registered with any consistency. One of the most significant residency issues is the fact that because Palestinians cannot confer their residency status by marriage, they are required to submit family unification applications, which, but for a brief period in 2007, have been on hold since 2000. It is a deliberate strategy designed to limit the growth of the Palestinian population, inhibit Palestinians abroad from returning by way of marriage, and to make life so difficult Palestinians feel they have little option but to leave their homeland, in order that they can live lawfully as a family. It has also led to some 23.4% of children in East Jerusalem being denied their rights of residency, as they are denied full registration at birth when only one of their parents holds residency in East Jerusalem. Unable to satisfy the high evidential threshold to establish East Jerusalem as their “center of life”, Palestinian children are denied basic rights to access education and health care, and their families are often forced to leave.91 Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, there has been a significant escalation in the revocation of residency rights for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Some 15,000 Palestinians have been deprived of their already inferior permanent residency rights due to a failure to establish Jerusalem as their “center of life” for seven years or more. This practice is the result of a broad interpretation by the Ministry of Interior in 1995 of a judicial decision by the Israeli High Court in the 1988 ‘Awad v. Prime Minister case.92 Many, some who hadn’t even left Jerusalem but nevertheless did not meet some necessary threshold, have been stripped of their residency and forced to leave homes, family, and jobs. This development contributes to a broader Israeli policy to alter and control the demographic population of Jerusalem, keeping the Palestinian population to just 30%, in preparation for “final status” negotiations.93 Denial of return of internally displaced Palestinians Following the Nakba, over 100,000 Palestinians managed to remain inside Israel, although between 35,000 and 45,000 of them were internally displaced between 1949 and 1966.94 These IDPs were defined as “present absentees” 91 Alqasis and Alazza, BADIL, Denial of Residency, supra note 90, 39-44; BADIL, “End Israel’s Policy of discriminatory child registration in Jersualem”, Written Statement submitted by BADIL to the 27th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, A/HRC/27/NGO/44, 6 August 2014, available at http://www. badil.org/en/legal-advocacy/un-submissions/human-right-council.html. 92 HCJ, 282/88, ‘Awad v. Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister and Minister of Interior et al., 5 June 1988, available at http://www.hamoked.org/files/2010/1430_eng.pdf 93 Alqasis and Alazza, BADIL, Denial of Residency, supra note 90, 24-27. 94 BADIL, Survey 2013-2015, supra note 6. 33