On December 8, 2014, the Ministry of Interior conducted a hearing for a Palestinian man born to a mother who is an Israeli resident and a father who is a resident of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), concerning the ministry's intention to reject the family unification application his mother had filed for him. Both during and after the hearing, the conduct of the East Jerusalem Population and Immigration Authority was unacceptable.
In the hearing summons, the population bureau stated that the reason for the intended refusal was "criminal files pending decision" – which might lead to indictments or end in the files' closure. But during the hearing, the man was questioned about completely unrelated issues. Moreover, despite the vital importance of guarding the applicant's privacy during the hearing, other than the officials conducting the hearing, other clerks working at this bureau were present at the hearing. When HaMoked's representative objected to the unrelated line of questioning, the hearing was stopped and one of the other clerks who happened to be present there burst out at HaMoked's representative and then refused to identify himself, as HaMoked's representative had asked him to do.
There were also flaws in the recording of the hearing and the preparation of the transcript. Among other things, for several weeks, despite HaMoked's repeated requests, the ministry did not deliver the hearing transcript. Once the transcript was received (though not from the ministry but via another legal proceeding), it was found not to contain HaMoked's arguments about the wrongful expansion of the hearing's scope, but rather gave the impression that HaMoked's representative had independently elected to terminate the hearing; it did not reflect the fact that the officials conducting the hearing were the ones who had decided to stop the proceeding and it did not record the clerk's outburst.
In January 19, 2015, HaMoked sent a
complaint letter to the Ministry of Interior detailing its grievances. In its response from February 3, 2015, the Ministry of Interior claimed that the transcript contained only technical flaws, and that all the officials who attended the hearing were professionals, whose presence there was not improper. HaMoked wrote again to clarify that the uninvolved clerks' presence at the hearing was indeed inappropriate, and repeated its complaint as to the transcript's preparation and non-delivery. HaMoked also noted that in its response, the ministry had disregarded the clerk's outburst at HaMoked's representative.
