E. Jerusalem security barrier at Kalandiya 311.
(photo credit: Marc Sellem Israel/The Jerusalem Post)
The cabinet on Sunday extended by six months a temporary order instituted at the
height of the second intifada in 2003 to stop granting Gaza and West Bank
residents’ legal status in Israel through family reunification.
The order
was adopted after a number of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians carrying Israeli
identity cards acquired under family unification regulations were involved in 23
terrorist acts, taking advantage of their Israeli identity cards to go through
IDF checkpoints and transport suicide bombers or explosives into
Israel.
The decision followed the suicide bombing at the Matza restaurant
in Haifa during Pessah in March 2002 in which 15 people were killed and more
than 40 were wounded by a Hamas suicide bomber from the Jenin refugee camp who
received an Israeli ID card through family unification.
By law this order
needs to be renewed from “time to time, for a period that shall not exceed one
year on each occasion.”
In addition, the cabinet will submit to the
Knesset for its approval the following: “The cabinet also decided, on the basis
of the opinion of the authorized security bodies, that the Gaza Strip is still
an area from which activity is being perpetrated that is liable to endanger the
security of the State of Israel and its citizens; therefore, the government
instructs the interior minister to continue denying permits to reside or stay in
Israel to those registered as residents of the Gaza Strip, as well as to those
who reside in the Strip even though they may not be registered as such.”