purposely
realizing the right of return, of course the state has to protect
itself.”
This
new racist law will divide many families, trapping them on either
side of a false border. Children may live two kilometers from their
fathers or mothers, but be unable to see them. In the future,
Palestinians from ’48 and ’67 areas will not be able to consider
marrying unless they want to give up the right to a home in the
’48 areas. Adalah, along with Arab members of the Knesset and
other interested parties, has filed a motion in the Israeli Supreme
Court. Whatever the outcome, or modification to the law, the racist
direction Israeli policy is continuing to pursue is clear.
I
will conclude with the words of a mainstream Jewish-Israeli writer
for those wondering if I am just yet another one of those people who
hate the “only democracy in the Middle East.” Uri Benziman, in
the August 2 2003 Ha’aretz, makes the straightforward link between
this law and the demographic concerns of maintaining an ethnic state
at the expense of another ethnic group abundantly clear:
[This]
vote exposed the self-righteous hypocrisy… the purpose of the
legislation is more than just to fill a breach in our line of
defense. It satisfies the secret desire of right-wing
parliamentarians… to allow their nationalist inclinations to
run rampant.
The
present government is composed of parties whose primary reaction
to Arabs… is one of foreignness and suspicion, if not outright
racism… Only a minority of the establishment… has developed
tolerance toward and acceptance of Arabs… It is not only a
rabble-rousing response to the distress of the security
situation, but also an attempt to distance as many Palestinians
as possible from Israel. In this, it emphasizes the racist
character of the legislation and strengthens the argument that
Israel’s claim to be a Jewish and a democratic state at the
same time is groundless.
Isabelle
Humphries is a British freelance journalist and Development Director
at Sawt Al Amel (Laborer’s Voice), an organization supporting
Palestinian workers inside Israel. She has an MA in Middle East
Politics and is also a freelance writer for the Cairo Times. You can
reach her at innazareth@yahoo.co.uk
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