Israel refuses to issue ID cards to unregistered Palestinians

[Violet_Crumble]

Over the years, Israel has changed its policy on family unification in the Occupied Territories. After 1967, Israel allowed family unification among war refugees in limited numbers. In 1973, Israel began to deny almost all requests for family unifica

Lack of status

“I long for the day I’ll finally get an ID card. I want to pass through each and every checkpoint in the West Bank, just to show everyone I have an ID card. Sometimes I feel that death will be the only solution to my problem. In the afterlife I’m sure no one gets asked about his ID card.”

This depressing quote, from the testimony of Muhannad al-Khafash, a resident of Mardah, Nablus District, offers an insight into the lives of many other residents of the West Bank who are trapped in a similar predicament. These are persons whose parents did not register them at birth in the Palestinian population registry, usually due to ignorance or neglect of bureaucratic affairs, and consequently have no legal status. The major result of their lack of status is their inability to obtain an ID card, which is essential to accomplishing the most mundane acts in many walks of life.

Israel’s policy

Since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a Palestinian resident. In this capacity, Israel could enable children whose parents did not register them – a tendency that is more prominent as regards daughters – to obtain ID cards by applying the simple and relatively rapid solution is known as “late registration.” However, Israel refuses to authorize this procedure and insists, instead, on channeling these cases to the long and exhausting family unification procedure, which was created to enable a non-resident of the West Bank or Gaza Strip (generally spouses of residents of the Occupied Territories) to live there. Not only is the demand to apply for family unification ridiculous as regards people who have never lived apart from their families and have always resided in the West Bank, but the procedure cannot even be implemented, since Israel has frozen handling of all family unification requests over the last seven years. Furthermore, even if the freeze is removed, and the quota applied prior to the outbreak of the second intifada remains in effect, it would take dozens of years to arrange their status. B'Tselem has taken the testimonies of Palestinians without a legal status who began the family unification process when they were minors, who are now married with families, and have yet to receive a status.

http://www.btselem.org/english/Family_Separation/20080529_Unregistered_persons.asp

[subsuelo]

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