In a heartless judgment, the Appeals Tribunal condemned a young Jerusalemite to remain stateless

Time and again, HaMoked has to fight arbitrary refusals and severe foot-dragging on the part of the Ministry of Interior in handling applications to grant status in Israel to minors from the indigenous population of East Jerusalem. Thus, sometimes even into adulthood, these Palestinians are condemned to remain without any status in the world and without social security rights in their own homes. As they are stateless, they cannot receive services from the National Insurance Institute or medical treatment at the HMOs. They cannot register for school or open a bank account, work legally, obtain a driver's license or travel documents, and they are at risk of arrest at all times. Because of all this, they find it difficult to start a family and maintain social relationships. In many of the cases, these are people who already suffer from complex socio-economic problems. Nonetheless, the Ministry of the Interior, and often the Appeals Tribunal as well, see fit to compound these hardships by refusing to grant them status for protracted periods of time, and sometimes indefinitely, thus preventing these people from rehabilitating their lives. 

Thus in the following case. On January 22, 2022, HaMoked filed an appeal to the Appeals Tribunal to demand that the Ministry of Interior register a young East Jerusalemite man in the Israeli population registry pursuant to Regulation 12 of the Entry into Israel Regulations regulating the registration of a child with only one parent who is a permanent resident of Israel, and reverse the rejection of the application for his registration submitted more than a decade earlier, while he was still a minor.

This is a young man born in 1995 who still lives with his parents. His family has lived in Jerusalem continuously for more than 18 years, but time after time the Ministry of Interior dragged its feet in handling the application to grant him legal status. His father is a permanent resident of the State of Israel, and his mother is a resident of the oPt. The two married in 1992, and have six other children, who, like the appellant, were all born in Israel, but all of whom have permanent status in Israel, some granted only after protracted legal battles, most recently in 2017.

In a judgment of January 9, 2017, regarding the appellant and two of his brothers, the Court for Administrative Affairs ruled that the Ministry of Interior must act in accordance with Regulation 12 of the Entry into Israel Regulations, and rejected the Ministry’s position that the three came under the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law because they had lived in childhood in Abu Dis (in the West Bank beyond the area annexed to Israel). Two of his brothers were thus accorded Israeli status, but the Ministry of Interior refused to examine the young man's case in accordance with this judgment. Only over two years later, following an appeal submitted to the Appeals Tribunal for non-implementation of the Court's judgment, did the Ministry of Interior notify that it intended to refuse his application on “criminal grounds”. HaMoked submitted written arguments against the impending decision on 23.7.2019, but in the end, after another appeal for non-response, was referred again to exhaust the administrative process. This time, too, The Ministry of Interior failed to respond, and again HaMoked had to filed another appeal. In its January 2021 response, the Ministry of Interior proposed an “outline for exhausting the administrative process”, in the framework of which the appellant's "criminal situation" would be reassessed. But the Ministry’s infuriating procrastination continued, and once again HaMoked had to appeal against the failure to respond. Thus, it took about five years for the Ministry of Interior to issue its decision regarding the young man: On January 18, 2022, it announced that it had decided to reject the application for registration of the young man due to a “police preclusion”. The decision listed the young man’s criminal convictions and prison sentences dating back to his childhood, eight and more years prior. The decision did not include any new information against the man or any claim that there was such classified information.

Therefore, HaMoked filed the appeal to overturn this decision, arguing that it was unfair, unreasonable and disproportionate. Among other things, HaMoked claimed that the Ministry of Interior ignored the appellant’s difficult socioeconomic background which led to his having dropped out of school in the fourth grade and getting involved in criminal activity. HaMoked also claimed that the appellant had been maintaining a normative lifestyle for several years and that he had served his debt to society for the acts he committed as a child. HaMoked emphasized that the Ministry of Interior's decision was also invalid because it was based on the procedure for handling family unification status applications for foreign spouses, and not the children of Israeli residents. What's more, HaMoked argued that “the decision is doubly unacceptable, if only for the reason that due weight has not been given to the fact that this is a stateless person who was born in Israel and has been residing therein by virtue of a family unification procedure for children... [and who] has nowhere else to go”. HaMoked argued that the decision severely violated the right to family life of the young man and his family, and that it meant the permanent expulsion of a son and brother from his home and his city since youth. HaMoked concluded that the harm that would be caused to him and his family by his removal was totally disproportionate to any benefit that would be gained.

On February 4, 2024, the Appeals Tribunal rejected the appeal. The Tribunal did not see fit to extend a lifeline to a young man whose life has been difficult from the start and who has no possibility of relocating. In his judgment, Judge Halevga ruled that “although the most recent conviction for which he served a prison sentence is for offenses he committed over a decade ago, ... they indicate recidivism and a danger on the part of the appellant to public safety and security," and ruled that the Ministry of Interior's decision "lies well within the realm of reasonableness and that there was no administrative or other flaw in it that justifies the intervention of the Tribunal”. Thus, he condemned the young man to remain with no possibility of leading a normal life in his city of birth or elsewhere.

HaMoked is preparing an appeal the Court for Administrative Affairs to overturn this judgment.