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JERUSALEM: When Israeli Arabs search for a spouse, they don’t just worry about looks, job prospects or future in-laws. They must think about whether their partner will be allowed to live with them.
The problem is — many Israeli Arabs, who are ethnically Palestinians, want to marry Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip. But relations between the Palestinian territories and Israel are testy at best and violent at worst, resulting in limits that even love can’t overcome.
For the past decade, Israel has largely restricted Palestinians from joining their spouses inside the Jewish state, citing security concerns like Palestinian militants using entry permits gained through marriage to carry out attacks in Israel.
For ordinary people, though, the restrictions have undone countless romances, created stressful living arrangements and frayed family ties.
About 1.6 million Arabs are Israeli citizens. About 4.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza. They are linked by ethnic and family ties, but the lines between Israel and Palestinian areas divide them.
There are no official statistics, but thousands of Palestinians are believed to be living illegally with their Israeli Arab spouses inside Israel, threatened with deportation.
Israel’s Interior Ministry did not say how many have actually been deported, if any, and no one volunteered stories of relatives or acquaintances who had been arrested or expelled.
Still, the perceived threat hanging over them compels the Palestinians in Israel to stay near their homes.
“I’m living on my nerves,” said Sahar Kabaha, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman. After her Israeli Arab husband died last year, she was denied the right to remain in the country, even though her four children are Israeli citizens. She now lives without legal papers in the Israeli Arab town of Bartaa. She does not take her children to a doctor, fearing arrest if she’s discovered.
“All I want is permission to be with my children. They don’t have anybody else to care for them,” Kabaha said.
Critics argue the restrictions discriminate against Israel’s Arab citizens. Israeli Jews marrying fellow Jews living in West Bank settlements do not face such restrictions. Critics say it also discriminates against Palestinians, since foreign spouses of Israelis are eligible for citizenship.
The difference is security aspect.
Israel “sees Palestinians and Arabs as forming a threat to Israel’s security without an individual check, or any ability to prove his or her innocence,” said attorney Sawsan Zaher of Adalah, a legal organization fighting the restrictions.
According to official Israeli figures, some 130,000 Palestinians acquired Israeli citizenship in the decade before the restrictions took effect. Of them, five were imprisoned for security-related crimes.
Few Israeli Arabs want to join spouses in the Palestinian areas, where unemployment is rampant. Israeli law bars its citizens, including Arabs, from living there.