Urgent petition to the HCJ in the case of three women, residents of the West Bank, who were slated for deportation based on their registered address, HCJ 4242/10

June 1, 2010

Urgent petition filed on June 1, 2010, on behalf of three women who were detained in Jerusalem and slated for deportation based on their registered address, without consideration for the fact that their center-of-life is in the West Bank.

The three women were detained while they were escorting a pregnant woman to Al-Muqased Hospital in Jerusalem after one of them presented a Palestinian ID card that had Gaza listed as her registered address. All three were taken in a police car to Erez Crossing, though two of the women had been living in the West Bank for over a decade and have young children there, including one woman with a one-year-old daughter. The authorities also ignored the provisions of the Entry into Israel Law which require that certain procedures be followed, including a requirement to hold a hearing in the event that a competent authority decides to deport someone from Israel.

Gisha learned of this case in an urgent phone call made by a relative of one of the women. The organization filed a petition against the deportation to the Supreme Court that same day. In the petition, Gisha argued that deporting the women based on their registered address while ignoring their de facto place of residence was unlawful. Gisha also made a motion for an order nisi in which it requested the court to instruct the respondents not to deport the petitioners to the Gaza Strip.

The court granted the motion for an order nisi on the same day, instructing the police to refrain from deporting the women to the Gaza Strip pending a further decision in the petition. The court also instructed the respondents to respond within 60 days.Related documents
The petition (Hebrew)