On Sunday, May 14, 2006, the Supreme Court decided not to annul the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) 2003. Six justices supported the ruling, led by Justice Mishael Heshin, while five were in opposition to the law, led by Chief Justice Aharon Barak. The five in opposition to the law saw the necessity of its annulment as it infringed on the right to equality and the right to conduct a family life in Israel.

The Knesset enacted this law in 2003 by adopting government decision 1813, which prevented the acquisition of any status in Israel for spouses from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and prevented requests for citizenship for those spouses.

The new law explicitly refers to the ethnic identity of an individual, impairing the rights granted to certain citizens on an ethnic or national basis. As such, it not only discriminates on the grounds of nationality or ethnic affiliation, thus impairing the constitutional right to equality of all citizens of Israel, but it is also tainted by overt racism.

This law is a clear violation of the rights of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Palestinian Arab citizens are the only citizens that marry spouses from the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. On one hand, the law dictates that those from the Occupied Territories be barred from living with their Arab citizen spouses in Israel. On the other, the State prevents all citizens, including Arab ones (unless they renounce their citizenship), from entry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories, considering them closed military areas. Therefore, the law, in concert with official State policy, makes family division of Arab Palestinians obligatory.

Since the law's introduction in 2003, it has forced thousands of families to live illegally in Israel or separate from one another. Only two weeks ago, in the early hours Israeli border guards stormed the house of Palestinian Arab citizen, al-Hajj Mohammad Sa'eed al-Heen, 67, in Qalansaweh. He and his wife, Mariam, from Qalqiliyah in the West Bank, and his two kids, Dana and 'Awad were threatened with weapons and dogs. The entire family, including the children, were arrested and thrown into the Eyal detention centre. The mother was expelled to the Qalqiliyah checkpoint and separated from her children and husband. Al-Hajj Mohammad al-Heen was forced to sign an agreement that his wife would not return to Israel.

Those in support of the law use security as legitimisation. They contest that by forbidding citizens of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from acquiring status through the unification of families, they help prevent participation in activities that hurt the security of Israel. This was also the explanation given by the Attorney General in response to the appeal presented in July 2003 to the Supreme Court calling for the annulment of the law.

It should be noted that international law organisations and human rights committees in the UN and EU condemned the law and asked for it to be revoked, as it embodied blatant violations to the basic rights of Arab citizens according to International Human Rights law.

The majority of the Justices in the Supreme Court decided that the law does not violate the constitutional rights of Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel in the aspects of equality and creating a family. Moreover, even if the law violates those rights, the security focus of the law justifies this violation. As Justice Mishael Heshin said,

The benefit that the Citizenship Law offers in terms of security and defending the lives of Israel's residents is more crucial than the violation that this law imposes on the lives of some citizens of the State who married or are going to marry Palestinians that demand to live with their spouse in Israel

However, the majority ruling ignored the real motives behind enacting and enforcing the law i.e. the demographic motive – which means strengthening and preserving the Jewish majority in the State and decreasing the number of Palestinian Arab citizens in the State as much as possible. On April 4, 2006, the former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said in reference to the law, "There is no need to hide behind security claims; there is the need to realise a Jewish State". Moreover, the real reasons behind the law were reflected clearly throughout the discussions in the Knesset and its Committees before even issuing the law, as it was mentioned in the dissenting opinion of Justice Ayala Procaccia.

Even if the claim that security was the main reason was true, the majority ruling denies the truths proved through the court sessions. It was found that of the thousands that received status, only fewer than 30 were interrogated by Israel for alleged security threats. Therefore, the law is collective punishment for Palestinian Arab citizens, something that is in contravention to both international and Israeli law.

Taking this fact into account, and other statements made by Justice Mishael Heshin in the past concerning the law, the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) views the main motive behind the Supreme Court ruling as being demographic and not security related, even though this point was not clearly reflected in the ruling.

What makes the law more severe is the fact that it not only applies to Arab citizens who wish to marry spouses from the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the future, but retroactively also works on the couples that were married and built families years ago, and live today in Israel – a fact that means fragmentation of Palestinian families in the near future.

The HRA considers this a serious affront to the most elementary democratic principles that Israel claims to uphold i.e. respecting individual and collective human rights. Therefore, the Supreme Court failed in a major way to defend the human rights of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel – which is the right of equality and the right to conduct a family life. The Supreme Court denied those rights explicitly at a time when it should have intervened to abort a law that explicitly violated the rights of citizens on national and racial lines.

The HRA calls upon the international community and all organizations that work to preserve peace and human rights, to use all internationally accepted means possible to strike down the racial law that offers a solid basis for racial separation in the State of Israel. The HRA warns that this law is a serious threat to any peaceful solution in the region and to the coexistence of the two communities in the State.

For further information, please contact us directly:

Mohammad Zeidan, Director
Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA)
PO Box 215, Nazareth 16101, Israel
Telephone: +972 (0)4 6561923
Fax: +972 (0)4 6564934
Email: mzeidan@arabhra.org; hra1@arabhra.org