Israel allows 3,500 Palestinians to stay in West Bank

Oct 10, 2007, 9:42 GMT

Ramallah - The Israeli government has granted official residency status to 3,500 Palestinians who in the last decade entered the West Bank on Israeli-issued visitors' visas but never left, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.

Israel however did not grant official residency status to another 1,500 Palestinians residing illegally in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

'After Israel had declared the Gaza Strip as a hostile entity, it decided to postpone any decision regarding its (illegal) citizens,' Hussein al-Sheikh, the head of the Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Department in Ramallah, told Voice of Palestine Radio.

The move answers a request by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, made in one of his recent meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of the US-sponsored Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland scheduled for November.

The Palestinians demand that Israel grant permanent residency status to all of the around 55,000 Palestinians who entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1993 interim Oslo peace accords and have since stayed illegally.

Many who have family there or have since married have applied for official documents on the basis of 'family reunification,' but Israel suspended considering such applications for family reunification with the outbreak of violence in September 2000.

Sheikh said Abbas personally raised their case in his six meetings with Olmert in the past months. The issue has high priority for Abbas because it affects many Palestinians and their relatives.

Granting the illegal immigrants residency rights would allow them greater freedom of movement, access to such benefits as health and education and allow them also to apply for official documents for their children.

Israel had agreed to consider their applications but in small patches of 5,000 each, Sheikh said.

Under the Oslo accords, Israel controls the Palestinian population registry, meaning all identity cards, birth certificates and travel documents for residents of the Palestinian autonomous area are issued through it.