When Tamara and Ala’a got married in 2012, in addition to their wedding in Beit Jala, they held a second ceremony in Jerusalem to ensure that they could register their marriage in the holy city. The couple moved into a small house in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Safa to make sure that they could legally prove their connection to Jerusalem.

The second wedding and the Jerusalem home were necessary to ensure that the Palestinian couple would not lose their residency permits. But this played out differently. Because Ala’a is from Beit Jala and Tamara from East Jerusalem, the couple could not always be together in the same place. Ala’a came home whenever he managed to obtain a permit, often around Christmas and Easter, while the rest of the year he had to either sneak into Jerusalem or Tamara had to stay at her in-laws.

This complicated arrangement is the result of an Israeli policy aimed at administratively reducing the Arab population of East Jerusalem, by forcing Jerusalemites to constantly have to prove their connection to Jerusalem or else risk losing their right to live in Jerusalem as permanent residents.

After three years, the couple could no longer take it and decided to move to a high-rise apartment building in the north Jerusalem neighborhood of Kufr Aqab. The building is located within the Jerusalem municipal city boundaries, and so Tamara and Ala’a can now prove their connection to Jerusalem. Though Ala’a now has to travel a long way to get to his workplace in Bethlehem, at least they can live together as a family.