Israeli permit regime in the West Bank
[6] The Israeli High Court has rejected petitions against the permit regime, allowing that it severely impinges on the rights of Palestinian residents but that the harm was proportionate.
[7] Considered an example of racial profiling by scholars like Ronit Lentin, Yael Berda and others,[8][9][10] the regime has been characterized as arbitrary and as one that turned such rights as freedom of movement into mere privileges that could be granted or revoked by the military authority.
"[16] Israel has defended the permit regime as necessary to protect Israelis in the West Bank against what it describes as continued threats of attacks by Palestinian militants.
[17] According to Yael Berda of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the Israeli permit regime is one of three elements underpinning Israel's military management of the occupied population through intelligence, economic control and racial profiling.
[10] Berda defines the "permit regime" as the "bureaucratic apparatus of the occupation modeled around that which developed in the West Bank between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 through the early 2000s".
[5] Within ten days of the end of the war a military order was issued that required a permit to conduct any business transaction that involved land or property.
That same day an order was declared that required Palestinians to hold a permit to possess any foreign currency, with violations punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
[29] With the uprising, the Israeli army placed greater restrictions on Palestinian movement and imposed security measures such as curfews, closures and the marking of ID cards as either green for those denied entry into Israel, or red for the rest of the population.
"[3] The interim Oslo Accords left Israel with partial or full control over 83% of the West Bank and, according to Rashid Khalidi, concomitantly, Israel proceeded to tighten restrictions of what he calls its 'matrix of control, by developing a substantially new system, an intricate "web of procedures" including the "all-encompassing permit system", which suffocated Palestinian movement in the territories.
[29] After the breakdown of negotiations at the 2000 Camp David Summit and the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the IDF imposed a total closure on the occupied territories and made the permit system more stringent in order to protect both its perceived security interests and civilians from armed confrontation with Palestinian militants.
[32] In the first two decades of occupation Palestinians were required to apply to the military authorities for permits and licenses for a number of things such as a driver's license, a telephone, trademark and birth registration, and a good conduct certificate which was indispensable to obtain entry into many branches of professions and to workplaces, with putative security considerations determining the decision, which was delivered by an oral communication.
[37] Prohibitions also affected dress codes by disallowing certain colour combinations in clothing or refusing to cover the sewage in the Negev detention centre of Ansar 111[38] where a significant numbers of Palestinians have served time.
Comprehensive permit forms: from the tax office, the local police, the municipality, the Israeli-sponsored "village leagues" (both of the latter often staffed by collaborators) and the Israeli Security Agency Shin Bet did not guarantee the approval.
The multiplicity of permit types and the legal complexities of qualifying to obtain them have created a sprawling bureaucracy, replete with brokers, and arguably feeds corruption, since as much as 25% of the wages earned by many Palestinian labourers with permission to work in Israel can be required to pay off permit brokers who, in turn, are thought to share their dividends with Israeli employers in a kind of kickback arrangement.
By 2007 approximately one fifth of the Palestinian male population between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five in the West Bank were classified as "security threats", resulting in their being barred movement permits.
Two new forms of control were instituted by Israel during the Intifida, the entry permit regime, in 1988, and, in 1991, closures that restricted any Palestinian from leaving the West Bank or the Gaza Strip for some period of time.
The following year magnetic cards were issued to Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip that contained "security background", including such things as the status of their electricity and water bills.
[54] Work was transformed from a right to a privilege that could be revoked at any time, and as a result many Palestinians restricted themselves from participating in political activities for fear of jeopardizing their families livelihoods.
The amendment expanded the meaning of "infiltrator" from those who had entered the West Bank from Israel's neighboring countries that were considered enemy states, namely Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, to also include Palestinians not holding a valid stay permit.
[65][63] Israel introduced a building permit policy in East Jerusalem and Area C which made home construction for Palestinian residents challenging.
[68] When pieces of land are fenced off from their traditional owners, often by declaring they lie within a closed military zone or on the Israeli seam land side of the Separation Barrier, a permit from the military administration is then required for the owner to access his fields: tending such fields becomes an arduous bureaucratic and physical task with access often allowed only once a year.
The practice of denying usufruct in order to allow the 10 year expiry of rights to kick in was taken to the Israeli Supreme Court which, in 2006, arguing that the denial of access custom was akin to denying a person the right to enter his own home in order to defend himself from a thief, ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, and directed the IDF to ensure everything was done to ensure Palestinians could tend their olive groves.
According to Irus Braverman, however, subsequent IDF regulations, guaranteeing tree protection in designated "friction zones" (ezorei hikuch) but not anywhere else, only complicated the issue.
[69] By 2018 it was calculated that of grants to people in the West Bank of areas Israel declared to be state lands, 99.7% was given to Israeli settlements, with 0.24% (400 acres (160 ha)) being earmarked for allocation to Palestinians who constitute 88% of the population.
[72] HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization, filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Israel calling for the revoking of the permit regime on the basis that it effectively institutes apartheid.
HaMoked argued that requiring permits from one population, the Palestinians, and not from another, Israelis, in the same area is "necessarily comparable to the Pass Laws of apartheid South Africa".
[12] Leila Farsakh writes that the splitting of the West Bank into eight districts from which Palestinians could not leave without a permit effectively turned those areas in to bantustans.
