Families divided by law: security and latent xenophobia
Tens of thousands of people have been affected by a Supreme Court decision to reject the unconstitutionality of a law, motivated by reasons of security, which bans Palestinians married to Israeli citizens from getting residency and citizenship rights.
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews)- The news has reverberated through the world: Israel's Supreme Court - though by a razor-thin majority of six against five - has refused to rule unconstitutional the law that bars Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from acquiring residence and citizenship rights themselves. The majority of the Court essentially accepted the Government's argument that residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territories are, in effect, members of an enemy nation, "enemy aliens," and that it is reasonable for a State to refuse admission to its territory, to refuse permanet residence and citizenship, to such persons. Precedents abound, it could be pointed out, and it is sufficient to think of Britain and the U.S. at the time of the Second World War. Israel's security establishment - the military, the police, the secret police - argued to the Court that, as a matter of fact, more than one Palestinian from the Occupied Territories previously admitted to Israel, through marriage to an Israeli citizen, later cooperated with terrorists who sowed death and destruction in Israel.
On the other side of the courtroom battle (which lasted several years) were, not only several highly respected human rights organisations, but also couples, families, for whom the law - and the ruling of Court - represent a personal and conjugal and familial catastrophe, one that is being retroactively imposed. It is not only a matter of the Palestinian partner in the marriage, the Palestinian parent of the children, not being able to obtain Israeli residence or citizenship - it is that this spouse or parent is being forcibly, physically removed from the conjugal home, from the family home. As a resident of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Palestinian member of the family cannot at all remain on Israeli territory, or even on Palestinian territory if it is on the western side of the "Wall of Separation" that Israel is building through the Occupied West Bank, and even through the Jeruslaem area. The new law, combined with the Wall (and the administrative measures related to the Wall) have already meant homes breaking up, literally. Before the recent law, now upheld by the Supreme Court, there was at least a "procedure", a "process" in place, for the Palestinian spouse and parent to "prove" - over several years - that the marriage was genuine, that he was not a threat to the security of the State, that he was an altogehter law-abiding person etc. Now even this hope, this prospect, has been firmly removed. Families are going to have to break up, wives and mothers are going to be sent away from their husbands and children, husbands and fathers are going to have to abandon the women they love and the children who look up to them. It is a tragedy on a large scale. It is estimated that the number of people affected is in the tens of thousands.
It is hard to deny the fundamental logic of refusing admission - let alone residence and citizenship - to enemy nationals. There are very real security considerations involved. But it is also hard to understand how such legislation could be, in effect - especially when combined with the Wall and the Closure (i.e. total exclusion of "enemy" Palestinians from Israeli territory) - retroactive, and why no "process" is offered to examine individual cases, to see whether there actually is, in any individual case, a security threat.
The only ray of light - human rights activists say - is that the Court was so unusually divided, that five of six Judges did vote to declare the law unconstitutional, and that at least one of those six hinted strongly that he may change his vote when the matter comes up again (as it surely will). The revered Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, voted with the minority.
While the security argument seems to have been the strongest one that the Government used to defend the law, the case also had a marked undercurrent of xenophobia, with many supporters of the law openly invoking their purpose of excluding non-Jews from the Land of Israel, at least as much as possible. Xenophobia of this kind is particularly prominent in the fundamentalist Jewish religious parties, but it is also present elsewhere, e.g. in the second largest Opposition party, "Israel Our Home", led by the extreme right-wing politician, Avigdor Liebermann. A wave of xenophobia has already led in recent years to massive "manhunts" by the police of non-Jewish "illegal" immigrants, deported to their "countries of origin," even if they had not lived in those countries for many years, and now had children who spoke Hebrew, and knew very little - if at all - of their "country of origin" and its language. Most of those immigrant families were Catholics, from the Philippines, hard-working, law-abiding, peaceful families, which could not in any way be thought of as a "threat to national security."
Ultimately such xenophobia was also responsible for the grave crisis in relations with the Church a couple of years ago when the Government simply stopped issuing - or renewing - any visas to Catholic priests and religious. If that policy had not been changed, under tremendous international pressure, the Church would soon have been without almost any priest or religious to serve at the Holy Places. Those who were already physically in the country faced being jailed for being there without a valid visa (!).
Visas and residence permits for Church personnel is actually a matter that has for many years been on the agend of the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel. However, it is not likely that the two Delegations will be able to take it up before completing their current negotiations on an Agreement to reconfirm the fiscal status of the Church, and to safeguard Church property, especially sacred places. These negotiations have been going on for more than seven years - without result. Most recently, Israel postponed the negotiating session earlier planned for 17-18 May: no new dates appear to have been chosen.
.png)
09/06/2018 09:05
