Family unification status cannot be revoked as a collective punishment; District Court accepts HaMoked’s appeals and prevents deportation of seven innocent Palestinians from East Jerusalem “for general deterrence considerations”

On April 13, 2023, the Jerusalem Court for Administrative Affairs accepted HaMoked’s series of appeals of October 19, 2022, and reversed the Appeal Tribunal judgment of September 20, 2022, which upheld for the first time revocation of family unification status "for deterrence purposes”. The judgment of Judge Tamar Bar-Asher 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 and who are somehow related to an assailant who committed a lethal attack against Israelis on January 8, 2017 in Jerusalem. HaMoked’s appeals argued that their status revocations were essentially a collective punishment of innocent people. Seven of the ten had been left with no status in Jerusalem following the Appeal Tribunal judgement. Thus, for the time being, the threat of their deportation from the city has been lifted.

The judgment invalidated the Tribunal’s ruling that the Minister of Interior is authorized to terminate family unification and child registration procedures due to considerations of deterrence even without explicit statutory authorization. The Judge ruled that the Minister’s discretion to refuse or revoke status on security grounds is strictly confined to the express authorization set in the law, i.e., to situations where a direct security risk arises from the applicant/permit holder themselves or their immediate relatives as defined in the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (child, parent or sibling and their spouses). In the case in hand, ruled the Court, not only are some of the appellants only distantly related to the assailant (nephews and cousins), but “the opinion of the security officials on which the said Minister of Interior decision is based does not concern any security threat, direct or indirect, arising from the appellants or anyone of their family members… but rather information regarding ‘general considerations of deterrence’”, and nothing more. The Judge noted that had the State wanted to legislate an expansion of the Minister of Interior’s authority, it had ample time to do so in the intervening years while the judicial proceedings were ongoing.

This is the fourth proceeding regarding these family members. The Judge criticized the Minister of Interior’s third decision (and thereby also the Tribunal’s judgment) for failing to substantively contend with the ruling in the matter of Khatib, which constitutes “a correct precedent that no substantive reason has been found to stray from”. In the matter of Khatib – a case in which HaMoked successfully represented a woman whose residency was stripped by the Minister of Interior following an act of violence by her son – the Court ruled, among other things, that the revocation of status in the absence of any direct or indirect security preclusion is disproportionate and is motivated by illegitimate punitive considerations. Furthermore, the Court ruled that when it considered the revocation, the Minister failed to give proper weight to the resultant grave harm to Mrs. Khatib’s basic right to family life and the severe impact of uprooting the family from their permanent place of residence. Citing this, Judge Bar-Asher ruled that in this case also, the Minister had not duly considered “the far-reaching implication of uprooting the appellants’ families from the place that has been their center of life for many years… or the possibility of anyone from the family being torn away as a result of the Minister’s decision”.

The Court ruled that the State must consider – for the fourth time – the appellants’ applications to renew their permits or status, and issue a final decision within six months from the date of the judgment. The Court also ordered the State to bear the appellants’ trial costs to a total of NIS 38,000 (2,000 for each appellant). This marks the successful end of the fourth round of legal proceedings launched by HaMoked on the families’ behalf.