RAMALLAH: Israel is taking unilateral steps in order to institutionalize a new reality of separation between the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip and the one living in the West Bank, Israeli human rights organizations stated in a new report released yesterday.
B’Tselem, the Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and HaMoked, Center for the Defense of the Individual, warned against harming Palestinians’ human rights and their possibility to realize their right for self-definition.
According to the rights organizations, since the beginning of the current intifada Israel has been working in different ways to create a separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and split the Palestinians into two different populations.
This policy reached its peak in the past year, the report said, with the new demand from residents of the territories whose home is registered in Gaza to obtain a stay permit for the West Bank, and with the refusal to let these residents enter the West Bank claiming they are “illegal aliens” there.
“Through this new regime of permits, Israel is turning Palestinians from the territories into illegal aliens in their own home, in an unprecedented move which has no legal basis,” the organizations said.
B’Tselem and HaMoked noted that from November 2007, a Gaza resident staying in the West Bank is required to have a permit “to stay in West Bank.” The permit must be obtained from the army, and it is only valid for three months.
In order to receive such a permit, the person must prove that he has been living in the West Bank continuously for the past eight years, that he is married and has children, and that there are no security-related or police limitations against him, and he must add a “humanitarian” argument to the request.
Even if this person meets all the detailed conditions and requirements, the report said, the Israeli Army could turn down his request. The report went on to claim that Israel’s permit method denies Palestinians’ right to choose where they want to live.
According to the organizations, Israel has stopped updating the addresses of Palestinians who have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, making illegitimate use of the control it obtained over the Palestinian population registration.
Meanwhile, the expected release of 40 Hamas lawmakers held in Israeli prisons before the end of 2009, as part of a deal to release abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, is expected to bring Mahmoud Abbas’ term as Palestinian president to an early close in a legal sense, though not necessarily in practice, a report said yesterday.
