Yasser Abu Marir, Age 29
I am a construction worker for A. I. Marir Company in Beit Safafa. I mostly work in Jerusalem, but sometimes in Tel Aviv and Ein Gedi as well.
On 24 June 1996, I married Samaher, a resident of Yata who has a Palestinian identity card. We have three children: Sirin, 6, 'Iz, 4, and Yazen, 2. Sirin is in the first grade at the elementary school in Beit Safafa, and 'Iz goes to a nursery school in the neighborhood.
Two months before we got married, I submitted a request for family unification at the Interior Ministry office in East Jerusalem. I filed the request on my own, without an attorney. I prepared all the documents and submitted them together with the request. I attached bills for water, municipal property taxes, electricity, and telephone, as well as our marriage certificate. I was given a confirmation that the request had been submitted. It stated that I must check [with the Ministry] every six months to see where the matter stands. Over the first year and a half, I went to the Interior Ministry three times, and each time they told me that the request "was still being processed." Then, after eighteen months had passed, I received a letter from the Ministry notifying me that I had not submitted all the documents they needed to process the application, such as an affidavit from an attorney regarding my place of residence. I went to the Interior Ministry and gave them the additional documents they requested. The clerks told me that they would send me a letter. I continued to check [the status of the application] every six months, until 2001.
In August 2001, my brother, who married a Jordanian woman and also submitted a request for family unification, went to the Interior Ministry to check on the status of his application. The clerks told him that his request had been approved. When he asked about my request, they said that it had been rejected. He asked to speak with the director of the office. He told the director that we had not received any letter. He also asked how my request could be rejected when we both live in the same house. The director, whose name was Avi Lekach, I think, promised that he would check into why the request was rejected, and that he would respond by letter. I did not receive any letter. I did not want to go back to the Interior Ministry because I was afraid that they would give me a rejection letter and that I would not be allowed to file an appeal. About a month later, an attorney filed an appeal on my behalf. Since then, I have called every six months to check on the status of the appeal, and each time, they told me that no decision had been reached.
In June 2002, I called the Interior Ministry, and they told me that all requests for family unification had been frozen because of the government's decision. Six months later, I again called to find out the status of my appeal, and they told me that my request had been rejected and no appeal had been filed. I told the clerk that I was holding the confirmation that the appeal had been filed. Eventually, he told me to come to the office to get the decision on the request for family unification and on the appeal. I did not go, because I was afraid that if they gave me the letter, I would not be allowed to file another appeal.
A month later, I contacted HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual to request their assistance. Now, I contact them to find out the status of my request. They told me that they are in contact with the Interior Ministry [on the matter].
Since we got married, my wife and I have lived in my parents' home in Beit Safafa. My wife is living here [in Israel] without a permit. I went to the DCO [District Coordinating Office] in Hebron to get a permit that would allow her to enter Israel. The officials there told me that only the Interior Ministry issues such permits. My wife goes to Yata to visit her family once every month or two. Since she doesn't have a blue [Israeli] ID card or even a permit to enter Israel, she takes a risk every time she leaves Beit Safafa.
In July 2002, she went to Tsur Baher [a neighborhood in East Jerusalem] with our children, my mother, and my brother to buy some things for our daughter Sirin's birthday. On the way home, they were stopped by Border Police officers. One of them asked for her ID card and she gave him the application for family unification that we had submitted. The officer demanded that she get out of the car, and summoned other officers to the site. She tried to explain that she lived in Jerusalem with her husband and three children, but the officer again ordered her to get out of the car. She tried to convince him to let her stay in the car, because she did not want problems in front of the children, who were already crying, but he refused, and she was forced to get out of the car.
In the meantime, my brother called and informed me that the police officers had arrested my wife. I went there immediately and spoke with the officer in charge. I told him that she is my wife and that our request for family unification was still pending in the Interior Ministry. I explained that she is staying inside Israel because the Interior Ministry wants proof that she lives with me in Beit Safafa. The officer was not convinced. He said that she needed a permit to be in Israel. Since she doesn't have a permit, she must be deported. I insisted that he call the police. He replied, "I'll show you about the police. Come with me to the station." He wanted to take my wife in the jeep, but I refused and insisted that I go with her to the police station in my car. In the end, he agreed.
I drove to the Moriah police station in Talpiot. With me were my wife, my brother, and our baby, Yazen. Our other two children went with my mother and my other brother, who had also come to the scene. Before leaving to go to the station, I heard the commanding officer say to one of the officers who took us: "Tell the interrogator that I request that she be deported."
When we arrived at the police station, they finger-printed my wife. Then, a police officer took her statement. I translated what she said, and the officer wrote it down. I noted that the officer did not write what my wife said. For example, he asked her how she got to Tsur Baher, and she replied that she had been living in Jerusalem for seven years. The officer wrote that she had taken a dirt road to Tsur Baher from Bethlehem to go back and forth to visit her children. When he asked her to sign the statement, I asked to read it first to see what he had written. I [read it and then] said that she would not sign it in its current form.
As we were arguing, an interrogator came into the room. He heard what happened and demanded that the officer rewrite the statement. The officer took another statement from my wife, and then she signed it. Then we spoke with the interrogator, and I told him what happened. He replied, "I recommend that she never leave the house," and told us to go home.
Our situation is very bad. Since that day when my wife was stopped, which was about a year ago, she almost never leaves home. We do not leave the neighborhood. I take the kids out, while she stays imprisoned in Beit Safafa. Sometimes, she wants to join us, but the older children do not allow her to come along. They tell her, "Don't come because the army will take you again." Since the incident in Tsur Baher, the children have been very frightened. Sometimes, a jeep comes by when they are playing outside the house, and they rush into the house and tell my wife to hide so that the army doesn't take her.
Now I am waiting, and I hope that the situation improves and that our request for family unification is approved. My wife cannot return to Yata, because the children and I have Israeli ID cards, and we are not allowed to live with her. I want us to live like a normal family. I know other families that are living in the same horrible situation.
Yasser Abu Marir, 29, construction worker, married with three children, is a resident of Beit Safafa. The testimony was given to Sohad Sakalla on 13 August 2003