Understanding Family Unification: Just the Facts…

• Israel controls immigration into both Israel and the occupied Paletinian territories.
• Israel’s control over the Palestinian population registry effectively means that it can decide to whom status gets granted in Palestine.
• The last batch of IDs Israel granted was in 2009.
• Under the Law of Return, “every Jew has the right to come to” Israel.
• However, the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel, and of their spouses and their
• children are limited.
• 140,000 families were divided as a result of the 1967 war.
• Between 1967 and 1994, Israel also cancelled the residency status of 130,000 Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
• From 1994 to 2014, 11,448 Palestinians from East Jerusalem had their IDs revoked by Israel.
• Between 2000 and 2005 alone, 120,000 requests for family unification were not considered by Israel.
• As “permanent residents,” Palestinians in East Jerusalem have to continually prove that their “center of life” is in the city, or they could have their ID revoked by Israel.
• Israel’s family reunification ban was passed in 2003 as a “temporary” security measure in the wake of the Second Intifada.
• The reunification ban has been renewed annually every year since.
• While the Knesset failed to extend the Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law in July 2021, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior is still refusing to process family reunification applications.

This week’s facts come from:

• “Engineering Community: Family Unification, Entry Restrictions and other Israeli Policies of Fragmenting Palestinians” from Al-Haq 
• “Israel: Thousands of unregistered Palestinians fear deportation, separation from families” from Middle East Eye
• “Israel: Interior Ministry Blocks Palestinian Family Reunification Requests” from Palestine Chronicle

Learning More 

• To learn more you can start by reading “Israel has denied certain married couples the right to live together. Some hide. Others break up.” from the Washington Post.
• You can listen to the “Love Under Israeli Apartheid” episode of the This Is Palestine podcast from the IMEU. 
• You can watch “Palestinians Daring to Love” from the IMEU. 
• And also watch “Love Stories for Social Justice” from Visualizing Palestine. 
• Finally, you can look at the Timeline of Family Unification in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from Hamoked. 

To go deeper, we are developing an extensive list of Additional Resources at the bottom of this week’s entry as well as a YouTube playlist on the subject.