Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH – Israeli human rights organizations said that Israel is violating the rights of Palestinian families split between the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and “Israel proper” by placing bureaucratic obstacles that make it almost impossible to maintain “a reasonable family life.”
The report “So Near Yet So Far”, which was jointly released on Monday B'Tselem, the Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and HaMoked, Center for the Defense of the Individual, says that Palestinians in the West Bank are only permitted to travel to Gaza to see their loved ones if they commit to remaining in the Strip or in special “humanitarian” cases. The rights groups said that after the 1967 occupation, Israel enabled Palestinians to travel relatively freely between the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. Residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who married Israeli citizens or Israeli residents (i.e., East Jerusalem Palestinians with Israeli ID cards) could receive permanent residential status in Israel through the family unification process. This policy facilitated the renewal of family ties and the creation of new ties of marriage, work, etc. According to the groups, once the first intifada began in late 1987, Israel started imposing restrictions on the freedom of movement of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. At present, the Palestinians can move from the West Bank to Gaza (as long as they commit to staying there) but requests to move from Gaza to the West Bank are largely refused pointblank. Visits are allowed only in exceptional “humanitarian” cases, usually under tragic circumstances. Marriage does not qualify as such a case. Israeli citizens and residents of East Jerusalem who married residents of Gaza must choose whether to move to the Gaza strip or only visit their spouse. Their lives are governed by the “split family procedure”, which entails bureaucratic difficulties and forced separation from their families in Gaza. The groups said that Israel's High Court of Justice regularly accepts the government's position. However, a high court petition may assist in resolving bureaucratic issues in the cases where people adhere to the strict criteria set by Israel. According to official figures, there are currently 425 Israelis – most of them women citizens or residents of Israel – married to residents of Gaza. Of these, some 340 are regularly issued permits under the “split family procedure”. Although able to leave the Gaza Strip freely, these women can only file a request to return home to Gaza once in Israel. Processing the request may take some weeks. Consequently, many women are forced to stay in Israel, away from their spouses and children in Gaza, for much longer than they had planned and without knowing when they will return. The report includes testimonies of Palestinians harmed by this separation policy. Najah Hamdan, who lives in Bethlehem, described how she felt after being denied the possibility of visiting her mother in Gaza before she died: “I didn't get a chance to see her and say goodbye. My brothers filmed my mother in hospital. I saw the tape and it was one of the hardest things I'd ever seen. It was a feeling of bitterness and sadness. It's so hard to see your mother when she's dying and you're not next to her holding her hand and saying goodbye. There's nothing harder than that painful moment. How can you deny a person their chance to see their father and mother and say goodbye to them when they're sick? Something broke inside me.” “B'Tselem and HaMoked call upon Israel to respect the right of all Palestinian residents to family life and to freedom of movement, and to allow them to choose where to live,” the organizations said in a statement. “When one spouse is a resident of the West Bank, the couple must be allowed free movement – subject to individual security checks – between Gaza and the West Bank, which constitute a single territorial unit. Israel must also enable residents of Gaza who marry Israeli citizens or residents to live with their spouses, and enable residents of Gaza to maintain regular family ties with relatives in Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.” Under heavy US pressure and following intense shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks in July after a three-year hiatus, agreeing to a nine-month timeline set to expire in March 2014. Kerry has paid several trips to the region this year, initially expressing confidence that a permanent peace accord, providing for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, could be wrapped up by the end of April. More recently, he has been pushing the less ambitious “framework” idea. The goal is for the framework, or series of guidelines, to address all core issues, including borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, Palestinian refugees and conflicting claims to the holy city of Jerusalem.
