Background
The law originated in a 2002 Cabinet order freezing the issuance of citizenship on family reunification grounds between Israeli citizens and residents of Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and areas governed by the Palestinian Authority. Renewal of the law's effect in mid-2005 relaxed some of its condition by restricting its scope to those families where the husband is under 35 years of age and the wife is under 25 years old. In the interim the law was tested against Israel's Basic Laws, which operate in a manner similar to a constitution, when the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, filed a 2003 petition to have the law struck down.
The law was upheld in a split 6-5 High Court decision rendered in 2006, but the decision criticized a number of aspects of the law. In particular, the minority judgement, written by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, emphasized the temporary nature of the law's effect, arguing that "the appropriate goal of increasing security is not justifying severe harm to many thousands of Israeli citizens."
A draft bill to replace the law rather than seek a second renewal following the expiry of its application in January, 2007, sought to expand the areas targeted by the law beyond Palestinian Authority-controlled areas to include other regions with which Israel is in a state of military conflict.
Read more about this topic: Israeli Immigration Law
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