On April 6, 1992, a newborn girl was found on the doorstep of an East Jerusalem orphanage. There was nothing to indicate her identity. The director of the institution, a Palestinian permanent resident of Israel, took the baby under her wings and raised her as her own. She became her legal guardian by order of the Shari'a Court. And so, since the Ministry of Interior refused to register an undocumented child in the population registry, the girl grew up in the orphanage without legal status in Israel. Her case reached HaMoked when she turned 16.
After a lengthy legal battle, the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Humanitarian Affairs decided the girl, by now a teenager, would be granted a B/1 visa for Israel for a period of two years, and could then apply to have her status upgraded. B/1 visas are meant for tourists, and other than a work permit, they give their holders no rights whatsoever. Ironically, since the teenage girl has no status anywhere in the world, she had no passport which could be stamped with the visa.
On December 2, 2012,
HaMoked submitted an appeal against the decision to the Appellate Committee for Foreigners. The appeal contained a scathing criticism of the decision of the lower committee, stating that it was injurious and unreasonable, that it ignored several international norms Israel had undertaken to respect in various international conventions and that it caused severe hardship to the girl. HaMoked demanded the matter be resolved immediately and that the girl be granted permanent status.
On November 6, 2013, after a delay of nearly a year in responding to the appeal,
the appellate committee decided to return the girl's matter for reconsideration by the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Humanitarian Affairs. The appellate committee accepted HaMoked's argument that giving a tourist visa to a person who has no status anywhere in the world provides no solution for her predicament, fails to improve her situation, and in effect, perpetuates it. The appellate committee also agreed with HaMoked's general argument that a B/1 visa confers no social security rights whatsoever and in fact, does not constitute legal status at all. The committee commented that when the Inter-Ministerial Committee granted this visa to the girl, it left her with no status, although there was no dispute that her application had humanitarian grounds. Finally, the appellate committee held that pending the Inter-Ministerial Committee's new decision, the girl's B/1 visa would be renewed.
