As a result of the pressure ACRI brought to bear on the Population Registrar, the waiting period at its East Jerusalem branch for a meeting to begin the procedure for processing spousal residency requests has been significantly reduced. ACRI’s staff was advised of this development in Sassi Katzir’s, the Director of the Population Registrar, written response to ACRI this week. In his response, Katzir undertook to take the necessary steps, despite the office’s heavy work load and its lack of sufficient manpower, to cut down the waiting period for the initial meeting at the Jerusalem office of the Population Registrar, and to ensure that it does not exceed 60 working days from the time of the initial request for a meeting. Up to now applicants have been forced to wait between 8-10 months for this meeting.
A month ago, ACRI Attorney Oded Feller approached the Director of the Population Registrar and the Director of its East Jerusalem office, in response to a complaint lodged by an Israeli citizen and resident of East Jerusalem, who had submitted a request for a meeting to begin the process of formalizing his wife’s status, (a resident of the occupied territories), at the beginning of last November. To his amazement, the meeting for him and his wife to submit the appropriate documentation and to open a file was scheduled for September 2006, more than 10 months after his initial request date. Attorney Feller provided the Ministry of the Interior with examples of a number of other couples who have been waiting between 8-10 months for a meeting to submit similar residency applications.
Attorney Feller further emphasized that this timetable is extremely unreasonable and undermines the primary obligation of the Ministry of the Interior to exert its authority to ensure that its service to the public will be carried out in a reasonable period of time with the least amount of difficulty. He further states that the Supreme Court has already ruled that the conditions of the public reception services provided by the Ministry of the Interior in East Jerusalem are problematic and unreasonable to the extreme. This, he goes on to say, is further underlined by the Jerusalem District Court which has insisted again and again, that the East Jerusalem office honor its obligation to provide service within a reasonable period of time.
As a result of ACRI’s intervention, the couples have been invited to submit their requests at the beginning of February. It has also been agreed that the waiting period for other couples waiting to submit their residency requests will be shortened. The Director of the Population Registrar, as previously mentioned, stated that from this point on, couples will be able to submit their applications within 60 days of their original request.
last updated : 02/02/06
