France Protests Plans to Expel Palestinian Atty. Salah Hamouri

France has registered an official protest against Israel’s planned deportation of the Palestinian-French lawyer Salah Hamouri. Paris asked Israel on Sunday, September 14, to postpone his expulsion and allow Hamouri, who is a French citizen, to be reunited with his family in Jerusalem.

Attorney Salah Hamouri

Attorney Salah Hamouri (Photo: Association France Palestine Solidarité)

Israel’s Foreign Ministry deputy director-general for Europe, Anna Azari, told the French Ambassador to Israel, Éric Danon, that Israel plans to revoke Hamouri’s residency in “light of his continued, active membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”

Over the past 20 years, Israel has shot, arrested and imprisoned Hamouri and has forced his family out of the country. Now, the Palestinian lawyer is facing yet another hurdle in his fight to remain in his homeland. On September 3, he was summoned by Israeli intelligence services and handed a ruling by Israel’s Interior Minister, Aryeh Deri, declaring that his status as a permanent resident of Jerusalem is being revoked. Citing Article 11 of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, the decision was justified on grounds that Hamouri had “breached allegiance to the state of Israel.”

“I now have 30 days to object to the sentence,” Hamouri told Middle East Eye. “Although I am sure the Israeli minister of interior will refuse my appeal, I have the option of bringing my case to Israeli courts, which I will do. This may take years but I will not waiver my right to live in Jerusalem.”

Hamouri is the latest victim of Israel’s punitive policy of residency revocation, which has long been the bane of Palestinian Jerusalemites. Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem, have long lived in their own separate jurisdictional category. Granted so-called “permanent residency” by Israel in 1967 to live in their own city, Palestinian Jerusalemites are at the mercy of a hostile Zionist regime to retain or lose it, and have long complained of being treated as immigrants whose presence in the city is a concession made by Israel that can be overturned at any time.

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