HCJ 10650/03 Abu Gwella et. al v

provided there was no security or criminal grounds for rejection. 3 Following this
decision, and for some time thereafter, the Respondents ceased handling requests to
register children. Requests to register children were made in the context of the request
for family unification submitted on behalf of the spouse. In this matter, too, it was
irrelevant where the child was born.
See Section 5 of the letter of 28 November 1995 from Ms. Kerstein, executive director
of Petitioner 6, to the then Minister of the Interior. The letter is attached hereto,
marked P/22.
The Respondents’ policy from 1996
52. In 1996, the Respondents recognized the mistake in incorporating requests to register
children in requests for family unification, and clarified that the request for family
unification on behalf of the spouse would be determined separately from requests to
register children. In her letter of 18 March 1996, Attorney Bakshi mentioned that,
from then on, persons wanting to register their children would do so in a procedure
separate from the request for family unification for the spouse, by completing a form
for child registration. Attorney Bakshi did not differentiate between children born
abroad and children born in Israel.
The letter of Attorney Bakshi and the child registration request form, the form still
used to register a child, are attached hereto, marked P/23 A-B, respectively.
53. Also, the form used by the Respondents to approve requests to register children never
differentiated between children born in Israel and such children born elsewhere. The
only difference between a child born in Israel (and the status given him at birth or
upon the “determination” of the Minister in accordance with Section 12 of the Entry
into Israel Regulations) and a child born outside of Israel (as to whom Section 12 did
not apply, so the child received a residency permit) was that a fee was demanded in
the case in which the child was born abroad. The demand for payment was written on
the form approving the request, after the request was considered and approved. It
should be mentioned that the Respondents began to demand a fee only at the end of
the 1990s. 4
The approval issued by Respondent 3 to the request for registration of children born in
the Occupied Territories, of 1997, in which no fee is demanded, is attached to the
3
The policy changed following HCJ 2797/93, Garbit v. Minister of the Interior
(unpublished).
4
The Petitioners do not know the precise date. They learned about the fee in the course of
their activity, from responses to specific requests sent by the Respondents and not from a
notice or official procedure.
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