Center for the Defence of the Individual - Following HaMoked’s petition, the Court for Administrative Affairs ordered the state to grant permanent status to the children of an Israeli resident: The deciding date is the date of submission of the application and not the date when a decision is made regarding the applications, as the state claimed
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
27.10.2009

Following HaMoked’s petition, the Court for Administrative Affairs ordered the state to grant permanent status to the children of an Israeli resident: The deciding date is the date of submission of the application and not the date when a decision is made regarding the applications, as the state claimed

In a judgment dated 19 August 2009, the Court for Administrative Affairs in Jerusalem ended the Interior Ministry’s protracted mistreatment of an Israeli resident, who requested that permanent status be granted to her children who live with her in Israel. The petitioner’s story is a clear example of the method the ministry has adopted in order to “encourage” Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to leave the city, in the course of its endeavor to preserve “demographic balance” in Jerusalem. Although this is one case among many, indeed, this case and the judgment eventually given clearly demonstrate the unacceptable conduct of the Ministry of the Interior – the ministry will stop at nothing in its fight to maintain the city’s Jewish majority.

The petitioner, a permanent resident who is married to a resident of the Territories, is a mother of eight. The mother and her baby daughter are permanent residents while the rest of the children have no status in Israel. In 2002, after the family relocated to Jerusalem, the petitioner submitted an application for family unification with her husband and for status for her seven eldest children. However, as a response from the Ministry of the Interior was not forthcoming, and in order to prevent their children from being completely devoid of status, the couple registered their children in the West Bank population registry.

During the substantial amount of time that elapsed between the submission of the applications and the ministry’s response, the ministry had changed its policy and announced that applications for family unification are required for the children too. However, the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) 2003-5763, in its original version, did not allow for submission of such applications insofar as, at the date of submission, the children (the applicants) are 12 years or older. Therefore, the Ministry of the Interior informed the petitioner that the five younger children would only be granted temporary permits, which legalize their presence in Israel but do not entitle them to social security rights. The eldest girls, who had already turned 12 when the applications were submitted, would not be granted any status, and would be branded illegal aliens!

Following the Ministry of the Interior’s refusal to grant status to the children – who, other than their registration in the Palestinian population registry, which was carried out due to constraints, had no affinity to the Territories – HaMoked petitioned the court.

Following the submission of the petition, the state announced that the five younger children would receive temporary status for two years, after which they would be able to apply for permanent status, but continued to refuse to grant any status to the eldest girls. Two years after the younger five children were granted temporary status, four of them received permanent status, while the temporary status granted to the fifth girl, who had since passed the age of 14, was extended but not upgraded.

Following the amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), which changed the requisite age for the granting of status from 12 years to 14 years, HaMoked rushed to make another appeal to the Ministry of the Interior, requesting that the eldest girls be granted status in Israel. The request was approved and the girls were granted temporary status. Two years after they received temporary status, a hearing was held for them. During the hearing, when it emerged that the eldest girl had become engaged to a resident of the Territories, and even married him later on, the Interior Ministry revoked her status. The other daughter’s temporary status was extended but was not upgraded to permanent status.

In its judgment, the court was required to determine what kind of status would be granted to the petitioner’s three eldest daughters, whose problem had yet to be resolved. The court accepted all of HaMoked’s claims and ruled that these girls were also entitled to permanent status.

The court ruled that an application must be considered in light of the child’s age at the time the application for status was submitted, and this is the deciding date insofar as status in Israel is concerned, rather than the date immediately following two years during which the child has a center of life in Israel, as the Ministry claimed. At the time the application was submitted, the second and third daughters were under 12 years of age. Therefore, the court ruled that they were both entitled to permanent status. This, since in accordance with the original version of the temporary order, which applied during that period of time, permanent status must be granted to a child of an Israeli resident whose age is under 12.

Basing its actions on an internal procedure -- which established that a child who receives temporary status for two years, during which he passes the age of 14, must not be upgraded to permanent status -- the Ministry of the Interior agreed to grant the second and third daughters temporary status, but refused to upgrade their status. The court ruled that the Interior Ministry’s internal procedure was illegal. Thus the court repeated a previous ruling, recently given, according to which the deciding date is the date of submission of an application and not the date marking two years.

In the eldest daughter’s case, Regulation 12 of the Entry into Israel Regulations applies, according to which children who are born in Israel to Israeli residents are to be registered in the population registry. The court avoided discussing the Regulation’s application to the eldest daughter’s case, but ruled that she must be granted permanent status, despite the fact that when the application was submitted she was already over 12 years of age. The court ruled that the application to register her in the Israeli population registry must be considered to have been pending at the time of the amendment to the temporary order, according to which it is possible to grant permanent status to children who were under the age of 14 when their application was submitted.

The court also ruled that the revocation of the eldest daughter’s temporary status was unlawful, as, on the date of the submission of the application to register her, as well as on the date when it was decided to grant her temporary status for the first time, she was not married. Therefore the court ruled that the ministry’s claim that it was given false statements as to the daughter’s personal status – has no merit.