Ban on Family Unification
Israel's 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), which bars Palestinians from the occupied territory who marry Israeli citizens or residents from obtaining legal status in Israel, forcing thousands of families to live apart or abroad.
On 31 July 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada, the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) – 2003. The law froze “family reunification,” the process by which a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip married to an Israeli citizen could obtain residency and eventually citizenship in Israel. Framed as a one-year emergency measure, it has been renewed or re-enacted almost continuously since — with only minor amendments, such as discretionary “humanitarian exceptions” and age limits — briefly lapsing in 2021 before being legislated again in 2022.
The burden falls overwhelmingly on Palestinian citizens of Israel, since they are the Israelis who marry Palestinians from the occupied territory; the general rules for all other foreign spouses remain unchanged. Thousands of couples have been forced to choose between living apart, living together without legal status under constant threat of deportation, or leaving Israel altogether. Adalah describes it as one of the most discriminatory laws in Israel, without parallel in any democratic state. Israel’s Supreme Court upheld it in 2006 and again in 2022, accepting the state’s argument that it responds to security concerns.
Israel’s governments have justified the law on security grounds, citing cases in which naturalized Palestinian spouses were involved in attacks. Critics — including Adalah, B’Tselem, and UN treaty bodies — answer that the law applies solely on the basis of national belonging, collectively punishing an entire ethnic group, and that its demographic effect is an openly discussed motivation: the law’s defenders have at times described it as a means of limiting the growth of Israel’s Palestinian population.
Sources
Cited works
2- adalah.org(opens in a new tab)https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7371
- btselem.org — family separation(opens in a new tab)https://www.btselem.org/family_separation
Connected in the archive
3 connected records3 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 2 records
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- Intifada
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: On 31 July 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada, the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) – 2003.
- The Second Intifada
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: On 31 July 2003, at the height of the Second Intifada, the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) – 2003.
names this record — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Adalah maintains a widely cited database of discriminatory laws in Israel and has brought landmark legal challenges, including petitions against the family unification ban imposed by the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law and against the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Ban on Family Unification.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/glossary/family-reunification.- MLA
“Ban on Family Unification.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/glossary/family-reunification. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-family-reunification, title = {Ban on Family Unification}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/glossary/family-reunification}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }