Background
Havatzelet Pinhas is an Israeli citizen, and Hang Jujian is a Chinese citizen who entered Israel in 2006. After holding work and visitor visas, Jujian remained in Israel after his visitor visa expired in April 2019. His asylum application was denied, and his appeal from that decision was withdrawn in 2022. The Administrative Court subsequently clarified that, absent interim relief, he was required to leave Israel.
In June 2025, the applicants sought status for Jujian based on their asserted unmarried partnership, which they said began in January 2025. The Population and Immigration Authority declined to process the request before he complied with the earlier judgment requiring his departure. The Appeals Tribunal dismissed their challenge, finding insufficient evidence of the claimed relationship to justify preliminary consideration before departure. The Tel Aviv District Court, sitting as an Administrative Court, affirmed, emphasizing that Jujian had neither addressed his failure to comply with the departure judgment nor shown changed circumstances warranting consideration of the status request.
While the applicants’ request for leave to appeal was pending, the Authority amended its unmarried-partner procedure. New section C.9 generally requires a foreign partner subject to an unfulfilled departure judgment to leave Israel before a status request will be processed, but permits the regional director, in exceptionally rare cases and for documented special reasons, to authorize processing before departure upon a reasoned application.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court treated the request for leave to appeal as though leave had been granted and an appeal filed, and allowed the appeal in a limited respect. With the respondents’ consent, the Court directed that amended section C.9 apply to the applicants’ status request. Jujian may therefore submit a reasoned application to the regional director within 30 days, asking that his partnership-based status request be processed before he leaves Israel. The regional director must decide whether to permit such pre-departure processing.
The Court stressed that this relief was granted only because the respondents agreed and “beyond the strict letter of the law.” It did not hold that the partnership was genuine, invalidate the amended procedure, or require the Authority to consider the underlying status request on its merits. The Court noted the grounds relied on below, the Authority’s assertion that its preliminary review found no minimal evidentiary basis for a genuine relationship, and the demanding standard governing a third-level administrative appeal.
To preserve Jujian’s ability to use the procedure, the Court barred enforcement of his unlawful presence until the regional director issues a further decision. If he does not apply within the prescribed period, that protection ends 30 days after the judgment. The Court made no costs order.
Key Takeaways
- A foreign partner who remains in Israel despite a final departure judgment ordinarily must leave before a partnership-based status request will be processed.
- Under amended section C.9, the regional director may exceptionally authorize processing before departure when a reasoned application establishes special grounds.
- The decision applied that new procedure to these applicants by consent; it did not determine the relationship’s genuineness or establish a general right to pre-departure review.
Why It Matters
The decision clarifies the practical effect of Israel’s amended unmarried-partner procedure on cases involving an outstanding judicial departure order. Such an order remains the general barrier to processing a status request from within Israel, but the amended procedure now supplies a narrow, expressly defined route for seeking an exception.
The ruling is also deliberately limited. Because relief rested on the government’s consent and was granted beyond strict entitlement, it does not resolve broader challenges to the validity or retroactive application of the amendment. Applicants must still present a reasoned request capable of satisfying the procedure’s highly restrictive exceptional-circumstances standard.