National Authority (hereafter: Palestinian Authority). Any changes to an individual’s residency status would be processed by the Palestinian Authority, and recorded on a master copy of the register. In turn, Israel would be notified of all changes, and would update their own copy of the register accordingly. In practice, however, given Israel’s control of movement across the borders of the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as internally, it was Israel’s copy of the register which came to be used as the de facto master copy. Furthermore, under the terms of the Oslo Accords, Israel also retained “prior approval” of applicants, and these factors – in conjunction with the aforementioned quota system – ensured that the positive potential of this transfer of control was never realized, rendering the exercise entirely superficial in practice. From that point of view, the Interim Agreement, did not alter the effective control of Israel of the civil registry of the occupied population. With the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000, the situation for Palestinian families significantly worsened, with the Israeli Civil Administration freezing all changes to the population registry, with the sole exception of registration of children under the age of sixteen born to a Palestinian parent already registered as a resident, and provided the child was physically present within the occupied Palestinian territory at the time of application. The ‘freeze’ remains in place to this day, leaving thousands of Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territory without the possibility to legally and permanently reside with their families. The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Civil Affairs states that from the beginning of the Second Intifada to August 2005, it forwarded more than 120,000 family unification requests on to Israel, all of which remain unprocessed. Attempts by human rights organizations to seek redress at Israeli High Court, demanding the cancellation of the freezing policy, have failed. Each time Israel argued that the freeze is underpinned by security concerns, and provides no further elaboration. In addition, the State Attorney has repeatedly urged domestic courts not to interfere in what it considers to be a political matter between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority,78 a position which was supported by the Israeli judiciary.79 However, in 2007, following concerted petitioning from NGOs, the Israeli High Court gave the State 60 days to reconsider its policy on family unification. In response, Israel pledged – as a political gesture – to process 50,000 family unification requests. It has so far processed 33,000,80 whilst this gesture only extended to applications whereby both the spouses – the resident and the non resident – were physically present within the occupied Palestinian terrtory.81 78 Human Rights Watch, Forget About Him. 79 Gazuna v. the Civil Administration in the Judea and Samaria Region (HCJ 2007). 80 Human Rights Watch, “Forget About Him”, 10. 81 Ibid. 32