Report: Israeli restrictions harming Palestinian families

Israel’s regime of restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement between the Gaza Strip and West Bank is the subject of a new report by NGOs B’Tselem and HaMoked. A key element of Israel’s apartheid system, restrictions on Palestinians’ ability to travel freely and live where they choose have long affected those living under occupation.

The new report, “So near and yet so far: Implications of Israeli-Imposed Seclusion of Gaza Strip on Palestinians’ Right to Family Life”, focuses on the impact of these policies on Palestinian families, noting how, for example, “there is also absolutely no possibility for Gaza residents to receive official status in Israel or East Jerusalem and live there with a local spouse.”

Israel “prohibits all passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, except in very few exceptional humanitarian cases”, and, “as a rule” prevents Palestinians from registering “a change of address in their ID cards from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.” The consequences can be harsh: see for example, the student at Bethlehem University snatched by Israeli soldiers in 2009 and deported.

As the report makes clear:

Tens of thousands of people must live with this impossible reality in which the state infringes on the most intimate aspects of their lives…The most fundamental and apparently simple matters such as raising a family, living together with one’s partner and children and regular contact with the relatives of both partners, are rendered impossible and impracticable.

Part of a politically-motivated policy of West Bank-Gaza “separation“, Israel’s fragmentation of Palestinian land and people is yet another example of a ‘security’ façade failing to obscure systematic violations of basic rights.

The report can be read in full here.

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