On Tuesday June 29, Israel’s new Minister of the Interior, the far-right politician from Yamina Ayelet Shaked, announced her adoption of the ministry’s bureaucratic recommendation to revoke the permanent residency status of Palestinian attorney and activist Salah Hamouri who lives in occupied East Jerusalem. Shaked justified her approving the process based on Hamouri’s “breach of allegiance.” The revocation of Hamouri’s residency must still be approved by the Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and Minister of Justice Gideon Sa’ar.
Salah Hamouri at the European Parliament (Photo: Adameer)
In light of Shaked’s decision, the Palestinian Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association has called for urgent international intervention to stop its implementation, writing: “This arbitrary, punitive and unlawful decision entails profound violations of human rights, constitutes grave violations of international humanitarian law, and represents yet another example of Israel’s protracted and systematic policies and practices intended to silence human rights defenders. Residency policies, embedded in Israel’s regime of racial domination and oppression, are designed to maintain a perilous legal status for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and uphold an Israeli-Jewish demographic majority in the city.”
The Palestinian NGO is urging individuals and organizations to send letters “joining our call against the Israeli Interior Ministry’s application of the recommendations for Salah Hamouri’s residency revocation and forcible transfer out of Jerusalem, and against broader policies of ethnic cleansing and suppression of human rights defenders.”
Hamouri, 36, born in Jerusalem to a French mother and a Palestinian father, is a lawyer and field researcher for Addameer. He has been in-and-out of Israeli jails for his political activism since he was 16 years old, having spent a cumulative seven years in prison between 2005 and 2017 when he was re-incarcerated under an order of administrative detention. Among the other punishments he has incurred from the Israeli authorities was his being banned from Jerusalem for six months, and his French wife’s being prevented from living with or visiting him since 2016.
Related: Posts on Salah Hamouri
