If a Palestinian-American wants to travel to the occupied West Bank to visit their family, they will soon need to apply to the Israeli government for advanced permission, reveal the personal information of the relatives they plan on visiting, along with data of any land they own or stand to inherit in the territory.
And even then, they could still be denied entry for “any relevant considerations,” as so deemed by Israeli authorities.
These are just some of the invasive restrictions that Palestinians who hold foreign passports would be subjected to according to a new ordinance published by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli government agency responsible for enforcing Israeli policy in the occupied territory.
The new regulations are set to go into effect on July 5th. Published by COGAT earlier this year, the restrictions were initially scheduled to go into effect on May 22, but were temporarily halted by a petition to Israel’s High Court from the human rights group HaMoked.
The COGAT revisions have received strong criticism from human rights groups and legal experts, who say that they will make life even more difficult for Palestinians. The West Bank isn’t part of Israel, but the country has controlled entry to and movement within the area for decades, imposing draconian restrictions on the population.
Ninety-seven pages worth of rules constitute the COGAT policy, which doesn’t apply to individuals visiting any of the West Bank’s many Jewish settlements. The policy refers to the area as “Judea and Samaria,” a biblical name preferred by the Israeli government.
“This is Apartheid in action,” Ahmed Abofoul, a lawyer with Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq told Mondoweiss of the new policy.
“Say for example, an American Palestinian and American Jew come [to the West Bank] together. The Palestinian would be treated differently from the Jew,” he said.
“It’s all part of the apartheid system. What we are seeing is representative of how Israel applies its apartheid laws to Palestinians everywhere, both in the occupied territory and abroad. Israel targets Palestinians simply for being Palestinians.”
De Facto Annexation
Human rights experts say the new restrictions laid out by COGAT are particularly dangerous due to the fact that it assumes Israeli sovereignty and jurisdiction over the entirety of the occupied West Bank.
For years Israel has sought de jure annexation of the occupied territory, but has faced significant political pushback. But rights groups say the government has practiced de facto annexation in the West Bank for decades, as millions of Palestinians are subject to Israeli laws and policies, but enjoy no rights under the law.
Using terminology like Judea and Samaria, for example, seeks to blur the borders and treat the occupied territory as a part of Israel. And while Israel has always controlled the borders between the West Bank and the outside world, by enacting these exhaustive new restrictions, the state is formalizing what it views as its sovereignty over the territory.
“Israel seeks to bureaucratize its de facto control of all Palestinian land by introducing new procedures of intelligence gathering that will be employed to further dispossess Palestinians of their land and identity.”
Dr. Osama Abuirshaid
“Israel seeks to bureaucratize its de facto control of all Palestinian land by introducing new procedures of intelligence gathering that will be employed to further dispossess Palestinians of their land and identity,” Dr. Osama Abuirshaid, Executive Director of Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action), told Mondoweiss.
“Israeli authorities understand that – according to international law – they do not have the legal right to sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory. Therefore, they aim to circumvent this reality through subversive tactics that treat Palestinian land as their own.”
“Israel is betting on the complicity of the international community through its inability – for decades – to deter violations of its legal obligations as an occupying power,” he continued. “It believes that this new violation against the Palestinians will pass after a storm in a teacup, similar to the storm that ensued regarding the American recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. The new COGAT rules are part of Israel’s broader effort to Judaize the occupied Palestinian territories and dismantle inactive and evidently ineffective international resolutions from within, one by one.”