Farahti with three of their four children. Ahmed Farahti is facing deportation back to West Bank even though he has been married to Samar for eight years Morad as-Sana and his wife Abir returned home from their honeymoon in Istanbul last Saturday to the news that the Israeli parliament had passed a law two days earlier that will make their planned life together impossible.
As the young couple crossed back over the land border from Jordan to Israel, they parted ways: Abir to her family in the West Bank city of Bethlehem and Morad to his apartment in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva. Neither knows when they will be able to see one another again.
The enforced separation is the result of legislation rushed through the parliament last week on the orders of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, before the Knesset's summer recess this week. Sharon made the new law -- an amendment to the Citizenship Law barring Palestinians from joining a spouse to live in Israel -- a vote of confidence in his government.
The measure was approved by a wide margin last Thursday.
<snip>
Morad and Abir, like thousands of other couples, now face a heart-breaking future. Abir, a 27-year- old lecturer in social work, is barred from living with Morad in his home in the Negev; and Morad, a 30-year-old lawyer, is prohibited from moving to Bethlehem by army regulations that ban Israelis from entering Palestinian-controlled areas.
"The state is making it impossible for us to be together," said Morad. "I am an Israeli citizen and this is supposed to be my state. What other country treats its citizens in this way?" Paradoxically, the couple met at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in 2000 on a masters programme on peace-building, co-sponsored by the Israeli Embassy and designed to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to trust each other.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=4019
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