WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s parliament is set to vote on whether to renew a temporary law first enacted in 2003 that bars Arabs in the occupied territories from extending ‘citizenship’ or even residency to spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Critics say it’s a racist measure aimed at restricting the Arab minority.
The law creates an array of difficulties for Palestinian families that span the war-drawn and largely invisible frontiers separating the Israeli-occupied territories from east al-Quds, the West Bank and Gaza, territories it seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state.
The law was enacted as a temporary measure in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, or uprising, when Palestinians launched scores of retaliatory attacks inside the occupied territories.
The law has been renewed even after the uprising wound down in 2005 and the number of attacks plummeted.
Because of the law, Arab citizens have few if any avenues for bringing spouses from the West Bank and Gaza into the occupied territories. The policy affects thousands of families.
Human Rights Watch pointed to the law as an example of the widespread discrimination faced by Palestinians — both inside the occupied territories and in the territories the regime controls — in a report earlier this year that said such practices amount to apartheid.