“Justice for Salah” campaign throws spotlight on illegal residency revocations
"Israel’s coercive environment imposed on the Palestinian people [aims to] drive them out of Jerusalem, and Palestine at large."
Jerusalem24– A civil society campaign aims to end the Israeli authorities’ harassment of Jerusalemite activist Salah Hammouri, as well as raise awareness of “the systematic and illegal policies and practices employed against the Palestinian people.”
The “Justice for Salah” campaign called in a press release for the immediate release of Hammouri from administrative detention, an end to threats against Hammouri of forcible deportation, and for allowing him and his family to live freely in Jerusalem.
The campaign further calls to “repeal all ID revocation and deportation policies against Jerusalemites, and allow for the return of those deported or that had their IDs revoked back to Jerusalem.”
According to Al-Haq, one of the undersigned members of the campaign, residency revocation has long been used by Israel as a tool to forcibly transfer Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
“Continuous judicial and administrative harassment”
37-year-old Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian-French Jerusalemite and lawyer with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, “has been the subject of Israeli occupation harassment since he was 15 years old,” says the campaign. He was imprisoned six times and has been held in administrative detention since 7 March this year. In addition, the campaign says, Hammouri has “faced several travel bans, exorbitant bail and fines, house arrests, separation from his family, surveillance and spyware attack, and the illegal revocation of his permanent Jerusalem residency under threat of forcible deportation on 18 October 2021.”
According to the campaign, the revocation of his residency status took place “under the vague and illegal criterion of “breach of allegiance” to the state of Israel.”
“It is part of a larger attack on Palestinians living in occupied Palestine, and Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in particular, including with regard to Israel’s policy of forcible transfer and persecution.”
Hammouri’s case illustrates “the widespread and systematic practice of illegal deportation and demographic manipulation, as manifested through its laws, policies, and practices, to maintain an institutionalized regime of domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole.”
“Profound violations of international law”
“The initiation of his residency revocation under Amendment No. 30 to the Entry into Israel Law of 1952, unlawfully applied to Jerusalem, an occupied territory, entails profound violations of international law,” claims the campaign. “It also puts him at imminent risk of forcible transfer and deportation, a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as the crimes against humanity of persecution, apartheid, and deportation.”
The campaign says Hammouri’s case constitutes an example of Israeli apartheid, “including the widespread and systematic practice of illegal deportation and demographic manipulation, as manifested through its laws, policies, and practices, to maintain an institutionalized regime of domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole.”
The campaign is undersigned by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Amnesty international, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International, Front Line Defenders, The Palestinian Institute of Public Diplomacy-PIPD, and Forensic Architecture.
