Banned from Entry

Palestinians holding Palestinian Authority IDs can be banned from entry to Israel (and therefore to Jerusalem) at any time for any reason. This also includes entry into Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The banning can be ordered by the Israel Security Agency (formerly the General Security Service (GSS), or Shabak or Shin Bet in Hebrew for short), the police, or the Civil Administration. Each of these organizations has a different ostensible reason for banning:

• The Shabak if the person is deemed a security threat
• The police if they have entered or tried to enter Israel without proper documentation or have a criminal record or failed to pay a fine
• The Civil Administration if they are suspected of violating administrative regulations

In truth, no reason is needed to ban a Palestinian from entry into Israel.

The criteria for assessing and defining “security threats” are kept secret and constantly fluctuate. They are also arbitrary; the same person can be denied or granted a permit at different times. The uncertainty and unpredictability is by design. According to Yael Berda, an Israeli sociologist and lawyer and author of Living Emergency: Israel’s Permit Regime in the West Bank, “profiling criteria are classified . . . . For the general population, these practices produce uncertainty and paralysis because no one knows if and when movement will be restricted or for what reasons.”1

The banning is accomplished merely by changing the person’s status in the computerized system that is now available at every checkpoint and in all the District Coordination Offices (DCOs) throughout the occupied West Bank. Once the change—“a swift, invisible, administrative maneuver”2—is made, the person is blacklisted. Denial of entry to Israel due to blacklisting can last as long as 99 or 100 years.3 According to one top Israeli official, the blacklist is “a one-way street—you can go in but not come out.”4

Even as far back as 2007, more than a quarter of a million Palestinian Authority ID holders were classified as security threats and blacklisted by the Israeli police and security forces.5 This was broken down as follows:6

• 200,000 classified as “denied entry for security reasons”
• 79,000 classified as “denied entry for criminal reasons”
• 12,000 denied entry by the police

According to Berda, writing in 2012, “denial of entry by the police includes people who have pending cases in criminal or civil courts, cases opened by the police but never investigated, or who have served jail sentences for any charge and are denied for two to five years after they are released, and those who have not paid their traffic tickets.”7 Today those numbers are likely several times higher, especially if you consider that since 1967, according to Abdul Nasser Farawanah, director of the statistics department in the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Ministry for Detainees’ Affairs in Ramallah, there have been nearly one million cases of arrest among Palestinians from the occupied West Bank (including Jerusalem) and Gaza.8 Israeli officials readily allow that as many as two out of three Palestinian males with such IDs are blacklisted (see below). This means they have no chance of obtaining an entry permit; they will be “refused for security reasons” or “precluded” from approval.

Blacklisted Palestinians cannot obtain a permit to work or trade in Israel or the settlements, and will have great difficulty getting permits for any other type of entry, including for essential medical care (see Sick While Blacklisted, and the Care You Need Is Found Only in Jerusalem).

Some of the groups who are routinely classified as “denied entry” or banned include:

1. Palestinians who have ever been imprisoned9
2. First-degree relatives10 of Palestinians currently imprisoned in Israeli jails on “security” charges or held in administrative detention11
3. First-degree relatives, and in some cases second- and third-degree relatives, of a Palestinian slain by Israel security forces (i.e., a martyr or shahid in Palestinian discourse); this is on the basis that the person might be motivated to take revenge. According to Berda, “This classification applies to all family members, including women, and people over the age of 80.”12 This even includes relatives of people who were merely innocent bystanders at an incident.
4. Palestinians who were informed on by Shabak informants (collaborators) (not uncommonly, to settle a family or childhood dispute with no bearing on security whatsoever) or others; even employers trying to pressure workers into obeying can threaten to inform on them to the authorities.13
5. Residents of Palestinian villages that have been classified in whole as a security threat; in such cases the classification extends to all the village residents.
6. Civil servants in Palestinian police or other Palestinian armed forces, as well as mid-level clerks for the Palestinian Authority (senior officials, however, get VIP permits—see Jerusalem: A Closed City)

Beginning in 2016, Israel began classifying people “denied entry” merely because they shared the same name as someone who was suspected (not even necessarily proven) of committing a security offense. This affected thousands of workers who depend on wages earned in Israel, stranding them and leaving them unable to feed their families14 (see Banned from Entry).

Any Palestinian Authority ID holder can be blacklisted, even in error (for example, due to confusion in similar names) or based on informant information, whether accurate or not. In a report on the situation based on six years of working with Palestinians attempting to clear their status, author Sylvia Piterman of the Israeli organization Mahsom Watch15 explains:

Unpaid traffic tickets result in permit denials.17 Just being young, single, and male can do it. The Israeli authorities assume that someone who is single fits the “profile” of someone who is more likely to sacrifice his life for political reasons or stay illegally in Israel.18 There are thousands of cases of young Palestinians (18–30 years old) who are not previous prisoners or brothers or relatives of prisoners or martyrs, but who are still blacklisted and do not have the privilege of obtaining an entry permit. This type of profiling is also why applicants for work permits in Israel are required to be married, aged at least 22, and without any security record.19

Irus Braverman, a law professor in the United States, interviewed various Israeli officials for a study on Israel’s new crossing administration in 2008, including Brigadier General (ret.) Ilan Paz, former head of the Civil Administration in the occupied West Bank. She explained:

Paz continued:

As Paz mentions, the system is designed to pressure Palestinians into collaborating. Berda explains how this unfolds:

Someone who is desperate for work to feed his children is willing to do anything. According to Mahsom Watch:

When Palestinians are blacklisted and denied a permit, they are generally not given a reason or even formally notified; their status is just changed in the system and they are not even told—until they are standing at the checkpoint waiting to pass and the soldier checks the computer and informs them summarily that they are denied. In some cases, their entry or work permit is confiscated on the spot, throwing lives into chaos. Most of the time, there is no clear reason why someone would be blacklisted, other than just being a single young man. According to Berda,

Beyond this, there is no clear avenue for appeal and little one can do to clear one’s status. The process periodically breaks down, and many appeals take months or years to get any response or simply go unanswered. Attending to this need can mean spending every day waiting, until the sun sets, for an audience with the “captain” to plead for removal. This waiting game can go on for weeks, months, even years. For example, Berda shares the words of one of her clients, Muhammad Faraj, a tour guide from Bethlehem who was banned for two years:

An appeal process is available, but the regulations governing it are not widely known, clear, or consistent. Moreover, the authorities frequently capriciously change these regulations, such as they are, without any public notice. For the few who can master the regulations, meet the qualifications, and afford the relatively high costs of an appeal, their cases can be heard in court. According to Mahsom Watch, of these few cases that do reach judicial scrutiny, 70 percent are withdrawn by the Shabak before the court actually considers them, ostensibly because the Shabak does not want to reveal the basis for blacklisting. The few appeals that ever go before an actual judge rely on secret evidence. For these, the blacklisting is almost invariably upheld.27 It’s no wonder that many Palestinians with Palestinian Authority IDs have simply given up even aspiring to visit Jerusalem (see Helga Tawil-Souri: “A Confining and Asphyxiating Experience”).

Palestinian Jerusalemites—people who identify as belonging to the city—holding Israeli permanent-resident IDs are subject to Israeli civil law, not the military law prevailing in the occupied West Bank. Therefore, they cannot be banned in this particular way. However, they can be and frequently are stripped of their residency and deported from the city (see Precarious, Not Permanent: The Status Held by Palestinian Jerusalemites).

Palestinian Jerusalemites include those who hold Palestinian Authority IDs, Israeli permanent-resident IDs, no IDs, and others (see Who Are the Palestinians of Jerusalem?). The arbitrary Israeli-declared municipal boundary cut through Palestinian villages that had long considered themselves part of the larger Jerusalem area; the Separation Wall excluded neighborhoods that are technically within the municipal boundaries and consider themselves part of the city.28 In all these areas live Palestinians holding both types of ID. So ultimately, the feeling that their relationship with the city is precarious, outside their control, and at the mercy of Israel is shared by all.