The Law Offices of Bechor & Ben-Hillel petitioned the High Court of Justice to repeal or amend the “Policy on Entry and Residence of Foreigners in Judea and Samaria” published by Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (“COGAT”), a unit of the Israeli Defense Ministry. The policy purports to regulate all issues regarding the entry into the West Bank, stay and permanent residence of citizens of countries maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel.
The 97-page policy replaces the current “Policy for Foreigners Entering the Territories of Judea and Samaria,” set to expire on July 3, 2022. Our office previously petitioned the High Court of Justice to amend the current policy. Paradoxically, rather than ease restrictions created by the current policy, the new procedure introduces a draconian visa policy that aims to further isolate the West Bank from the rest of the world. The new policy is in clear violation of the rights of Palestinians to family life, freedom of occupation and employment, and the rights to health, education and culture.
The policy explicitly robs the Palestinian Authority of its powers under the Oslo Accords. Thus, while the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement stipulates that the Palestinian Authority is the body authorized to examine applications for permanent status in the West Bank and applications for work visas, it is Israel that will examine such applications under the new policy, creating a host of restrictions and obstacles that turn the Interim Agreement into a dead letter.
A particularly problematic example of the military’s harsh intervention in matters exclusively under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority is the restrictions the new policy places on academic freedom of Palestinian universities and the right to education. The policy denies Palestinian universities the right to set academic priorities and recruit foreign faculty and students. Palestinian universities can no longer determine for themselves which foreign lecturers and researchers will work in their institutions, in which departments and for how long. In addition, they can no longer determine which foreign students to invite to study in their institutions. The new policy imposes restrictions by significantly shortening the periods during which foreign lecturers are allowed to teach in the West Bank, setting long “cooling-off periods”, during which the lecturers will be forced to return to their countries of origin, and by setting quotas. And all this without any justifiable reason and in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law requiring that the military act for the benefit of the occupied population.
Our office petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual and 19 individual petitioners, who present just a few examples of those individuals and families who will be severely harmed by the expected and immediate entry into force of the new policy. These petitioners, and thousands like them, desperately need the implementation of the new policy to be frozen until properly amended in keeping with petitioners’ demands.
The state has been ordered by the court to reply to our motion to freeze implementation of the new policy by June 29, 2022.
March 24, 2022 demand letter to the military (Hebrew)
“Israel to Decide for Palestinians Which Foreign Lecturers Can Teach at West Bank Universities,” Amira Hass, Haaretz, March 8, 2022