HaMoked appeals the Tribunal Judgment approving deportation "for deterrence purposes” of seven innocent spouses and children of Palestinian Jerusalemites

On October 19, 2022, HaMoked submitted a series of appeals to the Jerusalem Court for Administrative Affairs to reverse the Appeals Tribunal judgment of September 22, 2022, which upheld for the first time revocation of family unification status "for deterrence purposes”. The judgment was issued in the matter of 10 Palestinians who have been living in East Jerusalem for years with stay permits or temporary residency status in the framework of family unification and child registration processes, whose only “crime” is that they are distantly related to an assailant who committed an attack against Israelis on January 8, 2017 in Jerusalem. The Tribunal effectively sanctioned the deportation of seven of them (six of them represented by HaMoked and one represented by CAC) to whom the Minister of Interior hastened to send notices that they must “leave Israel within 7 days”, although they have not yet exhausted all legal remedies in their cases. Additionally, the judgment approved the revocation of temporary residency status of three others, who will be issued with stay permits instead.

This is the fourth round of legal proceedings HaMoked has launched on the families’ behalf: in the first two rounds, the Minister of Interior’s revocation decisions had been cancelled in the framework of appeals to the Tribunal due to flaws in the decision-making process. In the third round, as stated above, HaMoked’s appeals were rejected on the finding that even in the absence of express authorization, “the Minister of Interior is authorized to terminate a proceeding of family unification and child registration on grounds of deterrence”.

In the new appeals, HaMoked forcefully challenged this determination, arguing that the Tribunal had chosen “an interpretive move that would cause judicial sages of old to turn over in their graves” as it “completely and blatantly ignores the consistent and well-established case law which holds that human rights cannot be harmed without an express and detailed authorization set in the law”.

HaMoked also criticized the judgment for lacking a detailed review of the proportionality of the revocation decision in each case, and containing instead merely a laconic and general review of the tests of proportionally as applied to the appellants as a whole. HaMoked also expressed dismay over the fact that the Tribunal approved the revocations on the third round of appeals, the round in which the Ministry of Interior dropped all pretenses, stopped raising baseless claims against this or that appellant and outright admitted that it was not authorized to make such decisions. As to the revocation decisions themselves, HaMoked repeated its claims that the decisions were entirely invalid, issued on extraneous grounds, without express authorization, and in severe and direct violation of innocent persons’ basic rights to dignity and family life. HaMoked clarified that the revocations were a cynical act of collective punishment propelled by considerations of revenge and deterrence, without any legitimate bearing on the appellants’ family unification and child registration processes.