St. Yves Obtains a Temporary Jerusalem ID for a Jerusalemite Citizen After Years of Deliberate Postponement by the Israeli Ministry of Interior

• Date: 2017-01-18

The Society of St. Yves – Catholic Center for Human Rights was able to obtain a temporary Jerusalem ID for “N.A.N”, a woman who holds a West Bank ID married to a Jerusalemite citizen, after many attempts by the Israeli Ministry of Interior to delay her due application to obtain temporary residency.

“N.A.N” lives in Shufat camp and has 5 children. She applied for a family unification permit in 1994 and obtained it in 1998. However, the Israeli Ministry of Interior tried to constantly interrupt renewing those permits for unjustified reasons, after which she approached St. Yves for legal assistance.

St. Yves built its case before the Israeli Ministry of Interior proving that the center of life of this family is indeed in Jerusalem, stressing that according to the law rectified in 2006 which stipulates  that citizens who have obtained a family unification permit before 2003 have the right to obtain the temporary Jerusalem ID, there was no valid legal reason for the Israeli Ministry of Interior to prevent her from obtaining a permit, and finally granted the citizen the temporary Jerusalem ID.

It is noteworthy that Israel maintains an extremely rigid and discriminatory residency policy against Palestinians in Jerusalem, and deliberately impedes family unification applications, which is the case when people with a different legal status according to Israel (West Bank ID and Jerusalem ID) marry.  In that case, family unification procedure has to be started to allow the spouse with Palestinian ID to stay legally with their family in Jerusalem.

For more information about family unification procedures read our report: http://www.saintyves.org/downloads/reports/20150407050234.pdf