Petition against Israel’s decision to deny a Palestinian passage from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, where his registered address is, due to a “security block”
February 4, 2019. The petitioner, a married father of two, was born in the Gaza Strip in 1981. In 1999, when the “safe passage” between the two parts of the Palestinian territory was open, he moved to live in the West Bank and in 2000, he changed his registered address to Hebron. In 2001, he returned to live in the Gaza Strip.
The petitioner contacted Israeli authorities three times via the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee to request a permit to allow him to return to live in the West Bank, in keeping with his registered address. The respondents initially claimed that they had not received his permit application, then that the application was still being processed, and finally, demanded that he provide a different telephone number than the one they had been given as a condition for completing the processing of his application, without explaining why. Ultimately Israel denied his permit application, alleging that he posed a security threat.
Gisha filed a petition (Hebrew) against this decision, emphasizing that the petitioner’s application met Israel’s narrow criteria for travel of Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank. The denial of the permit application on vague security allegations was issued perfunctorily, and is part of a troubling trend of issuing seemingly bogus security-based denials in order to prevent movement of Palestinians, even in cases where Israel’s restrictive access policy would ostensibly allow it.
We further argued that the respondents’ decision was unreasonable as it blindly adopted the position of the Israel Security Service and ignored equally important considerations, including the fact that Israel could, if the petitioner does indeed pose a security threat, take enforcement measures against him once he exits the Strip.
The state filed its response (Hebrew) on March 11, 2019, claiming the petitioner has ties to a terrorist organization and terrorist operatives and that his passage through Israel cannot be allowed given the security threat he poses. The state further said that despite having a registered address in the West Bank, the petitioner’s “overall life circumstances indicate that he should be regarded as a Gaza resident.”
This argument is particularly perplexing given that Israel only considers “life circumstances” as a factor when it can use it to force a Palestinian to live in Gaza. In the opposite circumstances, when Palestinians who have been living in the West Bank for years but have a registered address in the Gaza Strip seek to gain official status in the West Bank, Israel invariably refuses, and life circumstances attesting to residency in the West Bank are casually dismissed.
A hearing has been scheduled for May 19, 2019.
