Israel announced Oct. 19 it had officially legalized the status of 4,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank. For the first time in a decade, the Israeli defense ministry allowed the Palestinian Authority to update the status of 4,000 people in its population registry. With a Palestinian West Bank resident card or updated registrations of their address, these people can now apply for work permits in Israel and travel abroad through the Israel-Jordan Alenby Bridge crossing point.
Out of the 4,000 Palestinians announced yesterday, 1,200 are considered stateless or status-less —people who were born and raised in the West Bank, but have never been issued a Palestinian identity card for various reasons. These reasons include children born at home and never registered properly, people who had entered Palestinian territories in recent years, got married there and stayed without registering, and residents of Palestinian territories who went to live abroad before the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords and got their identity cards revoked.
