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Israeli court backs split-family law
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 15, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel's high court Sunday narrowly upheld a controversial law that restricts the right of Palestinians to live in Israel with their Arab-Israeli spouses and children. The law, imposed in 2002 at the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, is believed to have kept hundreds, and possibly thousands, of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians from moving to Israel to live with their families. The law states that only Palestinian women over the age of 25 and men over 35 are eligible to join their families in Israel and eventually receive citizenship. A panel of judges voted 6-5 against a petition to strike it down. The government argues the legislation is based on security concerns, but the restrictions also cut to a sensitive demographic issue - the fear that Israel's Jewish majority could be threatened if too many Palestinians were granted citizenship. Orna Kohn, a lawyer from Adalah, a group that fights for the rights of Israeli-Arabs, said the court's ruling trampled on the basic rights of thousands of people. "The bottom line is the Supreme Court of Israel refused to intervene with a law that is racist," Kohn said. Fla. teen dies of injuries from bombing in Israel JERUSALEM - A Florida teenager wounded in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on April 17 died Sunday from his injuries, a Tel Aviv Medical Center spokeswoman said. The death of Daniel Wultz, 16, of Weston brought the number of victims killed to 11. Wultz and his parents had been in Israel for Judaism's Passover holiday.
[Last modified May 15, 2006, 08:10:13]
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