How Israel makes Palestinians foreigners in their own land

    An Israeli Arab young woman wears a bridal gown as she plays the part of a bride without her groom as they pass the Rose Garden on their way to the Jerusalem offices of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 14 April 2013. Israeli Arabs and Palestinians held the protest under the banner 'Love in the Time of Apartheid' to challenge Israeli laws and policies that prevent the reunification of families when one partner holds Israeli citizenship and the other is a resident of the 'occupied territories.' The protest passed without incident. Photo by Sliman Khader
    One of the most insidious aspects of Israel’s military occupation is also one of its most overlooked: its deliberate fragmentation of Palestinian society. While the spectacle of violence is typically the focus of media attention – when international media cover Israel’s oppression of Palestinians at all – the reach of Israeli control over Palestinian family life falls under the radar.
     
    But as the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq points out in a new report, Palestinians are forced to make life choices as personal as who they marry and where they live “based on the constraints of Israeli policies and practices that not only target them, but are ultimately aimed at their transfer.” As a result of those efforts, “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were born in Palestine are now considered ‘foreigners’ with no immediate right of entry or stay by Israel,” according to Al-Haq.
    Read more in Electronic Intifada

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