“Just because he’s Israeli and I’m Palestinian, we’re not allowed to be together … And just because we choose to be together, now we have like some kind of curse, not to be around the people that we love: his family, my family.” Abir, a Palestinian woman married to an Israeli, is speaking about an Israeli law that may tear her family — which includes their new two-month-old son — apart.

The Israeli parliament passed the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law on July 31, 2003, and in so doing prohibited family unification for Israelis who are married to Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. The law, which is a temporary measure instituted by the Israeli government as a measure to protect its citizens, has been extended for another six months. The Israeli government views this law as both temporary and necessary; according to the Israeli government, 23 Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories who obtained residency permits during the past three years to live in Israel for the purpose of family unification have been “involved in providing meaningful assistance in hostile activity against state security.”

Amnesty International has condemned the law on the basis that it “institutionalizes a form of racial discrimination based on ethnicity or nationality,” and the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination has asked that Israel repeal the law.

While the law has significant political ramifications, it is the personal impact of the law that is the most heartwrenching. As Murad, Abir’s husband, states: “Here is our home, here is our land, and here is our family and our tribe and my people and my schools and my work. And I see myself here and not in any other place in the world.

Mimi Hanaoka