Success in HaMoked appeal to register stateless Jerusalem child: Ministry of Interior will reconsider her registration application under the Entry into Israel Law instead of the inapplicable and racist Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law

Time and again, HaMoked has to conduct lengthy battles against arbitrary Ministry of Interior refusals 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, and are effectively prevented people from developing a normative life. However, in the following case, the Ministry of Interior outdid itself and refused to grant status to a young Jerusalemite girl on particularly preposterous grounds, claiming that the girl was subject to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, a racist law banning Palestinian family unification. (A High Court of Justice order nisi has been pending for almost a year now, requiring the State to justify why it should not revoke this law).

This case concerns a five-year-old girl who lost her father to cancer in 2019 shortly after she was born. The girl has remained stateless since birth despite her family’s efforts to have her registered as a permanent resident of Israel based on the fact that her father was a permanent resident of annexed East Jerusalem and she has lived in the city her entire life. HaMoked appealed to the Appeals Tribunal against the Ministry’s refusal to grant her status on humanitarian grounds, but the appeal was rejected. In its judgement of September 11, 2024, the Appeals Tribunal adopted the position of the Ministry of Interior and ruled, without any legal or moral basis, that the child is subject to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law of 2022, although she cannot be considered as a Resident of the Area [i.e., the West Bank] as defined in this law, given that she never lived in the oPt nor was she ever registered there.

On October 29, 2024, HaMoked appealed to the Jerusalem Court for Administrative Affairs to overturn the Appeals Tribunal judgment. In the appeal, HaMoked challenged, among other things, the Tribunal’s erroneous ruling that “the very existence of a potential to be registered as a resident of the Area, but its non-realization due to various utilitarian considerations, indicates that the person in question is a resident of the Area”. HaMoked also criticized the Tribunal’s preposterous suggestion to expand the definition of “Resident of the Area” in the Law to also include cases where there is “an unfulfilled potential” for registration in the West Bank. HaMoked asserted that leaving the girl stateless exposed her to the threat of deportation and separation from her family, including her siblings who are registered residents of Israel, and also harmed the stability of the entire family. The child’s mother is originally from the West Bank, who married a permanent resident in 2007 and has since lived with him and their three children in Jerusalem, until his untimely death. Despite the lengthy time she has been living in the city, the mother has no Israeli status, as the Ministry of Interior has rejected all her applications and proceedings in her matter, first those her husband submitted and then those filed by HaMoked on her behalf on humanitarian grounds.

The Ministry of Interior has been treating the child with the same heartlessness. Immediately after her father’s death, the Ministry rejected the application he had filed. Once it became clear that the Ministry would not register the child via the appropriate avenue for registering children of Jerusalemites, the mother filed via HaMoked an application to register the child on humanitarian grounds. However, and without any legal basis, the interministerial advisory committee advising the Minister of Interior on grant of status in Israel sent back the application and referred HaMoked to the so-called humanitarian committee established under the Citizenship and Entry into Israel law – although, as stated, this draconian law does not apply to the child. And thus, repeatedly, despite the appeals HaMoked submitted to the Ministry of Interior against this decision, the Ministry refused to register the child, insisting that she fell under the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. It is impossible not to quote the Ministry’s refusal of August 13, 2023, for its utter cynicism: “The minor’s mother is a resident of the Area and she has chosen for her own reasons not to register her daughter in the Area. The mother and daughter form a single family unit and it is impossible to artificially divide the two and consider the child[‘s case] separately. It should be noted that their matter should be reviewed according to the provisions of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law”. HaMoked’s petitions to the Jerusalem Court for Administrative Affairs to grant the child status and rule that the decision to subject her to the draconian law had been given without authority, were to no avail. And therefore, the appeal was filed.

In March 2025, some five months later, the State announced that it accepted the appeal “in the sense of canceling the judgment of the Appeals Tribunal and the administrative decision” which prompted it. The State noted that the child’s case “will be considered according to the Respondent’s procedures and the Entry into Israel Law”. This notice was endorsed by the Court as a judgment on March 19, 2025.

It remains to be hoped that the Ministry of Interior will quickly grant the child and her mother status in Israel and allow them to live a full life.