{"id":46984,"date":"2021-11-21T11:25:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-21T11:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=46984"},"modified":"2021-11-21T11:25:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T11:25:52","slug":"jerusalem-palestinian-french-lawyer-fights-israeli-deportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=46984","title":{"rendered":"Jerusalem: Palestinian-French lawyer fights Israeli deportation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ramallah, Occupied West Bank <\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> Jerusalem-born-and-bred Palestinian lawyer and human rights advocate Salah Hammouri is fighting imminent deportation from his homeland.<\/p>\n

The move to expel Hammouri comes after Israeli authorities accused him of a \u201cbreach of allegiance to the State of Israel\u201d and described him as a \u201csecurity threat\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m living in limbo because I can\u2019t plan the next 24-hours of my life. I\u2019m unable to leave Ramallah because I\u2019m scared of being arrested if I cross the checkpoints into Israel,\u201d said Hammouri, who is also a French citizen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t visit my home and family in Jerusalem, and I can\u2019t leave the country to travel to France to see my wife and children because I will not be allowed to return,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Hammouri\u2019s pregnant French wife Elsa was refused entry to Israel in 2016 despite having a work visa.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was held at Ben Gurion Airport for several days and then deported to France,\u201d said Hammouri. \u201cI used to leave the country every three months to go and see my wife and two children, but now that is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Out of the question\u2019<\/h2>\n

On October 18, Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked officially notified the 36-year-old Palestinian-French human rights defender<\/a> of the revocation of his permanent residency status in Jerusalem for a \u201cbreach of allegiance to the State of Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

The decision had already been approved by Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and Minister of Justice Gideon Saar.<\/p>\n

Last year, Hammouri was officially notified of the interior ministry\u2019s intention to revoke his Jerusalem residency. He was told he could challenge the move in a written submission within 30 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeportation and leaving my home country are out of the question. Israel has no right to deport Palestinians from their homeland nor to deny us the right to live in our own cities,\u201d Hammouri said.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Palestinians have been living \u201cillegally\u201d in Jerusalem and in Israel because Israeli authorities refuse to grant residency rights to West Bank Palestinians or foreigners married to Jerusalemites, unlike Israeli Jews whose spouses are automatically granted residency as well as citizenship.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s denial of residency rights to Palestinian spouses is based on its Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, allegedly on security grounds, but critics argue it is part of a policy to alter occupied East Jerusalem\u2019s demographics in favour of a Jewish majority.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsequently, to this day, thousands of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens or residents must live in their home for years on end with nothing but military stay permits and no social security rights,\u201d Israeli rights group Hamoked has noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a minority of the cases, those who applied for family unification and received initial approval before the enactment of the law receive temporary status in Israel, which affords them social security rights but gives them no sense of stability in their own homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Breach of allegiance\u2019<\/h2>\n

International humanitarian law explicitly forbids an occupying power from demanding allegiance from the occupied population, as stated in Article 45 Hague Regulations and Article 68(3) of the Fourth Geneva Convention.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s policy of revoking Palestinian residency rights in occupied East Jerusalem further violates Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and Article 64 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that the occupying power may not act as a sovereign legislator or extend its own legislation over the occupied territory.<\/p>\n

According to a 2018 report from Human Rights Watch, at least 14,595 Palestinians from Jerusalem have had their residency revoked by Israel since 1967, the majority on the basis of having a \u201ccentre of life\u201d outside of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The revocation of Hammouri\u2019s residency, however, is the first based on a \u201cbreach of allegiance to Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the steps being taken against him appear to be politically motivated because of his human rights work and \u201cloud opposition\u201d to the Israeli occupation.\u00a0He was first arrested as a teenager for painting political graffiti on a wall.<\/p>\n

Hammouri was later sentenced to 10 years in jail for allegedly being involved, together with another Palestinian, in the beginnings of a conspiracy to attack a rabbi from the Israeli Shas political party \u2013 a charge his lawyer said was unfair because he actually stopped the plan from going forward.<\/p>\n

He was given the option of being deported to France, where his mother and wife are from, or serving jail time; he refused to be deported from his homeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI served seven years of that sentence before being released in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011 between Israel and the Palestinians,\u201d said Hammouri.<\/p>\n

\u201cThereafter, I was arrested a number of times and placed in administrative detention for a combined period of about two years with no charges brought against me,\u201d he added, referring to Israel\u2019s policy of detaining Palestinians without trial or charge for indefinite periods.<\/p>\n

His Israeli lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said the appeal against the deportation could take months and that any court decision would be influenced by the political situation on the ground.<\/p>\n

She also acknowledged there was a chance they would not win the appeal but that would not deter them from continuing to fight for justice however long it took.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have various arguments we intend to use in regard to Hammouri\u2019s actions and his non-actions,\u201d Tsemel told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Israel annexed occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 \u2013 a move that is not recognised internationally and stands in contravention of international law.<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestinians had no choice in the annexation,\u201d said Tsemel. \u201cOnly later did the Israeli court amend legislation to enable the interior ministry to deny Palestinians residency on the basis of not swearing loyalty to the state or for committing an offence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are arguing that East Jerusalem residents are not obliged to have allegiance to a state they are not citizens of and that the occupation was imposed on them. Furthermore, under international law people under occupation are not obliged to be loyal to the occupying power and also have the right to fight the occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERACTIVE: Palestine\/West Bank Illegal settlements - 112 companies\"<\/p>\n

Jerusalem family reunification<\/h2>\n

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law is renewed every six months but, on July 6, it expired after the Knesset, Israel\u2019s parliament, voted down the bill to extend it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin weeks it became clear that the minister of interior had instructed ministry clerks not to process requests for citizenship or permanent status filed by those to whom the law had until recently applied \u2013 a population of more than 13,000 people despite human rights organisations\u2019 repeated communications to the ministry,\u201d Hamoked reported.<\/p>\n

Hamoked, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), and Physicians for Human Rights petitioned the high court to compel the interior ministry to process reunification requests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been no hearings so far \u2013 we have asked for the case to be heard in the high court rather than the district court, and are waiting for a decision on this request,\u201d Hamoked Executive Director Jessica Montell told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state has to submit its response to the petition but requested an extension.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hammouri was one of six Palestinian rights activists whose phones were infected with Pegasus spyware marketed by the Israeli tech company NSO, according to an extensive investigation carried out by Frontline Defenders, in a joint technical report together with Amnesty International and the University of Toronto\u2019s Citizen Lab, which independently confirmed the results.<\/p>\n

Milena Ansari from the Addameer Palestinian rights group told Al Jazeera that Israel had been trying to deport Hammouri for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no evidence against him regarding his recent detentions and the Israelis have ignored the human rights work he has been involved in for years as a qualified lawyer,\u201d Ansari said.<\/p>\n

Hammouri acknowledged his life would be easier if he left Palestine to live in France with his family, but he said that is not an option.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me it\u2019s not a question of leaving. I will exhaust every avenue to continue living in Jerusalem, which is my right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born in Jerusalem, I grew up in Jerusalem, my memories are there, my life is there. It\u2019s my right to live in Jerusalem and I will continue to fight for this right although I know the road ahead is long and hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ramallah, Occupied West Bank \u2013 Jerusalem-born-and-bred Palestinian lawyer and human rights advocate Salah Hammouri is fighting imminent deportation from his homeland. The move to expel Hammouri comes after Israeli authorities accused him of a \u201cbreach of allegiance to the State of Israel\u201d and described him as a \u201csecurity threat\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m living in limbo because I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}