On January 25, 2017,
Minister of Interior Deri announced that he had revoked the status of eleven family members of the man who perpetrated a deadly attack against Israelis in Armon HaNatziv in Jerusalem on January 8, 2017. On the following day,
HaMoked hastened to appeal to the Appeals Tribunal in a bid to prevent the deportation of five of the family members, asking the Tribunal to cancel the unacceptable decision. On December 12, 2017, the Tribunal accepted HaMoked’s position as to four of the appellants,
cancelled the Minister’s decision on their matter, and ordered the Ministry of Interior to decide their cases anew and conduct full proceedings accordingly.
On March 11, 2018, the Appeals Tribunal heard the case of the fifth appellant, the assailant’s mother – a woman who has been living in Jerusalem for some 30 years, built her home and raised her children in the city –
whose status was revoked on the grounds that she was in a bigamous marriage. The hearing was conducted in the presence of the appellant only, without a Ministry of Interior representative being present, because the Ministry’s legal department was on strike.
At the end of the hearing, the Tribunal issued
its judgment, instructing that the woman’s case be returned to the Ministry of Interior for reconsideration, among other things, based on the fact that her husband had filed for family unification with her only after he divorced his first wife, as proved by documents supplied by HaMoked in the framework of the appeal. The Tribunal ruled that the Ministry of Interior must decide the woman’s case within 75 days from the date of the judgment, and that steps of enforcement and deportation, insofar as they were taken against her, must be delayed for 30 additional days. The Tribunal also ordered the Ministry of Interior to pay trial costs in the sum of NIS 3,000.
