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Palestinian women in the Samarian city of Jenin, Saturday (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners May 14, 2006 |
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Israel's high court narrowly upheld on Sunday a controversial law that severely restricts Palestinians in Judea and Samaria from living with spouses and children who are Arab citizens of Israel.
The law, passed in 2002 at the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, is believed to have kept hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Palestinians from moving to Israel to live with their families. An expanded panel of 11 judges voted 6-5 against a petition to strike down the law.
"This is a very black day for the state of Israel and also a black day for my family and for the other families who are suffering like us," said Muad el-Sana, an Israeli-Arab attorney married to a Palestinian woman from the Judean town of Bethlehem.
"The government is preventing people from conducting a normal family life just because of their nationality," el-Sana told Israel Radio, minutes after the ruling was announced.
The court had granted el-Sana's wife, Abir, a temporary injunction preventing her deportation. But el-Sana said the high court's ruling made it almost impossible for the couple and their two children, aged 2 years and five months, to continue living together.
The law states that only Palestinian women over the age of 25 and men over 35 are eligible to join their families in Israel, and eventually receive citizenship. Critics of the law have slammed it as racist and discriminatory, and Amnesty International has called for its repeal.
The government has repeatedly said the legislation was based on serious security concerns, but the restrictions also cut to a more sensitive demographic issue - the fear that the country's Jewish majority could be threatened if too many Palestinians were granted citizenship.
State Prosecutor Yochi Genesim said the state has granted 6,000 of 22,000 requests for family unification since Israel and the Palestinians signed an interim peace deal in 1993. The remainder were rejected, some for security reasons, Genesim said.
In the current climate of tension, the law is necessary to prevent Palestinians from using Israeli residency or citizenship to carry out attacks against Israelis. she said.
Israeli Arabs are free to travel freely throughout the country, something that is difficult, and sometimes impossible for Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
"Today the war is conducted on the home front. You need creative ways to combat that," Genesim said.
Zehava Galon, a lawmaker for the dovish Meretz Party, slammed the high court's decision as racist.
"I had hoped and expected the high court to be the last arena for protecting democracy," Galon told Israel Radio. "In essence we are talking about a means to halt the demographic threat. There are no real security issues."
Orna Kohn, an attorney from Adalah, a group that fights for the rights of Israeli-Arabs, said the court's ruling causes "grave damage to the basic rights of thousands of people."
"I am afraid the message the Supreme Court relayed today will foster additional racist legislation," she told Israel Radio.
AP contributed to this report.
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