On January 25, 2015,
HaMoked filed a motion under the Contempt of Court Ordinance, in a petition concerning a man from the OPT who is married to a woman from East Jerusalem. The man’s wife had applied for family unification with her husband, but the application was denied on grounds of “conflict of interests”, as the man worked for the Palestinian Authority.
HaMoked filed the motion four months after a
court ruling instructing the Ministry of Interior to give more weight to some factors that supported the approval of the application and to issue a new decision in the matter within 60 days. HaMoked insisted its motion be heard even after the
Ministry of Interior issued its decision, asserting that the ministry had only paid lip service to the the court's instruction to consider certain factors more seriously in its new decision. HaMoked also argued that if the Ministry of Interior objected to the court’s decision in the petition, it should have appealed it rather than create the false impression that it accepted and respected the ruling, when in fact, its new decision ignores parts of the ruling and openly rejects others.
On February 18, 2015, the court
dismissed HaMoked’s motion under the Contempt of Court Ordinance. The court held that HaMoked’s initial petition related to the ministry’s failure to respond to the family unification application within the timeframe stipulated in the judgment, and therefore, there was no cause to review substantive arguments against the ministry’s new decision via a contempt of court motion. The court added that the right way to challenge the ministry’s decision is to file an appeal, and HaMoked intends to pursue this course of action.
