“At the end of the day, if this was normalization, the government would give us citizenship with ease,” she said. Is Sara concerned about her application for Israeli citizenship contributing to “normalization” - a term used to describe the strong taboo of Palestinians cooperating in any way with the Israeli government and sometimes with Israeli civilians? As much as they can elongate the process, they do.” Her own conclusion: “They aren’t rushing to give citizenship to East Jerusalem residents. Every six months, she goes to the Interior Ministry’s office to check on the status of her application, and each time is asked to bring in updated documents.Ī view of East Jerusalem as the sun sets, August 8, 2016. Since applying for Israeli citizenship, Sara said, her hassles have compounded. (Different rules apply to those seeking citizenship under the Law of Return, who may retain foreign passports.) In the case of most East Jerusalem applicants, that means renouncing Jordanian citizenship. I should be able to live here as a citizen, not a resident,” she told the Times of Israel.Įast Jerusalemites, like all permanent residents seeking Israeli citizenship, must give up any other citizenships, passports, or residency statuses - like a US green card - on gaining Israeli citizenship. I belong here, to the place I was born, where I live, where I pay taxes and where I work. “If I get a Jordanian passport, it means I’m a part of the Jordanian state. Sara refuses to be a part of such a system. The large majority of East Jerusalemites have Jordanian passports - a remnant of the time Jordan controlled their neighborhoods between 1948-1967 - but no Jordanian citizenship. Palestinian children pose for a photo on top of cement blocks placed by the Israeli army in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al Amud, on October 21, 2015. In stark contrast, so far in 2016, 1,102 applications have been submitted, while only nine applications have been approved and two rejected. That same year, 1,609 were either approved or rejected. In 2009, for example, there were 1,656 applications - a relatively high number for the period. In other words, it wasn’t building up a growing backlog. But from 2003-2013, the authority did manage to either approve or reject a total number of applications that was close to the total number submitted that same year. This situation has existed for many years.”įor many years, indeed, applications have almost never been processed in the same year that they are submitted. The requests that are dealt with in these years are usually not those submitted in the same year. In a response to the question of why, in the past three years, the number of applications processed has so greatly decreased, the authority argued: “Since there is a great number of requests for naturalization, processing them takes time. “The claim of allegedly posing obstacles is unfounded and each request is examined in its own right,” the authority’s spokesperson told The Times of Israel. The Population and Immigration Authority, which is responsible for the process, strongly denies this accusation, and contends that it is carrying out its responsibilities under the law. This includes the long-standing demand they have proficient Hebrew, even though Arabic, their native tongue, is an official language of the Israeli state. Some East Jerusalemites and the lawyers who deal with their citizenship requests say the government deliberately makes the application process itself difficult in order to discourage East Jerusalemites from even requesting citizenship. He says he doesn’t want to be a ‘second-class citizen’ anymore. Sufyan Dabash, 37, an East Jerusalemite seeking Israeli citizenship. But Israel, which in the decade from 2003 to 2013 denied or delayed about half of the citizenship applications by East Jerusalemites, has more recently been failing to accept almost all of them, The Times of Israel has established. Recent years, however, have seen a surge in the number of Palestinians seeking Israeli citizenship. Until around a decade ago, very few did, as the vast majority identified, and still do identify, as Palestinian. Since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, it has formally offered residents living in that area the option to apply for Israeli citizenship. I don’t want to feel like I’m a second-class citizen.” I have nothing,” he recently told The Times of Israel.
#TOY BLAST HINTS 1952 DRIVER#
The 37-year-old taxi cab driver - a lifelong resident of the Sur Baher village on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem - couldn’t prove he was a Jerusalemite. About seven years ago, Sufyan Dabash applied to be a citizen of his country of birth, Israel.
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