Israel's high court Sunday narrowly upheld a controversial law
that restricts the right of Palestinians to live in Israel with
their Arab Israeli spouses and children.
The law, imposed in 2002 at the height of Israeli-Palestinian
fighting, is believed to have kept hundreds, and possibly
thousands, of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians from moving to Israel
to live with their families.
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. A panel judges voted 6-5 against a
petition to strike it down.
"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 Murad el-Sana, an Israeli Arab attorney
married to a Palestinian woman from the West Bank town of
Bethlehem.
"The government is preventing people from conducting a normal
family life just because of their nationality," el-Sana, one of the
petitioners, told Israel Radio.
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 government argues the legislation is based on security
concerns, but the restrictions also cut to a sensitive demographic
issue, the fear that Israel's Jewish majority could be threatened
if too many Palestinians were granted citizenship.
In an indication of the issue's divisiveness, the 11 judges took
the unusual step of writing their own opinions.
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.
Genesim said the law was necessary to prevent Palestinians from
using Israeli residency or citizenship to carry out attacks against
Israelis. "Today the war is conducted on the home front. You need
creative ways to combat that," she said.
Israeli Arabs are free to travel freely throughout the country,
something that is difficult, and sometimes impossible, for West
Bank and Gaza Palestinians.
Zehava Galon, a lawmaker for the dovish Meretz Party, slammed
the high court's decision as racist.
"We thought that the Supreme Court would be the last bastion and
unfortunately, it failed in its mission," Galon told The Associated
Press. "The Supreme Court could have taken a braver decision and
not relegate us to the domain of an apartheid state."
Orna Kohn, an attorney from Adalah, a group that fights for the
rights of Israeli Arabs, said the court's ruling trampled on the
basic rights of thousands of people.
"The bottom line is the Supreme Court of Israel refused to
intervene with a law that is racist," Kohn told The Associated
Press.
(Chinadaily.com via agencies May 15, 2006)
