Foreign nationals who are married to Israeli residents can acquire Israeli status through the
graduated procedure for family unification. Under the protocol of Ministry of Interior, once the family unification application is accepted, the foreign spouse may stay in Israel for a period of 27 months by virtue of temporary visas (B/1 visa or a DCO permit) which do not afford social security rights to their holder. At the end of the first stage, the foreign spouse will receive temporary status (A/5 visa) for three years, and only at the end of which, provided there is no preclusion, he will receive permanent status in Israel.
The family unification applicationOn July 12, 1994, a Palestinian woman who is an Israeli resident filed a family unification application for her husband, a resident of Ramallah. Two years later and only after HaMoked requested the interior ministry to expedite the handling of the application, the interior ministry "remembered" to instruct the couple to supply various additional documents, on top of the ones the already submitted, as proof that their "center of life" was in Israel. HaMoked provided the requested documents three months later. In September 1998, some two years after the documents were sent, the interior ministry responded that the family unification application "was already rejected on September 11, 1997, on the grounds that the center of life had not been established"(!); this despite the fact that the couple had been living in Jerusalem continually since 1994, despite their having provided the interior ministry with the documents it demanded and despite the fact that until then neither the couple or HaMoked had been notified of the rejection.
That same day, HaMoked wrote to the interior ministry to demand it continue processing the family unification application, and expressed dismay over the stated grounds for rejection. In January 1999, the interior ministry announced it had decided to reexamine the rejection decision, and on June 8, 2000, six years after it had been filed, the ministry finally approved the family unification request. Thenceforth, the husband lived in Israel by virtue of temporary stay permits.
The Temporary Order: the Citizenship and Entry into Israel LawIn May 2002 – just 4 months before the husband could apply for temporary status under the graduated procedure –
government resolution 1813 entered into effect, which completely stopped family unification with OPT residents. In 2003 the ban was enacted in
the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) which,
along with its amendments,
was approved by the court. Following petitions filed by human rights' organizations as well as by private individuals who were harmed by the Law, the court set several qualifications to the Law and its applicability. In the framework of an
appeal filed by HaMoked against the interior ministry's refusal in another case to grant temporary status to a Palestinian who was in the process of family unification with an Israeli resident,
the Supreme Court ruled, inter alia, that "the applicant's status may be upgraded, even if his status had not been upgraded prior to the decisive date [i.e. the government resolution] and this, if the non upgrade resulted from an error or an unjustified delay caused by the respondent [i.e. the interior ministry]."
In another decision on the petition by another Palestinian couple whose family unification process had been terminated due to delays by the interior ministry, the Court for Administrative Affairs concluded that "it would not be justified to hold the four missing months against the petitioners and to deny the petitioner the status upgrade, given the fact that the respondent was in a considerable delay of more than four years in approving the initial family unification application".
The upgrade request In July 2012, following legal developments concerning family unification processes with OPT residents,
HaMoked requested the interior ministry to grant the husband temporary status. HaMoked stressed that the courts' decision clearly points to the husband's eligibility for temporary status, given that the interior ministry had delayed for six whole years until it had approved the family unification application. It should be noted that otherwise, the husband would not only have been able to receive temporary status, by then he would have completed all stages of the graduated procedure, and would have received permanent status before the government resolution banning such family unifications.
On September 5, 2012, the interior ministry announced that subject to the existence of a joint center of life in Israel, and provided there were no security or criminal preclusions, the husband's status would be upgraded to temporary status (A/5). Finally, 18 years after the husband came to live with his wife in East Jerusalem, he will receive status in Israel.
