On 18.1.2021 we filed a petition against the Population and Immigration Authority, demanding that they stop discrimination against Israeli citizens who are related to residents of the Occupied Territories, and to stop asking them to prove that their life is based in Israel as a condition to receiving registration and documentation services. We also demanded that they issue a birth certificate for a year old infant from Lod, whose father is a resident of the Occupied Territories, and to register the child under his mother’s identification card.
The baby was born in an Israeli hospital, son to an Israeli citizen residing in Lod, and still the Population and Immigration Authority refuses to issue the documentation since the mother has not proved that her life is based in Israel. The father of the family is a Ramallah resident, and cannot receive a permit to live in Israel. Since the child is unregistered, many rights were withheld from him and his family. Among them, the family was not given the right to rental assistance (since there is no documentation for the third child, which grants it), and the child did not receive health services in a medical clinic in the first, and most critical, months of his life.
The discriminatory refusal to grant services, and the demand to prove one’s life is based in Israel is directed at people with relatives residing in the Occupied Territories in the past or present. The policy is applied to the Arab population, which naturally has relations to people living in the Occupied Territories. The petition argued that this policy violates the rights of thousands of Israeli citizens in their pursuit of registration services, dignity, equality, privacy, and a number of social rights - including education, health and welfare services - which depend on presenting identification.
For further information (Hebrew)