Center for the Defence of the Individual - Response to a Freedom of Information petition filed by HaMoked reveals: In more than four years, no applications for relocation from Gaza to the West Bank were filed under the procedure the army issued for this purpose
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
02.02.2014

Response to a Freedom of Information petition filed by HaMoked reveals: In more than four years, no applications for relocation from Gaza to the West Bank were filed under the procedure the army issued for this purpose

As part of a policy of separating and isolating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, Israel stopped updating the addresses of people who moved from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank in its copy of the Palestinian population registry. In 2007, the policy was intensified and Israel began treating Palestinians who live in the West Bank with Gaza addresses as illegal aliens in the West Bank, unless they have a military-issued stay-permit. In 2009, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories published a procedure that blocked almost any option of relocating from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. The procedure stipulates that Palestinians would be permitted to "settle" in the West Bank only in exceptional, rare humanitarian cases and only after meeting extremely stringent prerequisites.

HaMoked argued that the procedure was unreasonably strict and that it was hard to imagine anyone meeting its narrow criteria. HaMoked fought a lengthy legal battle against the procedure and Israel's overall policy on this issue, which included, among other things, two High Court of Justice petitions. The battle has thus far resulted in a revised procedure that is only slightly different from the original one.

On November 26, 2012, HaMoked, along with fellow Israeli human rights organization Gisha, filed a Freedom of Information application regarding the processing of applications by Gaza residents to settle in the West Bank and the implementation of the procedure on the ground. Among the questions asked was how many applications for relocation from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank the army had received and how many it had approved.

On April 8, 2013, the army responded, providing a table with figures on address changes for each year between 2006 and 2012. However, the figures appeared to relate to all address changes during those years, rather than specific applications made under the procedure published in 2009. Most of the address changes were a direct result of a political gesture reached during negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

On June 27, 2013, HaMoked again contacted the army, pointing to the inaccuracies in the figures it had provided. When the response failed to arrive, HaMoked petitioned the court seeking it to instruct the army to respond. It was then that the army was forced to admit that between the initial publication of the procedure in 2009 and the publication of its revised version in August 2013, not a single application for settlement in the West Bank was filed.

It seems then, that the strict procedure for settlement in the West Bank has never been put to the test since no Palestinian registered as a Gaza resident used it to file an application to settle in the West Bank. The minor revisions made to the procedure in August 2013 provide little reason to believe a change is coming.