Israel’s Citizenship Policy towards Family Immigrants: Developments and Implications

ABSTRACT

This paper examines changes that have occurred in Israel’s citizenship policy towards family immigrants since the early 1990s, when it became a country of immigration. Its findings indicate that Israel now has a much more restrictive policy towards Palestinian family immigrants, and a somewhat more inclusive policy concerning the naturalization of various other groups of family immigrants. In a broader perspective, while there is evidence that the influence of the liberal perception of citizenship on policy-making processes has increased in some respects, this process has occurred within an overall ethnic, even ethnicizing, context. Accordingly, the inclusive trend toward non-Olim, non-Palestinian family immigrants may stem not only from a process of liberalization within Israeli society. Rather, it may also serve ethnic motivations by absorbing immigrants who are likely to eventually join the Jewish, or at least non-Arab, sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• immigration
• mixed families
• liberalism
• Jewish identity

Notes

1. Immergut, “Historical Institutionalism.ˮ

2. Freeman, “Immigrant Incorporation.ˮ

3. Hailbronner, “Nationality in Public International Law,ˮ 36.

4. Howard, “Comparative Citizenship.ˮ

5. Orgad, “Love and War.ˮ

6. Shafir and Peled, Being Israeli.

7. For an extended discussion of the right to family life in international and Israeli law, see Orgad, “Love and War;ˮ Merin, “The Right to Family Life.ˮ

8. Smith, Civic Ideals; Shafir and Peled, Being Israeli.

9. Koopmans, Michalowski, and Waibel, “Citizenship Rights for Immigrants.ˮ

10. For a comprehensive review of Israel’s citizenship policy, see Shachar, “Citizenship and Membership;ˮ Rubinstein and Medina, Ha-mishpat ha-hukati, 1095-117. The following sections specify rules adopted over the years in Israel. As far as possible, the research is based on primary sources – laws, government decisions, and protocols of the Interior Ministry. However, in some cases, especially regarding Interior Ministry procedures and decisions adopted before the 2010s, primary sources are unavailable. Indeed, there is much evidence of serious problems regarding the transparency of Israel’s citizenship policy during this period. See, for example, the Court’s ruling in an appeal submitted by civil rights organizations on this matter, Administrative Petition 530/07, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and others v. the Interior Ministry, https://www.law.co.il/media/computer-law/human_rights_society_PqgVozr.pdf. Today there is significantly more transparency, although some rules – for example those relating to the status granted to collaborators with the security forces – remain unpublished.

11. Among others, amendment no. 6 (1996) and 7 (1998) to the Citizenship Law regulated the right of minors who were adopted by an Israeli parent to acquire citizenship, and amendment no. 8 (2004) made it slightly easier for IDF soldiers to naturalize.

12. See, for example, Howard, The Politics of Citizenship.

13. Apart from the exceptional case of a resident of Israel who was born in Israel and never possessed any other citizenship (section 4a of the Citizenship Law).

14. Administrative Appeal 529/02, Bornea v. Interior Minister, Takdin (District Court) 2003 (3) 7058. It also mentions that elderly and lonely parents of Israelis are entitled to permanent residency, although this policy was adopted in 1994 (see below).

15. Howard, The Politics of Citizenship; Weil, Access to Citizenship.

16. It is difficult to find official data concerning the number of non-Olim immigrants who have arrived, settled, and received official status in Israel, especially until recent years. This difficulty has been noted by official bodies seeking to collect this data, such as The Advisory Committee for the Examination of an Immigration Policy for the State of Israel (Rubinstein Committee). See Rubinstein, “Ha-ve’ada ha-meya’etzet,ˮ 5.

17. There are different estimates of the exact numbers. For a discussion, see Soffer and Shalev, “Mimusha ba-po’al,ˮ 10-11. Other groups of immigrants include an unknown number of spouses of Israelis, as well as much smaller groups, amounting to no more than a few thousand each, such as non-Palestinian labor immigrants, refugees from Vietnam, and religious communities, for example the African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem (known in Israel as the Black Hebrews) and the Christian Bet-El community.

18. The definition of this population as “immigrants” is based solely on the perception of the State of Israel. It does not express any normative position.

19. According to data presented by Interior Ministry officials to the Israeli government in May 2002, about 129 thousand Palestinians – spouses of Israelis as well as their children, and possibly other family members – received official status, leading in most cases to the acquisition of citizenship (or permanent residency, if the Israeli spouse was a permanent resident; on the exact Israeli policy, see below). See Population Administration Jerusalem, “Hagira ve-hishtak’ut,ˮ 9. These figures (or slightly different ones) were cited later by many senior officials – for example, Deputy Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, at the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee (Protocol no. 47, July 14, 2003), and Supreme Court judge Ayala Procaccia, at HCJ 7052/03, Adallah v. Interior Minister, PD 61 (2) 202 (2006).

20. Unlike Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who, since 1968, commute to work in Israel.

21. Based on publications of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader.

22. Population and Immigration Authority, “Netuney zarim,ˮ 3.

23. Ibid.

24. Hoffnung, “Mehir ha-meida.ˮ Far smaller numbers of collaborators – Palestinians, Lebanese, and Egyptians – settled in Israel before the Oslo Accords: “85%-90% of the collaborators ever absorbed in Israel, have been absorbed since 1994.ˮ Ibid., 31.

25. Agmon, “Taktzivim ha-me’yuadim,ˮ 1.

26. Population and Immigration Authority, “Netuney Zarim,ˮ 4.

27. Ibid., 7. In addition, during the 1990s, several hundred refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo also arrived in Israel. Herzog, “Between Nationalism,ˮ 193.

28. Fidlman, “Sugi’yat matan,ˮ 4.

29. Gal, “Immigration and Categorial Welfare,ˮ 645. For a comparative study that does not define Olim as immigrants, but rather as emigrants, see Weil, Access to Citizenship.

30. Raijman, “Hagira le-Yisra’el,ˮ 339. Other studies supporting this claim include: Avinery, Orgad, and Rubinstein, “Hitmodedut im hagiraˮ; Kemp, “Managing Migration,ˮ 670; Elias and Kemp, “The New Second Generationˮ; Shoval and Leshem, “The Sociology of Migration,ˮ 39.

31. Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration; De Hart and van Oers, “European Trendsˮ; Howard, The Politics of Citizenship.

32. Janoski, The Ironies of Citizenship; Rhodes and Harutyunyan, “Extending Citizenship.ˮ

33. Joppke, “Transformation of Citizenship.ˮ

34. Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration.

35. Rhodes and Harutyunyan, “Extending Citizenship.ˮ

36. Alexander, “Struggling over the Mode of Incorporation.ˮ

37. Howard, The Politics.

38. HCJ 5315/02, Khatu v. Interior Minister (2002).

39. HCJ 3648/97, Stamka v. Interior Minister, PD 53 (2) 728 (1999).

40. According to HCJ 3648/97 (see note 39 above), the time that elapsed between the submission of the application and the receipt of permanent residency was five years and nine months; only then could the naturalization process begin (clauses 65–68). Various reports indicate that the naturalization process took more than three years, thus the entire procedure was over nine years in length. See HCJ 5315/02, Khatu v. Interior Minister, http://www.acri.org.il/he/447 (clause 3); Shhori, “Nohal hadash.ˮ

41. HCJ 3648/97 (see note 33 above). The court also ruled the procedure (adopted with the gradual process in 1996) that a non-Israeli spouse residing in Israel illegally must leave the country until the request is approved – unconstitutional; consequently, it was abolished.

42. Protocol 5.2.0008, Procedure for Processing the Provision of Legal Status to a Foreign Spouse of an Israeli Citizen, Population and Immigration Authority, October 1, 2014.

43. In his Citizenship Policy Index, Howard divides the required residency period before the spouse of a citizen can naturalize into three categories: up to three years, between three and ten, and over ten. According to these criteria, Israel is closer to the inclusive rather than exclusive end of the scale. See Howard, The Politics of Citizenship. Also see: Vink and de Groot, “Citizenship Attribution.ˮ

44. The policy change was announced in a letter sent by Interior Ministry official, Yochi Gansin, to Eliyahu Avraham of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, in June 23, 1994, in the framework of HCJ 2797/93 (1994, unpublished).

45. See clause 9 in an affidavit submitted by Interior Ministry official, Yosef Tov, to the Supreme Court in HCJ 463/97, Hazma and others v. Interior Minister. http://www.hamoked.org.il/items/5630.pdf.

46. Population Administration Jerusalem, “Hagira ve-hishtakut,ˮ 3.

47. Protocol 5.2.0011, Procedure for Dealing with the Granting of Status to Foreign Partner Married to Permanent Resident, Population and Immigration Authority, December 1, 2014.

48. HCJ 4156/01, Dimitrov v. Interior Minister, IsrSC 56 (6) 289 (2002).

49. Protocol 5.2.0019, Procedure Regarding Termination of Procedure for Arrangement of Status for Spouses of Israelis as a Result of Violence Perpetrated by the Israeli Partner, Population and Immigration Authority, October 15, 2013; Protocol 5.2.0017, Procedure Regarding Termination of Procedure for Arrangement of Status for Spouses of Israelis, Population and Immigration Authority, May 17, 2015.

50. HCJ 3045/05, Ben-Ari v. Director of Population Administration, Interior Minister, 61 (3) PD 537 (2006).

51. Between 2002 and 2015, the percentage of common-law couples among all couples in Israel rose from less than 3% to around 5%. See press release by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, February 21, 2017, http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/newhodaot/hodaa_template.html?hodaa=201711052; and Central Bureau of Statistics, “Nashim u-gvarim,ˮ 3.

52. The Knesset’s State Control Committee, Protocol no. 171, March 22, 2005.

53. Protocol 5.2.0009, Procedure for Grant of Status to Spouses of Israelis, Including Same Sex Couples, Population and Immigration Authority, October 7, 2013.

54. But, unlike other permanent residents, they are not required to renounce any previous citizenship as a condition for naturalization. Protocol 4.4.0001, Procedure for Treatment of Citizenship Application under Sections 5, 6, 8 of the Law, Population and Immigration Authority, May 4, 2017.

55. On this issue, see Kritzman-Amir, “Iterations of the Family.ˮ

56. About 276 thousand such Olim arrived from the former USSR in the years 1989–2005 (28.4% of the Olim). See Raijman, “Hagira le-Yisra’el,ˮ 342, 347.

57. By the end of 2016, among a population of 78 thousand tourists who over-stayed their visas, 52 thousand originated from the former-USSR. See Population and Immigration Authority, “Netuney zarim,ˮ 24. It is possible that some of these are relatives of Israelis, especially parents and children. It should be stressed that the number of Olim from the former-USSR is still much higher that the number of immigrants from this region who reside in Israel illegally.

58. HCJ 758/88, Kandel v. Interior Minister, 46 (4) PD 505 (1992).

59. This policy was first mentioned in HCJ 1689/94, Harari v. Interior Minister, IsrSC 51(1) 15 (1994). According to the Head of the Population Administration in the Interior Ministry, Hertzel Gadj, it was indeed adopted in 1994. See the Knesset’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, Protocol no. 110, May 10, 2004.

60. Protocol 5.2.0033, Procedure for Dealing with the Granting of Status to an Elderly Single Parent of an Israeli Citizen, Population and Immigration Authority, September 2, 2014. According to court rulings, the procedure also applies to parents who have other children outside Israel, with whom they have no contact. Administrative Appeal 1153/06, Zinayida Natyosov v. Interior Minister (published in Nevo database, https://www.nevo.co.il/).

61. Protocol 5.2.0036, Procedure for the Grant of Status to Parents of Soldier, Population and Immigration Authority, December 1, 2012. It was the Israeli government that decided to change the policy towards parents of soldiers: Government decision no. 2260, November 3, 2002; no. 1740, March 28, 2004; no. 3573, August 4, 2011.

62. HCJ 3403/97, Ankin v. Interior Minister, IsrSC 51 (4) 522 (1997).

63. Protocol 5.2.0008, see note 42 above.

64. Protocol 4.6.0001, Procedure for Processing the Return of Citizenship, Population and Immigration Authority, July 6, 2015. The change took place follow a petition to the Supreme Court: HCJ 2271/98 Dunia Zad Ahmed Muhammad Abed Hathut v. The Minister of Interior [2001] IsrSC 5 l(1) 458.

65. Weizman, “Cause Lawyering,ˮ 48.

66. While Israel has no formal constitution, the Knesset has enacted various Basic Laws concerning, among other matters, human rights and the formation, roles, and relations between the principle institutions of the state. These Basic Laws are intended to form draft chapters of the future constitution. At least since the Constitutional Revolution of the early 1990s, the Israeli Supreme Court has accorded Basic Laws greater status than ordinary laws. See Hirschl, “The Political Origins.ˮ

67. Peled argues that “only Palestinian citizens are likely to marry non-citizen Palestinians.ˮ Peled, “Citizenship Betrayed,ˮ 54.

68. HCJ 7052/03, see note 19 above; HCJ 466/07, Galon v. The Attorney General (2012).

69. Hoffnung, “Mehir ha-Meida.ˮ

70. Based on personal correspondence with Menachem Hoffnung, March 3 and June 22, 2015.

71. Officially, the arrangements were aimed at children of illegal immigrants in general; yet in practice, the government decisions were articulated in such a way as to include only children of illegal labor immigrants, and in particular to exclude children of illegal Palestinian immigrants.

72. Mei-Ami, Na’omi. “Ha-Ala̕at ketzev,ˮ 3.

73. Shafir and Peled, Being Israeli, 7.

74. Discrimination against Palestinian migrants clearly overlapped with gender perceptions, common until a few decades ago in many developed liberal democracies, of men as the “bearersˮ of citizenship. As in other developed democracies, in Israel these barriers have been removed or at least significantly lowered over the years. See Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration, 43. However, some aspects of the current policy indirectly affect women more than men, mainly because they reproduce the existing patriarchal order. For example, it can be argued that the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law affects women more. One reason is that because of the practice whereby married women move to live in their husband’s locality, many non-citizen Palestinian women who are married to Israelis have moved to live with them in Israel. According to the 2005 amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, only women above 25 (and men above 35) can usually obtain residency permits. As a result, many younger non-citizen Palestinian women who are married to Israelis live in Israel illegally, lacking political as well as social rights. In 2013, the NGO Physicians for Human Rights – Israel estimated their number at about 20 thousand. Moshe, “Medical Services,ˮ 4.

75. However, several alterations have occurred, both inclusive and restrictive. For example, on the one hand it is now easier for great-grandchildren of Jews, who are not defined as Olim and immigrate to Israel with their parents who are defined as Olim, to acquire Israeli citizenship (Protocol 5.2.0027, Procedure for Processing the Provision of Status to great grandchild of a Jew, Population and Immigration Authority, November 26, 2013); but on the other hand, Israel changed its previous policy and no longer recognizes spouses of Israeli Jews (as opposed to spouses of non-Israeli Jews) as Olim. On the differences between the status of non-Jewish spouses of Israeli Jews vs. non-Israeli Jews, see Kranz, “Quasi-ethnic capital.ˮ

76. For example: Peled, “Citizenship Betrayel;ˮ Carmi, “The Nationality;ˮ Barak-Erez, “Israel: Citizenship.ˮ

77. For example: Hacker, “Inter-Religious.”

78. For example: Mundlak, “Irregular Migration;” Ya̕acobson, “Zionism and multiculturalism;” Sheleg, “Yehudim she-lo.”

79. For example: Anteby-Yeminy, “Ethiopian Jews;” Sheleg, “Yehudim she-lo.”

80. Although a number of studies argue that Israel can potentially develop a more inclusive citizenship policy towards immigrants in general. See especially: Bartram, “Migration, Ethno-nationalistˮ; Ya̕acobson, “Zionism and multiculturalism.”

81. On the debate concerning the motives behind the law – security or demographic – see Peled, “Citizenship Betrayed,ˮ 613-17.

82. Ya̕acobson, “Zionism and multiculturalism,” 714; Sheleg, “Yehudim she-lo,” 17-19.

83. Herzog, “Between Nationalism,” 193.

84. Shapira, Hagira ve-ezra’hut.ˮ See also Bartram, “Migration, Ethno-nationalist.ˮ

85. Milikowski, “Exploring a Model of De-Ethnicization,ˮ 443.

86. Olesker, “National Identityˮ; Abulof, “Deep Securitizationˮ; Harel-Shalev and Peleg, “Hybridity and Israel’s Democratic Order.ˮ

87. For a list of prominent examples of the ethnization processes in Israel, see Harel-Shalev and Peleg, “Hybridity and Israel’s Democratic Order.ˮ

88. Shafir and Peled, Being Israeli. See also: Ram, “Palestinians in Israel,ˮ 113.

89. Lustick, “Israel as a Non-Arab State.ˮ

90. It was at least likely that also relatives of SLA soldiers and Palestinian collaborators will join the Arab sector. The inclusive policy in this cases was apparently guided by Israel’s “moral obligationˮ and the influential republican perceptions that emphasize the importance of military contribution, or by practical concerns regarding the state’s future need for collaborators.

91. In 2001, the IDF established its own conversion system, allowing non-Jewish soldiers to undergo a process of conversion during their military service. See: Waxman, “Multiculturalism, Conversion, and the Future.ˮ

92. Cohen, Non Jewish Jews.

93. Fogiel-Bijaoui, “The Spousal Covenant,ˮ 219.

94. Central Bureau of Statistics, “Long-Range Population.ˮ

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Assaf Shapira

Assaf Shapira is a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Governance and the Economy. He received a PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later was a post-doctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Centre d’études européennes (Center for European Studies) at the Sciences Po (Paris), and was teaching at the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University. Assaf’s research largely focuses on the representation and participation of citizens and various social groups, especially minorities and other marginalized communities, in politics and particularly in Israeli politics. He has worked on issues relating to, among others, the representation of women in politics, expanding immigrants’ citizenship rights, and intra-party democracy.