During October, a woman applied to the Family Court for urgent relief, for a passport for her 4.5-month-old daughter and permission to remove her from the country. This is a woman with dual citizenship who three years ago made aliyah and came to Israel alone and for Zionist reasons.
In Israel she met the girl's father, but after their daughter was born, the two quarreled and separated, and after the outbreak of the war, the applicant was offered through the foreign embassy to leave Israel on an emergency flight for the duration of the war, but in order to do so, she had to issue the daughter a passport. According to her, the father refuses to allow the daughter to leave the country and issue her a passport for irrelevant reasons. According to her, the father must agree and give his hand to his daughter leaving a danger zone to a safe place, and she undertakes to return to Israel immediately after the war ends.
Documentation: Ben Gurion Airport at the time of the alarm // Eliezer Klein
According to her, she works here and the center of her life in Israel. She is also in her final year of academic studies, signed a lease agreement until next year, and "it doesn't make sense for me to leave all this to return to a country I wasn't good at," she said, adding that the rented apartment where she lives doesn't have a safe room, and that during an alarm she has to run with the toddler to the nearby shelter.
The father, on the other hand, vehemently opposed the request, fearing that the mother would settle abroad or continue from there to another country and not return to Israel. According to him, granting permission to the applicant to leave the country with the daughter will lead to her abduction and denial of his right as a natural guardian.
The father feared: the mother would settle abroad with the girl, Photo: GettyImages
According to him, the applicant had indicated to him in the past that she wanted to return abroad and live with her family. The father added that the war is currently taking place mainly in the south, and if it spreads to the north of the country, the mother will be able to defend herself like all the inhabitants of the country. He suggested that the applicant rent a protected apartment and claimed that the mother's request constituted a "cynical exploitation of the situation." He also emphasized that he voluntarily pays substantial alimony.
The judge accepted the mother's request, but ordered that the child could leave Israel on condition that the mother provide a financial guarantee of NIS 150,<>, and if she did not return to Israel within a month with the child, the money would be transferred to the daughter's father.
The girl will be able to leave Israel with the mother's bail, the display of abductees at Ben Gurion Airport, photo: Sivan Faraj
"It seems that the procedural framework has given, against the background of the exceptional circumstances and the outbreak of war, a difficult dilemma. It goes without saying that there is no need to rely on references for the purpose of determining that the court must take into consideration the best interests of the minor, according to which it is in the best interest of a child not to stay in an area where war is taking place and thus decide the scales," wrote Justice Liron Zerbel-Kadshay.
She added: "I was convinced that at the heart of the decision lies a proper balance between the freedom given to the applicant to leave the country for a limited period in order to ventilate with the family of origin she needs in light of the outbreak of the war, and the necessity to return the minor to Israel at the end of the allotted period, to maintain continuous and lasting contact with her father."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us