On December 31, 2014, a Palestinian man from the West Bank applied to go on a visit, with his wife and son, to his brother, a resident of the Gaza Strip who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery two weeks earlier. The application was not answered, and HaMoked took the case and sent another application to the military.
On January 22, 2015, with all the applications still unanswered, HaMoked
petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) to instruct the military to approve the man's visit. HaMoked asserted that failure to respond violated both the military's duty to provide swift response to applications as well as its obligation to ensure the normal life of the residents in the occupied territory it administers. HaMoked further claimed that a refusal to allow the man's visit to his brother in Gaza would gravely impinge on the man's rights to family life and freedom of movement. HaMoked went on to recall that Israel and its military had recognised that Gaza and the West Bank formed a single territorial unit.
In its
response to the petition, submitted February 4, 2015, the state held that the request did not meet the stipulated criteria for approving visits to Gaza, as there was no proof that the surgery placed the brother's life at risk. The state stressed that under military procedures, visits to Gaza should only be approved in exceptional humanitarian cases, and that this here was not the case. To support the military's position, the state pointed out that the application to enter Gaza had only been filed two weeks after the date of the surgery, proving, so the state claimed, that the brother's medical condition was not as grave as presented in HaMoked's petition.
In the hearing of February 25, 2015, the court expressed dismay at the state's narrow interpretation of its procedures, and held that it might well be said that the life of a person who had undergone open heart surgery was in danger. Following the court advice that the military retract its decision, the state announced that the visit to the ailing brother in Gaza had been approved for the man and his son, but not for the wife, who was not an immediate relative of the brother. The court
endorsed the parties' agreement and deleted the petition at HaMoked's request.
