Summary
Israel’s Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (temporary provision), 5763-2003, in an unofficial translation: for as long as it remains in force, and despite any legal provision including article 7 of the Citizenship Law, 5712-1952, the Minister of the Interior shall not grant an inhabitant of an area — Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, excluding the inhabitant of an Israeli settlement in the area — citizenship under the Citizenship Law or a license to reside in Israel under the Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952, and the Area Commander shall not grant such an inhabitant a permit to stay in Israel under the security legislation in the area; the reservations allow only fixed-period licenses or permits for work, medical treatment or another temporary purpose up to a cumulative six months, a license or permit to prevent separation of a child aged up to 12 from a parent staying legally in Israel, and discretionary citizenship or residence for an inhabitant the Minister is convinced identifies with the State of Israel and its goals and who, or a family member of his, performed a significant act to promote the security, economy or another important matter of the State, or whose grant is of special interest to the State; transition rules preserve extension of pre-existing licenses and permits and a temporary-stay permit for pre-12 May 2002 applicants, who may not on that basis receive citizenship or a temporary or permanent stay license, and the Law lasts one year from publication, prolongable by the Government with Knesset approval for up to one year at a time (Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (temporary provision), 5763-2003 (2003), PDF p.1-2).
What the file is
The English text of the Law in one 2-page file, 676 words in the text copy, headed “(Unofficial Translation)”: sections 1-4 on PDF p.1, the completion of section 4, section 5 and a closing Knesset URL on PDF p.2. No signatories, passage footnote, publication date or Hebrew text appears in the file, so no enactment day or month is given beyond the year 5763-2003 in the title. The text copy was checked against the original at PDF p.1-2; the original reads the same, including the Hebrew year printed as 5862 recorded in Section by section and Open questions. No table or figure appears in the file.
Section by section
- Section 1, Definitions (PDF p.1). “area” — any one of the following: Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip; “Citizenship Law” — The Citizenship Law, 5712-1952; “Entry into Israel Law” — Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952; “Area Commander” — the commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the area; “inhabitant of an area” — including anyone residing in the area, even though he is not registered in the population register of the area, and excluding the inhabitant of an Israeli settlement in the area.
- Section 2, Limitation of citizenship and stay in Israel (PDF p.1). During the period in which this law shall remain in force, despite what is said in any legal provision, including article 7 of the Citizenship Law, the Minister of the Interior shall not grant the inhabitant of an area citizenship on the basis of the Citizenship Law, and shall not give him a license to reside in Israel on the basis of the Entry into Israel Law, and the Area Commander shall not grant a said inhabitant a permit to stay in Israel, on the basis with the security legislation in the area — “on the basis with” as printed.
- Section 3, Reservations (PDF p.1). Despite article 2: (1) the Minister of the Interior, or the Area Commander, as the case may be, is entitled to grant an inhabitant of an area a license to reside in Israel, or a permit to stay in Israel, for a fixed period, for the purpose of work, or in order to receive medical treatment, and also for some other temporary purpose — for a cumulative period of no more than six months, as well as a license to reside in Israel, or a permit to stay in Israel in order to prevent the separation of a child, aged up to 12, from its parent who is staying in Israel legally; (2) the Minister of the Interior is entitled to grant citizenship, or provide a license to reside in Israel, to an inhabitant of an area, if he is convinced that he identifies with the State of Israel and its goals, and that he or a member of his family performed a significant act to promote the security, economy or some other important matter of the State, or that the granting of citizenship or provision of the license to reside in Israel are of special interest to the State; in this paragraph, “member of family” — spouse, parent, child.
- Section 4, Transition regulations (PDF p.1-2). Despite this law: (1) the Minister of the Interior or the Area Commander, as the case may be, is entitled to prolong the validity of a license to reside in Israel, or of a permit to stay in Israel, that were in the possession of the inhabitant of an area on the eve of this law going into force; (2) the Area Commander is entitled to grant a permit for a temporary stay in Israel to an inhabitant of an area who applied for citizenship in accordance with the Citizenship Law, or made a request for a license to reside in Israel in accordance with the Entry into Israel Law, before Sunday, Sivan 1, 5862 (May 12, 2002) — the Hebrew year printed “5862”, as printed — and in whose case a decision was not yet taken on the day this law went into force, as long as (PDF p.2) the said inhabitant shall not be granted, on the basis of this paragraph, citizenship in accordance with the Citizenship Law, and shall not be given a license to stay temporarily, or to stay permanently, in accordance with the Entry into Israel Law.
- Section 5, Validity (PDF p.2). This law shall remain in force until the end of a year from the day on which it is published, but the Government is entitled, with the approval of the Knesset, to prolong its validity by order, from time to time, for a period that shall not exceed one year on each occasion.
- Closing line (PDF p.2). The Knesset URL for the Law’s English page; no other closing matter is printed.
Key passages
- “the Minister of the Interior shall not grant the inhabitant of an area citizenship” (section 2, PDF p.1)
- “excluding the inhabitant of an Israeli settlement in the area” (section 1, in the definition of “inhabitant of an area”, PDF p.1)
- “in order to prevent the separation of a child, aged up to 12, from its parent who is staying in Israel legally” (section 3(1), PDF p.1)
- “he identifies with the State of Israel and its goals” (section 3(2), PDF p.1)
Evidence the work relies on
A statute, not an evidentiary work. Its internal authorities are article 7 and the Citizenship Law, 5712-1952 as a whole, the Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952, and “the security legislation in the area”, none of whose texts is reproduced in the file beyond the references given. The one date the file gives for an external fact is the application cutoff in section 4(2), May 12, 2002.
Analysis
Read on its own terms, this Law is a blanket bar with narrow, mostly temporary exceptions. The bar in section 2 is framed by the defined terms: it applies to an “inhabitant of an area”, a category that includes a person residing in Judea and Samaria or the Gaza Strip whether or not registered in the area’s population register, and expressly excludes the inhabitant of an Israeli settlement in the area, so the bar as defined does not fall on settlers in the same territory. It overrides “any legal provision”, naming article 7 of the Citizenship Law — the spouse-naturalisation provision of the 1952 law as ingested here — and it bars all three routes at once: citizenship, a residence license, and an Area Commander’s stay permit. The exceptions do not restore a family-unification route as such: section 3(1) allows fixed-period status for work, medical treatment or another temporary purpose capped cumulatively at six months, and child-separation status only up to age 12; section 3(2) is a discretionary, merits-to-the-State exception, turning on identification with the State and its goals plus a significant act for the State’s security, economy or another important matter, or special interest to the State. The Law presents itself as temporary — one year from publication, prolongable a year at a time with Knesset approval — and the file contains no security rationale, no figures and no statement of which marriages or families prompted it; its operation on spouses is by way of the article 7 override and the absence of any spouse exception, not by naming spouses.
People, organizations, places and events
Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (temporary provision), 5763-2003, Citizenship Law (1952), Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952, Knesset, Israel Defense Forces, West Bank, Gaza, Israel
Concepts
Population registry and family unification
How it relates to other sources
This is the primary text of the Law other ingested sources describe in passing. Stateless Citizenship (2013) records the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (2003) as a “temporary order” extended nine times, denying Palestinian citizens residency or citizenship status for their Palestinian spouses from the OPT on the basis of nationality, its constitutionality upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2006 (PDF p.83, footnote 32, recorded on Citizenship Law (1952)); this file states the bar and the one-year, renewable validity that produced the extensions, but it does not name spouses, does not give an extension count and does not mention any court ruling, and the two accounts are held side by side on Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (temporary provision), 5763-2003. A later source gives the same law, under the name 2003 Citizenship and Entry Emergency Law, as barring Palestinians married to Israelis from becoming citizens, in a footnote example in For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group (PDF p.134, footnote 5; see the log entry for that ingest). The 1952 laws it overrides are ingested as Nationality Law, 5712-1952 — whose section 7 is the spouse-naturalisation route this Law’s article 7 reference engages — and Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952 (1952).
Open questions
- Section 4(2) prints the cutoff date as “Sunday, Sivan 1, 5862 (May 12, 2002)”; the Hebrew year 5862 does not correspond to 2002 alongside the other Hebrew years in the file (5712-1952, 5763-2003), and the corresponding year by the file’s own pattern would be 5762. It is recorded as printed, byte-checked in the text copy and confirmed in the original, not corrected.
- Section 2 prints “on the basis with the security legislation in the area”, as printed.
- The file gives no publication day, so the one-year validity period in section 5 cannot be dated from this file, and no extension order is in the file; Molavi’s count of nine extensions and the May 2006 Supreme Court ruling are outside this file.
- The file does not state whether “Judea and Samaria” and “the Gaza Strip” in section 1 are defined elsewhere; no other definition is printed.
Coverage
PDF p.1-2 of 2, read in full.