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Amnesty International condemns Knesset's extension of Law denying family unification |
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Thursday, 22 March 2007 |
Amnesty International condemned Israeli Knesset's extension of discriminatory
law denying family unification to Palestinian spouses of Israelis.
Amnesty said in a press release that the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law
(Temporary Order), which the Knesset, Israel's parliament, yesterday extended
until 31 July 2008 with widened provisions is profoundly discriminatory.
"It is explicitly discriminatory against Palestinians from the occupied West
Bank and Gaza Strip since it is used to prevent them from living with spouses in
Israel. It also implicitly discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel
(Israeli Arabs), who form 20% of the population of Israel, and against
Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, as it is most often they who marry
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories," according to the press release.
It added that the Law imposes blanket bans, which cannot be justified by genuine
security concerns. It does not allow family unification with Israeli spouses for
men aged between 18 and 35 and for women aged between 18 and 25 who are
residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Over that age, it said, the
amended law extends the denial of family unification to other relatives and
in-laws of anyone suspected of hostile Israeli activity (which carries a very
broad definition, including such offences as stone-throwing, demonstrating and
other political activity).
Amendments also ban family unification to spouses from four "enemy states":
Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. This would mean, for example, that family
unification would be forbidden also for a spouse with joint Iraqi/US or
US/Lebanese citizenship.
In what was supposed to be a gesture to the law's critics, an "Exceptional Cases
Committee" has been set up to consider individual cases on a "humanitarian"
basis. The five-person committee will include a representative of the Ministry
of Defense, the General Security Services (shinbet) and the Population Registry.
"The Israeli Knesset's extension of the law came less than two weeks after the
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called for
it to be revoked. Israel became a state party to the International Convention on
the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination on 3 January 1979,
assuming the obligation to respect the Convention and implement its provisions,"
it affirmed.
Amnesty said the Convention prohibits discrimination based on race, colour,
descent, or national or ethnic origin.
Comments posted are the sole opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of AIM. |
