JERUSALEM – The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a law that bars many Palestinian Arabs from living in Israel with Israeli spouses and children, a landmark ruling that security concerns outweigh harm to those affected.

Critics accused the court of defending racist legislation aimed at restricting the number of Arab citizens in Israel. But the government said there was evidence that some West Bank Palestinian Arabs who married Israeli Arab women took part in terror attacks.

The court case, decided by an unusually large panel of 11 justices, centered on two of the touchiest issues that have been facing Israel for decades – balancing security and human rights, and maintaining the state’s Jewish identity while dealing fairly with a large Arab minority.

The answers are never clear-cut, as reflected by the 6-5 vote to uphold the law, which bans Palestinian Arab women under the age of 25 and men under 35 from living in Israel with their Israeli Arab spouses.

The restrictions, imposed in 2002 at the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, are believed to have kept hundreds, and possibly thousands, of West Bank and Gaza Palestinian Arabs from moving to Israel. Exact numbers are not known.

State Prosecutor Yochi Genessin said the state has granted 6,000 of 22,000 requests for family unification since Israel and the Palestinian Arabs signed an interim peace deal in 1993. Some were rejected for security reasons, she said.

The law was enacted after a Palestinian Arab who had acquired Israeli citizenship killed himself and 14 other people in a suicide bombing of a Haifa restaurant in 2002.

“This is a very black day for the state of Israel and also a black day for my family and for the other families who are suffering like us,” an Israeli Arab attorney married to a Palestinian Arab woman from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Murad el-Sana, said.

The court had granted Mr. el-Sana’s wife, Abir, a temporary injunction preventing her expulsion from Israel. But Mr. el-Sana said the high court’s ruling made it almost impossible for the couple and their two children, aged 2 years and 5 months, to continue to live together.

Justice Minister Haim Ramon of the centrist Kadima Party defended the ruling.

“No place in the world is required to admit citizens from a country or authority with which it is in a state of conflict,” he said. “We have to remember that this law was legislated during the Palestinian uprising, when several people who received citizenship through family unification carried out attacks.”

The restrictions also cut to a sensitive demographic issue – the fear that the country’s Jewish majority could be threatened if too many Palestinian Arabs are granted citizenship.

Arabs account for nearly 20% of Israel’s population of 7 million, while nearly 4 million Palestinian Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In a minority opinion, Chief Justice Aharon Barak argued that the law should be overturned because security concerns should not take precedence over basic civil rights.

But the majority opinion, led by Justice Mishael Cheshin, contended that “the benefit it [the law] brings to the security and lives of the residents of Israel outweighs the harm it causes to some citizens of Israel.”

Israel’s Supreme Court has a reputation for backing human rights for Palestinian Arabs, but rarely rules against the state when security issues are at stake.