From Amnesty International 2022 reports:
PART 7 DENIAL OF NATIONALITY, RESIDENCE AND FAMILY LIFE
🔴 Israel maintains its system of fragmentation and segregation through different legal regimes that ensure the denial of nationality and status to Palestinians, violate their right to family unification and return to their country and their homes, and severely restrict freedom of movement based on legal status. All are intended to control the Palestinian population and aim to preserve a Jewish Israeli majority in key areas across Israel and the OPT.
🔴 Whilst they are granted citizenship, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. They are also denied certain benefits because of a linked exemption from military service.
🔴 Meanwhile, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens. Instead, they are granted fragile permanent residency status that allows them to reside and work in the city, and enjoy social benefits provided by the Israeli National Insurance Institute and the national health insurance. Under discriminatory legislation and
🔴 policies, however, the Israeli authorities have revoked the status of thousands of Palestinians, including retroactively, if they cannot prove that Jerusalem is their “centre of life”. This has had devastating consequences on their human rights. By contrast, Jewish Israeli settlers residing in East Jerusalem enjoy Israeli citizenship and are exempt from laws and measures enacted against Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.
🔴 At the same time, Israel has controlled the population registry in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 and imposed policies, restrictions and measures to control the demography of the territory. Palestinians in these territories remain without citizenship and are considered stateless, except for those who have obtained a citizenship from a third country. The Israeli military issues them with identification cards that enable them to permanently live and work in the territory. Israel’s control of the population registry since 1967 has further facilitated the fragmentation of Palestinians and restricted their freedom of movement based on their legal status and residence.
🔴 After the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada (uprising) at the end of 2000, the Israeli Civil Administration, a military unit that oversees all civilian matters for Jewish Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, froze most changes to the Palestinian population registry without prior notification to the Palestinian Authority. The freeze included the suspension of all “family unification” procedures for Palestinian residents of the OPT who had married foreign nationals. Even though on two occasions since then Israel committed to granting a small number of family reunification requests as goodwill diplomatic gestures to the Ramallah-based Palestinian authorities, in general, Israel continues to deny the conferring of residency status to tens of thousands of foreign nationals who are married to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This is profoundly discriminatory; Jewish settlers residing in settlements in the West Bank face no restrictions in obtaining authorization from the Israeli authorities for their spouses to enter the occupied territory and reside with them.
🔴 In early 2003, Israel began prohibiting Palestinians registered in Gaza from residing in the West Bank, arresting thousands and removing them forcibly to the Gaza Strip after labelling them as “infiltrators”. Over the years, the Israeli authorities authorized some Palestinians to change their addresses from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank but only implemented their commitment partially. At the same time, thousands of Palestinians remain undocumented in Gaza as the Israeli authorities have refused to regularize their status since 2008.
🔴 These policies have serious consequences on the ability of Palestinians in the OPT to lead a normal life, particularly in light of stringent restrictions on movement: those in the West Bank who are not registered face the imminent threat of deportation, are unable to access healthcare, education and social benefits, open a bank account and have legal jobs, and are effectively prisoners in their homes because of fear of ID checks at Israeli checkpoints. Undocumented Palestinians in Gaza are also denied their freedom of movement, and access to healthcare and education in other parts of the OPT and abroad. Overall, restrictions on family unification interfere with Palestinians’ enjoyment of their rights to privacy, to family life and to marry, blocking them from conferring residency status to their spouses and children.
🔴 Israel continues to deny Palestinian refugees – displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts – and their descendants their right to gain Israeli citizenship or residency status in Israel or the OPT. By doing so, it denies them their right to return to their former places of residence and property – a right, which has been widely recognized under international human rights law.
