Gisha files a petition to change the address of a Palestinian resident and her three children who live in the West Bank, HCJ 8101/14 Jabarin et al. v. Minister of Defense et al.

November 30, 2014, Gisha petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf of Ms. Jabarin and her children. The petitioner has lived in the West Bank since 1991. Her children were born in the West Bank and have spent their entire lives there. Today, 23 years after moving to the West Bank, though her center of life is in the West Bank and she has asked to have her and her children’s addresses changed to reflect where they actually live, their addresses remain in the Gaza Strip.

The petitioner has been trying to change her registered address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank since 1998. She has submitted several change-of-address requests, including around the time of the 2011 Israeli change-of-address gesture. The gesture was offered to the Palestinians as part of a package of gestures, which included, among others, a change of address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank for 5,000 Palestinian residents who had moved to the West Bank before 2008 and were still registered as living in the Gaza Strip.

The petitioner has not received a reply to her request. Meanwhile, her basic rights and those of her children are being harmed – in particular, their right to family life, freedom of movement, and freedom of religion. Every aspect of her life is influenced by the fact that her official address does not correspond to where she actually lives – the petitioner has not seen her relatives who live in the Gaza Strip since her father’s funeral in 2005, and she is ineligible to receive services from military authorities granted to Palestinian residents registered as living in the West Bank.

Ms. Jabarin is one of four clients on whose behalf Gisha filed a Freedom of Information petition to the District Court. The petition was filed on October 26, 2014, after the army refused to address the Freedom of Information application that was filed regarding the status of their change of address applications under the 2011 political gesture.

To read the petition (Hebrew)