ISRAEL: Even a major US Jewish group has come out against a law barring residency for Palestinian spouses of Israelis. Peter Hirschbergin Jerusalem reports
Zuhdi Samada is not certain when his wife, Siam, and their six-week-old daughter will be back living with him in their home in the Jewish-Arab town of Lod, not far from Tel Aviv. For now, they are with Siam's family in the West Bank village of Beit Lakiya.
Mr Samada, an Israeli Arab, says his wife and child went for a three-week visit. But he is not sure how Siam, who does not have a permit to live in Israel, will get through the West Bank army roadblock she will have to traverse on her way back to Lod.
Even if she succeeds, and returns to her husband, she will be breaking the law.
If she is not willing to do that, then Siam and Zuhdi have two other alternatives - separate or live abroad.
The couple's impossible predicament stems from a new Israeli law passed on July 31st. It bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who marry Israelis - in most cases Arabs - from being granted citizenship or residency status in Israel. The legislation enshrines in law a government decision that went into effect in May 2002.
"We have been trying to get my wife a permit ever since we were married 18 months ago," says Mr Samada. "But the answer is always negative. This law is a disgrace to the state of Israel. It's very, very racist." The Israeli government, which fast-tracked the legislation through parliament, insists the law is an essential anti-terror measure. It cites cases of Palestinians who have been given residence in Israel and have used the freedom of movement this grants them to assist in terror attacks.
But the law has touched off an avalanche of criticism, with human rights groups and left-wing politicians in Israel. Amnesty International has called it an extreme solution to a marginal problem. The UN, the EU and the US State Department have also labelled the law discriminatory.
The UN called on Israel to revoke the new statute, saying it violates international rights treaties signed by Jerusalem. State Department Spokesman, Mr Philip Reeker, said the legislation "applies only to non-Israeli residents of the West Bank and Gaza, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian. In this regard, the new law singles out one group for different treatment than others." Under Israeli law, other non-Israelis are eligible to apply for citizenship, or residence, if they marry Israelis. "An Israeli who marries a Swede, for instance, will be able to submit a request for their spouse to begin residency proceedings. But not an Israeli who is married to someone from the West Bank. This is an extremely black day for Israeli democracy," says Mr Yoav Loeff, spokesperson for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
Even one of the major American Jewish organisations, the Anti-Defamation League - which is usually unstintingly pro-Israel - expressed reservations over the law. It said in a statement that, while it understood Israel's "vital security concerns", it hoped ultimately "other methods" would be explored to ensure them.
The Middle East wars split many Arab families, with some remaining inside Israel proper and others ending up in the West Bank. Marriage between these two groups is not uncommon.
The new law will affect thousands of these couples - and their children - who are already living in Israel waiting for their request for "family unification" - as the procedure is called - to be processed. It will also affect future unions between Palestinians from the territories and Israeli Arabs, who make up 20 per cent of Israel's population of six million.
Israeli Minister Without Portfolio Mr Gideon Ezra defended the law on security grounds. Over 100,000 Palestinians, he said, have been granted residence permits in Israel in the last 10 years. He said that, since the start of the Intifada uprising in September 2000, "we have seen a significant connection, in terror attacks, between Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli Arabs." The government puts the number of such cases at 20, but Israeli civil rights activists are sceptical. Mr Loeff says that when ACRI first asked for numbers, the government said it was "impossible to give them to us. Then they somehow managed to find 20 cases." They also say Mr Ezra's figure of 100,000 residency requests that have been granted is bloated. Orna Kohn, a lawyer at Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, says only 24,000 requests have been made since 1993, and it is unclear how many have been accepted.
Israel's Interior Minister, Mr Avraham Poraz, whose ministry will be responsible for implementing the law, is uneasy but backed it anyway. "I wish we didn't need this law. I'm not thrilled with it. But there was a government decision and I must follow it," Mr Poraz said.
His aides stress that the law has been enacted only for a year. But rights activists say parliament, especially in its current right-wing constellation, will not hesitate to extend it.
Either way, Zuhdi Samada needs to find a way to live with his immediate predicament. Mr Samada (35), who works spraypainting cars, says Siam (26) is frightened to leave their house in Lod for fear of being picked up by police, held for not having residency papers, and sent back to the West Bank.
According to the new law, he says, his baby daughter can live with him in Lod - because she was born in Israel and so will get an Israeli ID card - but his wife cannot. "I don't know what to do. Why don't they just check out my wife, and her brothers?
"If they have no criminal or security record, then give her an ID card. We just want to be married and live a normal life." Civil rights activists suspect the real motivation for the law has less to do with security and more to do with what many Israelis perceive as the "demographic threat" - the fear that Jews will become a minority in their state if there is an ongoing influx of Palestinians.
"This law has no connection to security," said Israeli Arab MP Mr Azmi Bishara. "It is tied to demography. They want to limit the number of Arabs in Israel." The Arab rights group, Adalah, has already filed a petition asking the High Court of Justice to nullify the law. The Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) in Israel is preparing another. These groups will argue that the new legislation contradicts the country's law on "Human Dignity and Liberty", and the state's basic values, such as equality before the law for all citizens, Jew and Arab alike.
Mr Samada, who has approached ACRI for help, says he wants to be included in the petition. But the legal challenges to the new law do not fill him with hope. "If I had enough money," he says, "I would leave the country."