Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman has enacted a new regulation that effectively limits the ability of Palestinians and immigrants to file lawsuits in Israeli courts.According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the new regulation would require anyone filing a claim in Israeli courts to provide their Israeli ID number or foreign passport number. Palestinians from the occupied territories or stateless individuals without passports would effectively be banned from filing grievances with the courts when this order goes into effect on September 1.
Ha’aretz stated that people without a passport would have their cases referred to a judge, but in practice, warned Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, individuals without a passport would be barred from filing as court clerks refused to accept documents that are incomplete and forms missing passport numbers could be deemed as such.
Palestinians often file lawsuits in Israeli courts against Israeli Occupation Soldiers for misconduct and damages, which would be affected by this regulation. It would also hamper the ability of Palestinians from the occupied territories or migrants from other countries without passports from filing suit in labor courts against unscrupulous employers, from recovering damages if injured in a car accident, or even from filing appeals against the Israeli Interior Ministry if it decided to deport them.
