Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hammouri, who is currently imprisoned by Israel, has been ordered by the Israeli state to be deported on December 4th, following the revocation of his Jerusalem residency status.
Last year the Israeli government revoked the Jerusalem residency of Hammouri, a dual Palestinian-French citizen who was born in Jerusalem, on the basis of “breach of allegiance” to the state. The decision comes after an Israeli Supreme Court ruling back in July that allowed for stripping citizenship or Jerusalem residency status from those found in “breach of loyalty” to the state.
Over the past two decades, Hammouri has spent more than eight years in Israeli prisons, with several stints in administrative detention – a policy used by Israel against Palestinians allowing for indefinite detention without charge or trial.
According to the official Justice for Salah campaign, Hammouri was notified on Wednesday by the Israeli Prison Service that his forcible deportation was scheduled for Sunday December 4, 2022.
“Israel’s policy of revoking Palestinian residency rights in Jerusalem amounts to a war crime and feeds into their oppression and domination over the Palestinians,” the campaign wrote on their Twitter account, along with a call to French President Emmanuel Macron “not to be a part of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalemites.”
Prisoners rights group Addameer also tweeted they were “alarmed by the imminent forcible deportation of Salah Hammouri, who is currently under detention w/o charge.”
Hammouri is currently being held in Israeli prison under an administrative detention order. He was arrested back in March, a day after he published an article in Jacobin Magazine detailing his years of imprisonment and the government’s decision to revoke his residency status.
Since he was imprisoned in March, Hammouri has sent appeals to Macron and the ICC, demanding pressure on Israel to release him from prison and stop his deportation order.
‘Breach of Allegiance’
The deportation order for Hammouri came just over one year after his residency status was revoked, which paved the way for his eventual deportation, something Israel’s then Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked advocated heavily for at the time.
Shaked, who has infamously called for the mass killing of Palestinians, cited allegations of “terroristic activities” and/or affiliation with “terrorist entities,” based on withheld “secret information.”
Addameer slammed Shaked’s decision at the time for being “intentionally vague,” and reminiscent of Israeli administrative detention orders, in which Palestinians are held without charge or trial, often based on “secret evidence.”
Shaked’s decision also went on to cite Hammouri’s past history of arrests, most of which were also under administrative detention
“Notably, the Ministry explicitly alludes to the notable escalation of permanent residency revocation of Palestinian Jerusalemites for “breach of allegiance,” as exemplified by the case of Salah Hammouri, by stating that the decision was necessary “to deter others from breaching allegiance to the State of Israel’,” Addameer said in a statement.
Addameer said that the decision to revoke Hammouri’s residency was the culmination of years of targeted harassment by the Israeli government against Hammouri for his human rights work.
In addition to years of arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, Hammouri has been subject to travel bans, the deportation of his wife (who is a French national) in 2016, thus separating him from his wife and son, and most recently an Israeli spyware hack that targeted his personal devices.
‘Dangerous precedent’
Hammouri was born and raised in Jerusalem, and has called the city his home his entire life. He is one of more than 370,000 Palestinians residents of Jerusalem, which was illegally annexed by Israel in 1967.
Following Israel’s annexation of the city, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem were given “permanent residency status,” meaning they carry Jerusalem ID cards and live under Israeli rule, but are not considered citizens of the state, unlike Jewish residents of the city who boast full citizenship and national rights.
Due to a series of discriminatory laws and practices, Palestinian Jerusalemites can have their residency status revoked by the state at any time for a number of reasons, leaving them stateless.
It’s a practice that Israel has been enforcing for decades, as part of what Palestinians say is an attempt to change the demographic nature of the city, which Israel claims as its capital, and Palestinians seek as the capital of their future state.
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.
One of the most common tactics used by Israel to revoke someone’s Jerusalem residency, is based on a failure to prove a “center of life” in Jerusalem upon inspection by authorities. Palestinian Jerusalemites who live abroad, or are married to Palestinians from outside Jerusalem and live with their spouses outside of the city are commonly subject to such scrutiny and subsequent status revocation. Once someone’s status is revoked, it essentially leaves them stateless.
Human Rights Watch pointed out in its report that in recent years, Israel has also revoked residency status to “punish Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis and as collective punishment against relatives of suspected assailants.”
“The discriminatory system pushes many Palestinians to leave their home city in what amounts to forcible transfers, a serious violation of international law,” the rights group said.
Rights groups and activists have expressed fears that the deportation of Hammouri will set a dangerous precedent for other Palestinians in the city, who could be forced out of their homes for their human rights work, if deemed by the state as a “breach of allegiance.”
With the most right-wing government in Israel’s history recently elected into power, with ministers who have openly advocated for the revocation of citizenship and forced expulsion of Palestinain ministers of Israel’s government, the consequences of Hammouri’s deportation could be far-reaching.
No human being could be loyal to the zionist entity. It has no right to demand ‘allegiance’ from any human being, much less one who is actually entitled to live in the actual state of Palestine.
Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/israel-opt-deporting-salah-hammouri-would-constitute-a-war-crime/
“Deporting Salah Hammouri would constitute a war crime…“Unlawful deportation from the Occupied Palestinian Territories constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime. Deportation carried to maintain a system of apartheid constitutes a crime against humanity. These crimes are all in the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, whose Prosecutor has opened an investigation into the situation in Palestine. We reiterate our call for the crime of apartheid to be included in that investigation; Israeli authorities must be held accountable. ”
Israel may claim it didn’t sign on the the Fourth Geneva Convention, but the U.S. did.
Israel and Zionists like to claim that Israel is a villa in a tough neighborhood, that it’s an oasis in a jungle.
Setting aside the deplorable and inherent racism in that claim and argument, one must point out that Israel and its colonial racist “friends” implemented policies, and carried out atrocities in this region, one that used to be the very cradle of civilization – especially in the late 1800s and early 1900s – and have turned the region into a jungle. Jews, Christians and Muslims lived as neighbors side by side before Zionism and racist colonial powers arrived in the region and divided it as though they own it.
Israel is not a civilized nation, it never was. Pretense is not reality. Culturally, even amongst themselves Israelis are aggressive, and rude, while Palestinians are polite and behave with dignity.
Israel is not a signatory to many international agreements of which the so-called civilized Euro-centric West is part.
It is not a signatory because these are the actions of a creature – a monster – OF the jungle. A jungle in which disgusting racist venom and the dehumanization of others is part and parcel of the doctrine.
Bezalel Smotrich said that human rights organizations are an “existential threat to the state of Israel.” To Israel as a Jewish-Supremacy state – well, yes, they are.
1 of 2
What Is Happening In Israel?. The situation has gone from steady… | by Matthew Gindin | Nov, 2022 | Medium
“What Is Happening In Israel?” by Matthew Gindin, Nov. 29/30 – excerpts
“In the last month, according to Combatants For Peace, there were over 100 attacks by Jewish settlers in the occupied territories against Palestinians — & these attacks occurred in just over 10 days. These settlers, who are rarely brought to account by the Israeli state, & in fact receive support in both tacit & proactive forms, poisoned olive groves, terrorized shepherds, & brutally assaulted activists. “Five days ago, a young boy named Ahmad was killed by the IDF — the 55th child killed this year. Two weeks ago a 15 year old Autistic Palestinian teen was shot to death by the IDF while apparently catching a ride home with a 26 year old Palestinian man. Although the IDF originally claimed he drove his car at them, he was subsequently released for lack of evidence against him, suggesting that there was no reason for her death — although fatal ammunition is not the only way to react to vehicular assault in any case. “As I write this 5 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF in the last 24 hours. Last Friday, An IDF soldier was filmed attacking a left-wing activist in the West Bank city of Hebron. Another soldier can be heard telling one of the activists that “Ben-Gvir is going to bring order, you’ve had it,” in reference to the Kahanist lawmaker who has been named National Security Minister in the recently elected government. “Kahanism, the doctrine propounded by the late Meir Kahane, states that Israel should be a state in which only Jews have voting rights, & others may live as ‘resident strangers’ with no political rights or be forcibly expelled. Previously banned in Israel as a racist doctrine, it is now making its way into the halls of government…(cont’d)