Tag: Denial of Entry

Israel refuses visa extensions for foreign passport holders

Right to Entry, December 5th

In a new escalation of Israel’s policy of denying Palestinians and their families access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli Civil Administration at Beit El is refusing to accept at least 140 passports for visa extensions. The passport holders are mostly spouses and children of Palestinian I.D.-holders and are residing in the oPt. Many of them have been forced to become “illegal” since their visitor visas have expired while waiting to be renewed by Israel.

Twenty-seven year old Subha G is one of these cases. Her mother, brothers and her husband all have Palestinian IDs, but her request for family reunification has been frozen since 1997. “I am seven months pregnant and I am afraid of leaving to renew my visa and becoming stranded outside the country. My whole family is here.” Subha said.

Palestinian I.D.s can only be issued by Israel. Since Israel is refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications of spouses and children of Palestinians, foreign family members must renew their visa every three months. All foreign spouses and children of Palestinians who requested visa extensions in October had their passports returned from Beit El on November 19th stamped “Last permit.” The passport holders are required to leave the country before their visas expire, which in some cases occurred during Israel’s processing of the visa extension application. Israeli authorities are regularly denying entry to family members of
Palestinians when they attempt to cross the Israeli controlled borders to the Israeli oPt.

Soha N., French citizen, lives in Beit Jala with her Palestinian husband and their two children, ages six and eight years old. The Israeli authorities refuse to issue residency to Soha and her children. Therefore, they have been renewing their visas every three months. After applying in October for another visa extension, they received their passports back marked “last permit.” Soha’s final extension lasts until December 25th. Israeli authorities required her two children to leave by December 4th. The family may now be forced to relocate abroad, as their children are now considered “illegal” after overstaying their visas.

Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration states that those foreign passport holders with family in the oPt who stay illegally in the country, should expect “tough consequences”. “Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave,” said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. “Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together,”Ayish explained.

Contact: Basil Ayish Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps

Jerusalem Post: “Non-residents in territories threaten to sue Israeli gov’t”

by Dan Izenberg, December 3rd

Foreign passport holders married to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and those of Palestinian descent who want to visit their extended families in the territories are considering filing a class action suit against the Israeli government for refusing to grant them visitors’ visas, a Palestinian spokesman has told The Jerusalem Post.

The spokesman, Basil Ayish, is the media committee coordinator of the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Meanwhile, Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, told the Post that in accordance with instructions from the Interior Ministry, the Military Government was no longer extending the three-month tourist visas for more than one year.

According to Ayish, there are some 120,000 families in the West Bank and Gaza in which one of the spouses is a foreign passport holder who is not registered in the Palestinian population registrar.

After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, it held a census and registered all Palestinians in the territories at the time as residents in the Palestinian population registrar. Since then, only the children of Palestinian parents who are both residents of the West Bank and Gaza are automatically eligible to be registered as residents of the territories.

The only way for those who do not meet the above conditions to become residents of the territories is through the process of family reunification. However, since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, Israel has stopped processing such requests.

Since then, according to Ayish, the only way for a family consisting of one resident of the territories and one non-resident to live together in the West Bank and Gaza has been for the non-resident to obtain a visitor’s visa, good for three months at a time.

Until three months ago, these visas were more or less automatically renewed. However, until the Palestinian Authority was established, applicants had to leave the territories and ask the Israeli authorities to extend the visa for another three months from outside the country.

Ayish said last week that since the establishment of the PA, many Palestinian non-residents sent their applications to renew their visas to the PA, which served as a go-between between the applicant, who no longer had to leave the West Bank, and the Israeli authorities.

These arrangements were never entirely satisfactory. Over the past few years, Israel often rejected applications by non-residents to extend their visas and the applicant, often a parent to children living in the West Bank, was preventing from returning to his family.

According to Ayish, however, Israel’s new policy has intensified of late. During the past two weeks, he said, 250 foreign passports submitted by the PA to Israel for visa extensions had been returned with a stamp declaring that this was the last time non-residents would be able to apply via the PA. From now on, all applicants would again have to leave the territories and apply from outside the country. Ayish said these people were afraid that once they left their families, they would not be allowed to return.

Not all of the applicants are married to residents of the territories. Some are citizens of other countries, mainly the US, and of Palestinian descent who have routinely spent the summers in the West Bank or Gaza to be with their extended families and immerse themselves in Palestinian culture. Israel has begun systematically denying these requests as well, according to Ayish and the human rights organizations.

There are other categories of foreigners who are currently being prevented from entering the territories, including university students, humanitarian workers and tourists.

On Tuesday, Ayish’s organization held a meeting in El-Bireh to consider legal action against Israel. Speakers, including attorney Muhammad Dahleh, charged that Israel’s policy was in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. They called on the foreign nationals to urge their home countries to put pressure on Israel to change its policy.

According to B’Tselem and Moked, Israel is denying the Palestinians the basic right to family life by restricting their choice of partners.

“Israel is targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society in order to force a demographic change [in the territories],” Ayish told the Post. “It is forcing families to separate and ultimately leave.”

According to Dror, the Military Government will send an official to Ben-Gurion Airport to examine each visa application on its merits and determine whether or not to renew it. Only in humanitarian and other special cases, will the official allow applicants to return to the territories if they have already spent one uninterrupted year there.

Dror added that the PA was to blame for the fact that so many West Bank non-residents were still without resident status. Israel, he said, had told the PA in 1996 that it was prepared to register 20,000 foreign passport holders in the West Bank and Gaza Population Registry. “The PA did not forward any names to us,” he said.

By late 2000, with the onset of the second intifada, the window of opportunity closed, Dror said. Today, with Hamas in charge of the PA, there was no cooperation between it and the military government, he added.

Palestinian families separated by Israel take action

Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory :

Hundreds Of Foreign Nationals Meet To Consider Legal Action Against Israel For Denying Them Access To West Bank And Gaza

(Al-Bireh, Occupied Palestine – November 28, 2006) – Hundreds of foreign nationals packed into the Al-Bireh Municipality Hall to listen to legal experts explain the options available to them in light of Israel’s refusal to permit foreign nationals access to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). The audience was full of families with children, fearful that they will be forced to separate within days.

In a standing room-only lecture, Al-Bireh Deputy and Acting Mayor Omar Hamayel made a clear appeal that the Israeli policy of denying access to Palestinians who are foreign nationals be called ethnic cleansing. Attorney Abdallah Hammad from the Jerusalem Legal Affairs Center and Attorney Muhammad Dahleh discussed collective and individual actions that can be considered by those affected by Israel’s de-facto deportation of residents of the oPt.

Atty. Dahleh, a human rights activist and renowned legal expert noted that the proper legal reference for the issue lies in International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law. He also spoke regarding those Palestinians who have previously applied for family unification which allows for permanent residency. Israel has closed this door and created a reality where the Palestinian population is being forced from their homes. The final result of Israel’s practice could be the emptying of over 500,000 Palestinians from the occupied cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and others in a very short time as Palestinian residents leave to keep their families together.

Basil Ayish, spokesperson for the Campaign, noted that although the event was looking into legal options for affected families that are faced with forced separation, the issue is ultimately a political one, and that victims of Israel’s practice should take all measures to protest this action with the country of their citizenship. The Campaign stated that more than 80 percent of the latest Israeli denials for visa extensions are U.S. citizens.

The questions and comments of those in the audience articulated deep frustration and anger at their respective foreign governments and at the Palestinian Authority for not taking more concrete steps to immediately resolve this issue or at least raise it to a level of public debate.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calls for action against Israeli practice of separating families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

by The Campaign for the Right of Entry, November 26th

Concluding her visit to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called on UN member states to take action against Israel’s practice of denying foreign passport holders access to and residency in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel’s barring of foreigners is forcing the separation of spouses from their families, educators and students from their schools, and healthcare providers from their patients.

Arbour, who is the UN’s highest authority on human rights, stated “In recent months there has been an increase in obstacles imposed on foreign passport holders, including many of Palestinian origin, effectively preventing them from entering and staying in the (Israeli) Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) with their families or for humanitarian activities. I call on the authorities to take remedial measures to remove such obstacles.”

In order to legally reside in the Israeli (oPt), foreigners must resort to Israeli-issued visitors’ visas which expire 3 months after issuance, Enayah Samara, for example, has had to renew her visa 120 times in order to remain with her spouse and children despite repeated submission of family unification requests. The Hamoked-B’Tselem report “Perpetual Limbo” documents Israeli policy which contends that family unification for Palestinians is not a vested right, but a “special benevolent act of the Israeli authorities.”

Mrs. Samara was denied re-entry by Israel in May and continues to be separated from her family after have lived in the Israeli oPt for 30 years. Israel is refusing to process 120,000 such requests for Palestinian family unification and has recently begun marking visa renewal requests with “last permit” thus forcing the passport holders to exit to another country. Many, like Mrs. Samara, are then denied re-entry by Israeli border officials.

The academic, economic, tourist, and humanitarian sectors have been especially hard hit by Israel’s denial-of-entry practice, Birzeit University reports a 50% decline in foreign faculty and staff and, along with 10 other Palestinian universities, recently called on the international community to intervene and put an end to Israel’s attack on Palestinian academic development.

Families and other tourists coming from abroad for summer vacation were routinely denied entry by the Israelis. Combined with the international embargo on Palestinians, Israel’s actions further exacerbate its efforts to undermine Palestinian economic and social development.

Article 17 paragraph 1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his…family,” while Article 23 paragraph 1 adds that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” The above rights are to be enjoyed by all individuals “without distinction of any kind.”

The Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt calls on the international community to live up to its legal and moral obligations to protect rights afforded to Palestinians under international law. We call on the United States, in particular, to leverage its historic relationship with Israel in order to protect its own citizens wishing to reside, visit and invest in the oPt, as well as to create the conditions where citizens of other countries will also be protected from Israeli denial of entry.

Contact: Basil Ayish, Coordinator, Media Committee:
0598173953
info@righttoenter.ps

Israel issues final visas, splitting families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

by the Campaign for the Right of Entry

All foreign passports belonging to spouses and children of Palestinian ID-holders who had applied for visa extensions have recently been marked as “last permit” by the Israeli authorities. One hundred and five passport holders are required to leave via Israeli controlled entry/exit points before the end of the year. The Israeli Ministry of Interior (MoI) office at Beit El began returning the passports on November 19 after a six-week strike by Israeli MoI employees. Those who overstay their allotted time will be considered “illegal” and are subject to immediate deportation from the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). In an effort to avoid being considered “illegal” and threatened with arrest by the Israelis, some families are opting to relocate abroad. The pattern of refusing visa renewals for family members is part of an overall Israeli effort that denies entry to foreign nationals seeking access to the oPt.

The impact of Israel’s practice includes the forced separation of spouses, parents from their children, educators and students from their schools, health care, NGO and humanitarian workers from access to needy communities, and business owners from their investments. According to the Palestinian MoI, hundreds of applications for Israeli visa extensions following Israeli guidelines were submitted in October and are still pending. Israel is also refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications.

Every denial of entry and visa renewal refusal impacts an estimated 10 people, many of whom subsequently resort to moving to another country. “This is a silent ethnic cleansing,” said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt.

Despite official complaints by foreign governments of discrimination against their citizens, Israel continues to disregard its obligations under international law and agreements and persists in its practice of changing the demographics within the oPt. The U.S. State Department, EU, and at least one Latin American country have all submitted demarches to Israeli officials since October. Foreigners wishing to reside in, visit or work in the oPt continue to be banned at Israeli-controlled ports of entry.

Israel refuses to permit non-Jewish foreigners from receiving residency status in the oPt. This means that the only mechanism for foreign passport-holding spouses and children of Palestinian ID-holders to join their families has been to rely on a system of renewable 3-month ‘visitor’ permits.

This practice was widely expected to be a transitory measure until mechanisms were put in place to provide permanent residency status for non-ID holding family members. Some family members have been following this procedure for more than 30 years as the only option open to them.

Contacts:
Basil Ayish Coordinator: +970-(0)59-817-3953
info@righttoenter.ps

Updated November 22

For more background information on this story, see this article on Ma’an News.