Israel deports Palestinian-French lawyer after nine months of being held without charge

Israel deported today to France Palestinian-French lawyer Salah Hamouri, who spent more than nine months in detention without charge and whose resident status in occupied East Jerusalem was revoked earlier this month, the Israeli Interior Ministry confirmed today.

“I am happy to announce that today justice was done because the sentence for terrorism against Salah Hamori has been carried out and he has been deported from Israel. It is a long process, but a tremendous achievement in the fight against terrorism.”, said the Israeli Minister of the Interior, Ayelet Shaket.

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Hamouri, 37, left this Sunday on an Israeli airline Elal flight to Paris, where he is scheduled to land around 9:00 GMT. His deportation comes two weeks after Israel confirmed the revocation of his residency in East Jerusalem for “breach of allegiance,” a move he first took in October 2021.

The situation of this lawyer and activist with a Palestinian father and a French mother led to the intervention of both human rights organizations and Amnesty International (AI) as well as the French Government itself.

Last week, an Israeli court ruled that El Hamouri would continue to be imprisoned “until further notice” as “a high-security inmate,” despite the fact that he was recently formally released from administrative detention, the regime that Israel usually keeps in jail under. Palestinians indefinitely, without formal charges or trial.

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Dozens of people wait for the French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri at the Parisian Roissy airport, after he was expelled from Israel, on December 18, 2022 (Photo: Dafne BENOIT / AFP)

The lawyer was detained in these conditions since March, until at the beginning of the month He was formally charged with terrorism.

Israel says that the lawyer – born and raised in Jerusalem – is an “agent” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group it considers terrorist, while Hamouri’s defense He denies it and assures that there is no evidence to prove such an accusation.

“Salah’s forced deportation is just the latest episode of judicial and administrative harassment by Israel against him, his family and his crucial human rights work advocating for Palestinian political prisoners.” He denounced a statement from the campaign in his support “Justice for Salah”.

They consider that the lawyer, who worked in an association in defense of the rights of Palestinian prisoners Addameer, “became the main target of Israeli policies of intimidation and silencing those who challenge its institutionalized regime of racial domination and oppression.”

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France has rejected the revocation of his residence and defends that “Hamouri must be able to lead a normal life in Jerusalem”; while AI maintains that stripping someone of the status of resident of the place where they were born violates the Geneva Conventions and can even constitute a war crime, since it occurs in a territory under military occupation, Jerusalem is unilaterally occupied and annexed by Israel.

His case highlights the situation of the majority of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, where, despite being natives of the city, they do not have citizenship, but residency status, which Israel can revoke citing security concerns or if it considers that they have lived abroad. from the city for a long time.

In total, of the roughly 350,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, only about 20,000 hold Israeli citizenship. Few apply to become citizens because it involves a complex bureaucratic process and two-thirds of applications are rejected.

Source: Elcomercio