Share
Email
PrintGay Palestinian can stay in Israel
A gay Palestinian who fled vengeful kinsmen for Israel won temporary residency rights.
The 33-year-old from the Jenin area won a temporary resident’s permit from Israel’s military authorities, Yediot Achronot reported Tuesday. He illegally moved to Tel Aviv this month and is living with an Israeli boyfriend.
The Palestinian, who says he cannot return to the West Bank as his relatives will kill him, has filed for permanent residency with Israel’s Interior Ministry.
The case is exceptional both in its preliminary recognition of a same-sex relationship and the fact that the appellant is Palestinian.
Dozens of Palestinian gays are believed to have sneaked into Israel in recent years, escaping the ultra-conservative mores of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where homosexuality is punishable by prison time. In Arab society, gays are often killed by their kin for having “sullied the family’s honor.”
Israel has largely turned a blind eye to the sexual refugees, though undocumented Palestinians are regularly rounded up and deported as potential security threats.
This article was made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate to JTA now.
Discussions About this Article Elsewhere
Comments RSS Feed Reader Comments
There are currently no comments to this article. Leave a comment below.
Leave a Comment
To comment on this article, you must first be registered with JTA.
Not Registered?
There are real advantages to a FREE registration with JTA.org:
- Make your voice heard through comments on articles
- Receive our e-mailed Daily Briefing, an invaluable quick-read
- Help decide what Jewish news matters most with interactive tools
Register Now
Already a JTA member?
- Budapest court disbands neo-Nazi Hungarian Guard
- Rowe seeks parental rights, over Nation of Islam
- Report of sale of Jewish bones likely false
- Palestinian swine flu cases rising
- Israeli army, Palestinians trade fire
- Clinton, Fayyad meet
- Lighting a Jewish fuse on the Fourth
- Regev: Halting natural growth is ‘prejudging’ final status
- The Chosen: Jewish members in the 111th U.S. Congress
- Jackson kids’ Jewish mother could regain custody
- Obama in Cairo: See conflict through eyes of the other
- Guard shot at Holocaust museum dies
- In endorsing two states, Netanyahu adopts popular Jewish position
- Canadian politician sues Jewish groups
- Some Jewish settlers turning against Israel
- Mass converts pose dilemma for Latin American Jews
Trackback URL: http://jta.org/trackback/107714/
No trackbacks have been created for this article, be the first to create one.