A/HRC/12/48 page 57 for a permit is based on a person's registered address, enabling Israel to bar Palestinians whose registered address is in Gaza from moving to the West Bank. This measure has also retroactively turned many Palestinians who already live in the West Bank into illegal residents. These policies have had a devastating impact on many families that were effectively forced to live apart or, in order to live together, move to the Gaza Strip with no possibility of returning to the West Bank.52 Israel has bureaucratically and logistically effectively split and separated not only Palestinians in the occupied territories and their families in Israel, but also Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territory and between Gazans and West Bankers/Jerusalemites.53 206. Despite prohibitions under international humanitarian law (IHL),54 Israel has applied its domestic laws throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967. Notably, existing planning and construction laws were annulled and replaced with military orders, and related civil powers transferred from local authorities to Israeli institutions, with ultimate discretion resting with military commanders.55 The application of Israeli domestic laws has resulted in institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the benefit of Jewish settlers, both Israeli citizens and others. Exclusive benefits reserved for Jews derive from the two-tiered civil status under Israel’s domestic legal regime based on a “Jewish nationality,” which entitles “persons of Jewish race or descendency”56 to superior rights and privileges, particularly in land use, housing, development, immigration and access to natural resources, as affirmed in key legislation.57 Administrative procedures qualify indigenous inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as “alien persons” and, thus, prohibited from building on, or renting, large portions of land designated by the Government of Israel as “State land”.58 207. The two-tiered civil status under Israeli law, favouring “Jewish nationals” (le’om yehudi) over persons holding Israeli citizenship (ezrahut), has been a subject of concern under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, particularly those forms of discrimination carried out through Israel’s parastatal agencies (World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund and their affiliates), which dominate land use, housing and development.59 The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also B’Tselem and Hamoked, “Separated entities - Israel divides Palestinian population of West Bank and Gaza Strip”, available at: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200809_Separated%20Entities_Eng.pdf. 52 53 Amira Hass, op. cit. 54 The Hague Regulations (art. 43). Order regarding the Towns, Villages and Buildings Planning Law (Judea and Samaria) (No. 418), 5731-1971 (QMZM 5732 1000; 5736 1422, 1494; 5741 246; 5742 718, 872; 5743, No. 57, at 50; 5744, No. 66, at 30), para. 8. 55 56 Jewish National Fund, Memorandum of Association, art. 3 (c). For those holding “Jewish nationality” (as distinct from Israeli citizenship), special immigration rights and privileges are provided in the Basic Law: Law of Return (1950), as well as development and access to natural resources under the Basic Law: “Israel Lands” (1960). 57 An alien person is defined as one who falls outside the following categories: (a) an Israeli citizen; (b) a person who has immigrated (to Israel) under the Basic Law: Law of Return; (c) someone who is entitled to the status of immigrant under the Law of Return, i.e. a Jew by descent or religion; (d) a company controlled by (a), (b) or (c). 58 In 1998, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights observed “with grave concern that the Status Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries, including the Jewish 59