On Tuesday 6/7/2021, the Knesset voted to extend the Citizenship Law clause “preventing the unification of Palestinian families”. However, the Jewish government failed to pass the extension of the law, after it did not obtain the number required to pass it, as the votes for and against were tied despite reaching a settlement between the parties of the coalition government that requires extending it for half a year instead of a full year, granting about 1,600 Palestinians resident status, and forming a special committee to examine the provision of more facilities to Palestinian families who suffer from the consequences of this law, which prevents their unification and deprives them of their rights.
The family reunification law has been enacted since 2003, and since then it has been submitted to the Knesset annually for renewal. This law concerns thousands of Palestinian families residing inside the Palestinian territories, in which one of the spouses holds a West Bank or Gaza Strip identity card, and is allowed to stay based on a temporary residence permit that is renewed annually. Another amendment to the law was made in 2007, extending the ban to include the prevention of family unification in the event that one of the spouses is a national or resident of countries that the entity claims are “enemy”, namely Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
As a result of this gravely unjust law, thousands of Palestinians suffer, and families and relatives are scattered, as spouses cannot live together under one roof, forcing children in many cases to be deprived of one parent while they are alive. This is in addition to the restrictions and obstacles that these families face in all respects: health, education, freedom of movement, travel, and the exorbitant financial consequences of issuing temporary residence permits. Asmahan Jabali, head of the committee for families suffering from citizenship law at the Musawah Human Rights Center, which handles the judicial litigation, as well as the parliamentary follow-up to the files preventing family unification, says: “The Palestinian families listed in the ban on family unification, numbering about 300,000, live in a state of economic and social depletion, knowing that about 80% of them are below the poverty line, and are deprived of the most basic necessities of life and basic services such as health, treatment and education.” (Al-Jazeera Net 25/6/2021).
The Jewish entity invokes “security considerations” for the enactment of such unfair laws, which are in fact nothing but racist laws that reflect its state of fear of the demographic factor and the increase in the number of Arabs and Muslims in comparison to the number of Jews, especially in the Jerusalem area and its environs. The attempts to displace the Palestinian families, emptying of neighborhoods and residential areas and the demolition of homes in them, such as the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and the Bustan neighborhood in Silwan, reflect the reality of this matter.
The failure to pass the law in its current form or the proposed amendments in this session due to political differences between the parties in the Jewish government does not mean that it will not be re-introduced or that the suffering of these families has ended, for the Jewish entity is a criminal entity that has never and will never refrain from committing crimes and massacres against the people of Palestine. It did not and will not stop demolishing their homes and displacing them from their cities and villages, and it did not and will not refrain from violating their sanctities and attacking the Masra (ascension) of their Prophet (saw).
Indeed, the Jewish entity would not have dared to commit such crimes had it not been for the betrayal of the rulers of the Muslims, and had it not been for the support of the criminal Western countries. It is therefore incumbent upon the Islamic Ummah and its sincere people of strength and protection to move swiftly to uproot these traitorous rulers, and work to establish the second Khilafah Rashidah (rightly guided Caliphate), that our Prophet Muhammad (saw) gave us glad tidings of, on the ruins of their thrones, which will move its armies to liberate Palestine and uproot the Jewish entity from it.
[وَيَوْمَئِذٍ يَفْرَحُ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ * بِنَصْرِ اللَّهِ يَنصُرُ مَن يَشَاء وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ * وَعْدَ اللَّهِ لَا يُخْلِفُ اللَّهُ وَعْدَهُ وَلَكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ]
“And on that Day, the believers will rejoice. * With the victory of Allah. He gives victory to whom He wills, and He is the Exalted in Might, the Merciful. * [It is] the promise of Allah. Allah does not fail in His promise, but most of the people do not know.” [Ar-Rum: 4-6]
Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Press Release
3 Dhu al-Qi’dah 1442 – Tuesday, 13th July 2021
No: AH / 043 1442
(Translated)