Gisha files urgent petition to High Court to allow an Israeli citizen who lives in Gaza and her children to return to their home in the Strip
July 24, 2017
The petition was filed after the Gaza Civil Liaison Administration (CLA) demanded that the petitioner provide the Palestinian phone number of her spouse, a Gaza resident, as a condition for processing the permit application. The CLA rejected the Israeli phone number it was given, claiming it was “incorrect.”
The petitioner, Ms. N.A., is an Israeli citizen who married a Gaza resident in 1981 and moved to live with him in the Strip. The couple now has ten children. N.A.’s residence in the Strip is authorized under the Gaza CLA “Divided Families Procedure,” (Hebrew) and requires a permit which is renewed roughly every six months.
Last April, the petitioner entered Israel, accompanied by her minor children, to visit family. Six days later, she submitted an application to the Israeli citizens desk at the Gaza CLA for a permit to return with her children to their home in Gaza.
The CLA was slow to respond, and in the meantime, issued notice of a new policy (Hebrew) whereby every application by an Israeli citizen to enter the Gaza Strip must include the address and cell phone number of the Palestinian resident the applicant wishes to visit. The notice also stated that the policy would be applied retroactively to applications that predate it but had not yet been approved or denied.
Gisha and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual wrote to the commander of the Gaza CLA, Col. Fares Atillah (Hebrew), asking to annul the new policy. The letter emphasized that the CLA has no authority to demand these phone numbers and that the requirement constitutes exertion of undue pressure on the part of the authorities. The letter also stated that no clarifications were given as to why and for what purpose the information is being collected, and that the requirement was unlawful, as it was imposed indiscriminately and irrespective of any individual security concerns. On June 13, 2017, the Israeli citizens desk provided a laconic response (Hebrew).
Despite the above, the petitioner, who feared she would not be able to return to her spouse if she did not provide his cell phone number, decided to provide the CLA with the number she uses to contact him – a number listed on one of the Israeli cell phone networks. The CLA, however, was not satisfied, saying the number was “incorrect” and demanding her spouse’s number registered on the Palestinian cell phone network.
On June 22, 2017, Gisha filed a petition on behalf of N.A. and her minor children, demanding that their request to return home to the Gaza Strip be approved. The petitioners repeated their arguments against the requirement, which, on top of everything else, does not appear in the Procedure for the Entry of Israelis into the Gaza Strip, (Hebrew) published by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). The conduct of the CLA, the petition states, violates the petitioner’s and her children’s fundamental rights to family life, dignity, freedom of movement and autonomy. The petition also sought the general remedy of rescinding the new sweeping requirement.
In their preliminary response, the respondents argued that the petition should be dismissed, as they had approved the petitioner’s application even before the petition was submitted (though no written evidence of this was presented), and the petition had therefore become irrelevant. They did not address the substantive arguments against the requirement to provide cell phone numbers.
On June 27, 2017, in accordance with the respondents’ notice that the application had been approved, N.A. and her children entered Gaza and were reunited with their father and husband. On July 23, 3017, the petition was deleted (Hebrew).
At the time of writing, the CLA persists with the implementation of its new directive, which does not appear in the relevant procedure, and Israeli citizens wishing to enter Gaza are still required to provide the cell phone numbers of the Palestinian residents they wish to visit. The legality of this new demand has yet to be reviewed by the court. Nevertheless, Gisha’s clients who refuse to provide the cell phone numbers of their Palestinian relatives have found that the CLA does in fact process their applications, and has even approved some of them. This further substantiates Gisha’s arguments that the Gaza CLA‘s approach is to try until met with refusal, and that the demand for Palestinians’ phone numbers is not grounded in security as purported, and is certainly not necessary in every single case.
