Israel strips Palestinian-French rights lawyer of Jerusalem residency

Israel has stripped a prominent Palestinian-French human rights lawyer of his Jerusalem residency and is expected to deport him to France, a legal first that sets a dangerous precedent for other Palestinians with dual nationality in the contested city.

Salah Hamouri, 37, had his Jerusalem residency revoked in October 2021 on the grounds of a “breach of allegiance” to the Israeli state, based on secret evidence. Israel alleges he is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel’s western allies.

Unlike the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are defined under international law as occupied territories, East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in the war of 1967. The 300,000 Palestinians living there are granted revocable Israeli residency permits, and very few have full Israeli citizenship.

Hamouri has been held in administrative detention without charge or trial since 7 March, and went on hunger strike for three weeks in September. This week, Israel’s supreme court rejected an appeal against the order stripping him of his residency, and on Wednesday the outgoing interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, announced that the state planned to deport him to France.

“This is the first time Israeli law has been implemented in such a way, that a person who has a dual nationality is intended to be deported. The implications for other Jerusalemites [with dual nationality] are grave,” said Dani Shenhar, an attorney with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights group that is fighting his case.

Hamouri has been imprisoned by Israel on several previous occasions, including serving a seven-year sentence between 2005 and 2011 for his alleged role in a plot to kill a chief rabbi.

After maintaining his innocence during three years of pre-trial detention, he eventually took a plea bargain on the advice of his lawyer in order to avoid a 14-year-sentence or deportation, which would probably have meant losing his Jerusalem residency.

His wife, Elsa Lefort, a French national, was deported after arriving at Tel Aviv’s airport in 2016 and given a 10-year entry ban. She and the couple’s two young children live in France and have not been allowed to visit or even speak by phone to Hamouri since he was detained in March.

“This is the most severe attack against Salah, even compared to the long persecution he has already endured,” said a spokesperson for the #JusticeforSalah campaign. “Salah has made it very clear to the world that he would rather choose prison than being deported from his home town Jerusalem. This should tell the world what it means to him to be in his homeland and home town.”

The deportation decision threatens to spark a diplomatic spat with Paris. “France follows Salah Hamouri’s situation very closely and at the highest level,” the French foreign ministry said. He “must be able to have a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born and where he lives, and his wife and children must be able to travel there to get back with him.”

According to the Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer, where Hamouri works, 820 Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, the highest number in a decade.

HaMoked plans to file a petition on Hamouri’s behalf in early 2023.