Amira Hass : To Leave Gaza, Israel Asks Palestinian Minors to Commit They Not Return for a Year
On January 24, 17-year-old Hadil and her three younger siblings arrived at the Erez Checkpoint between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
A day earlier, they’d received an Israeli permit to leave Gaza through
Israel via the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. Since Israel didn’t let their
oldest brother accompany them on the trip to see their father, who lives
in Sweden, Hadil got the job of being the responsible adult.
At
Erez, a representative of Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Office
asked all four to sign a commitment not to return to Gaza during the
next year, adding that they wouldn’t be allowed to leave if they didn’t
sign. Having no choice, Hadil signed for all of them.
Hadil
never dreamed that her signature on this commitment would result in the
Liaison Office issuing more stringent instructions to its Palestinian
counterpart, the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, and in the latter
defying the new rules.
This
case sheds light on a general problem relating to the status of the
Civil Affairs Committee, whose job is to receive Palestinian
applications to leave Gaza and transfer them to Israel for approval or
rejection. The question that arises here, and not for the first time, is
where the border lies between necessary cooperation on civilian issues
that affect Palestinians’ lives, and collaboration by Palestinian
Authority officials with Israeli bureaucrats who sabotage Palestinians’
basic rights.
Making
minors sign such a far-reaching commitment is illegal, according to
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, whose intervention secured
exit permits for Hadil and her siblings. Gisha attorney Osnat
Cohen-Lifshitz wrote as much to Capt. Nadav Glass, legal advisor to the
Liaison Office’s Gaza branch.
“This
isn’t the first time Liaison Office representatives have made minors
sign commitments whose legality is dubious even when adults are forced
to sign them,” she wrote. “This is all the more true when minors on
their own are forced to sign a form without their parents’ consent and
signature.”
On
February 7, Glass responded that the minors’ signatures were invalid.
From now on, he wrote, the office would make sure commitments not to
return to Gaza for a year were signed by a minor’s parent or guardian.
Since
1997, Israel has forbidden Gazans to travel abroad via the Allenby
Bridge without a special permit, given stingily. This new rule was one
of many Israeli restrictions on movement that became more stringent
after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 and gradually disconnected
Gaza from the West Bank.
As
long as the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was open more
or less regularly, as it was in 1997, this restriction was tolerable.
But today, Rafah is open only a few days a year.
Also
in 2007, Israel instituted a sweeping ban on Palestinians leaving Gaza
through the Erez Checkpoint, except in stringently defined humanitarian
cases (sickness, death, weddings of first-degree relatives). Over time,
this restriction was loosened a bit, but even today, only a few thousand
of Gaza’s two million people are allowed to leave via Erez.
In
February 2016, Israel decided to let Gazans travel abroad via Allenby,
but only if they promised not to return for a year. This condition
didn’t bother the people for whom the change was meant – Palestinians
living overseas who got “stuck” in Gaza while visiting, or who planned
lengthy stays overseas for school or work.
Following
the case of Hadil and her siblings, the committee told Gisha the
Israeli Liaison Office had started demanding that a signed commitment be
included in every exit request. The office refuses to process requests
that arrive without the signed form, but the Civil Affairs Committee
still refuses to ask people to sign it.
The
Liaison Office has also recently ordered the committee to label more
exit applications as being for a “prolonged stay” overseas, even in
humanitarian cases like attending a wedding or visiting the sick.
Effectively, under the latest instructions received by the committee,
anyone traveling abroad must sign a commitment not to return to Gaza for
a year.
A
month ago, for instance, Gisha petitioned the High Court of Justice on
behalf of a young woman, her father and her aunt, who wanted to go to
Jordan for her wedding. The Liaison Office told Gisha that all three of
their requests would be labeled “prolonged stay,” requiring them to sign
the one-year commitment not to return.
Data
Gisha obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from Israel’s
Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories reveal large
gaps between the number of Gazans who request exit permits via Allenby
and the number approved, and also between that and the number actually
used. In August 2017, for instance, 475 requests were submitted, 169
were approved and 39 were rejected. But only 96 people actually left,
including 28 minors.
COGAT
didn’t say whether this gap was due to a refusal to sign the commitment
at Erez. It also declined to say how many Gazans sought to return to
Gaza before the year-long commitment expired or to specify the
“humanitarian reasons” that enable someone who signed the commitment to
ask to return home early.
Asked
to explain the logic behind the commitment not to return, a COGAT
spokesperson said, “In 2016, a decision was made to help residents of
the Gaza Strip who didn’t meet the existing criteria for going abroad
(patients, students and academics). As part of this decision, a
criterion was added for Gaza residents going abroad via Israel. To
implement this decision, they must sign off that this is a prolonged
stay of over a year abroad. The procedures for signing this commitment
haven’t changed since the above criterion was added. Nevertheless, to
regulate and streamline the process, it was recently decided that the
signed forms should be transferred well in advance.”
Gisha
said the criteria, “which Israel invented and changes when it sees
fit,” are rigid, and the demand that people promise not to return for a
year is immoral, illegal and inhumane.
The
Civil Affairs Committee, as the PA’s representative, is so far sticking
to its refusal to send requests for exit permits to the Liaison Office
with a signed commitment not to go home for a year. This principled
stance means requests for exit permits aren’t being processed, so people
can’t go abroad. But it’s quite likely the immediate human need to
travel will overcome this principled national stance, as has happened
more than once in relations between the PA and Israel.
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