Summary
Israel’s retained control of the occupied territories’ population registry — and hence of all Palestinian identity cards — and of family-unification applications, which decides who may live in the West Bank and Gaza at all (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.40-43).
Details
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Israel “retains complete control over the population registry (as well as borders, water, airspace, taxation, and other vital matters)—and hence the sole authority to permit the issuance of all Palestinian identity cards” (PDF p.40).
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120,000 family-unification applications had been pending since 2000, according to B’Tselem; a study cited by the World Bank estimates 17 percent of West Bank families are affected (PDF p.42-43).
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Sam Bahour’s application had been pending since 1994 (PDF p.40).
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Under the Oslo Accords Israel retained the registry: the power to grant residency, to alter or move residency status between Gaza and the West Bank, and to authorise identity cards (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.131-132).
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The East Jerusalem Ministry of the Interior, which administers Jerusalem residency for a quarter of a million Palestinians, is the ministry’s most overcrowded and underserved branch; its Hebrew-only forms, years of records demanded, and confiscation of identity cards at the booth are described through Samira Aliyan’s and Daoud Kuttab’s cases (PDF p.143-147).
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In part 3 the registry decides identity from birth: a Jewish baby born in Jerusalem, Israel or a settlement is automatically granted a birth certificate and a state identity number, while a Jerusalem Palestinian baby with one West Bank parent receives only a “Notification of Live Birth”, and the number requires secondary and tertiary applications that clerks do not tell parents they must initiate, in the joint report of B’Tselem and HaMoked (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.164-165).
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Hala Odeh’s baby daughter, given no identity number, was refused re-entry at Allenby Bridge and refused a Jordanian passport in Amman as a Jerusalem resident; three months of applications and appeals followed before mother and daughter returned to the city where both were born (PDF p.165-166).
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Israel’s refusal to relinquish control of the registry after the 2005 Gaza redeployment means it alone determines who is a Gazan and who is not, and hence who can come and go from Gaza: entry is permitted, when at all, only to Palestinians registered in Gaza and to individuals who obtain Israeli permits (PDF p.211).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Sam Bahour, Occupation by bureaucracy, B’Tselem, HaMoked, Mona el-Farra