العربية
HE
العربية
HE
On December 17, 2023, HaMoked and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) to allow all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem by virtue of stay permits issued pursuant to the family-unification procedure to enter the city via the Shu’fat refugee-camp checkpoint (one of the checkpoints around Jerusalem's perimeter enabling access to the city from neighborhoods located inside its municipal boundaries but beyond the Separation Wall). Since the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza, police officers operating the checkpoint prevented the passage into Jerusalem of some 300 oPt residents who live with their Israeli spouses and families in the Shu’fat RC and the adjacent Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ras Khamis, Ras Shihadeh and Dahiyat al-Salaam. Only people whose ID states they live in close-by Anata town, in the West Bank, were allowed to pass through the Shu’fat checkpoint. All others were told that that they must exit their neighborhoods via other, more remote checkpoints. The petition was filed after the ban on passage was still implemented after the Israel Police informed HaMoked on October 17, 2023 that there was no such instruction. The petition described the difficulties faced by the individual petitioners, among them a plumber and a pharmacist who work outside of the neighborhoods, and others in their situation who were forced to make their way to the rest of Jerusalem via circuitous routes that took over an hour longer, and had to rely on the kindness of car owners for lifts or pay for expensive taxi rides (as there is no public transportation connecting their neighborhoods to the rest of the city). Some had to forgo going to the city for weeks on end, although their daily routine necessities accessing the city, for work, education, health services, and so on. Therefore, the petitioners argued, the ban on passage via Shu’fat checkpoint violated this group’s rights to a livelihood, freedom of movement, equality, dignity and more.
In its response of January 1, 2024, the State claimed that the closure on the West Bank, imposed for the Jewish high holidays, was extended indefinitely after the war broke out, except with regards to some population groups. Thus, on October 10, 2023, oPt residents with stay permits issued pursuant to the family unification procedure were excluded from the closure order and this was communicated to the commanders of the checkpoints in the “Jerusalem envelope” areas. However, admitted the State, “as arises from the petition, it seems that an error occurred in the implementation of the closure order with regards to the entry into Israel of [such] permit holders via the Shu’fat checkpoint, and passage was effectively allowed via this passage only to holders of stay permits issued pursuant to the family unification procedure whose listed address in Anata. To the best of the respondents’ inquiries, this error occurred only at the Shu’fat checkpoint”. The State also informed that on December 12, 2024 (i.e., a day after the petition was filed), the Shu’fat checkpoint commander issued a clarification on this matter to the police officers staffing this checkpoint and clarified that passage there is not restricted to any specific listed address of the permit holder. Therefore, the State argued, the petition was no longer pertinent.
The petition was deleted on January 8, 2024, with the parties’ consent, after the petitioners verified that free passage at the checkpoint was indeed again allowed for family unification permit holders.
