JERUSALEM, June 21 (JMCC) - All the signs are there: as protests step up in the city of Jerusalem, Israeli officials are prepared to implement increasingly draconian policies.

Sources in the government say that officials have been instructed to punish Palestinian Jerusalem activists and their families by depriving them of their national insurance benefits and threatening them with being expelled from the city.

New regulations make it possible for Israeli officials to strip Palestinians in Jerusalem of their rights to live and work in the city if they are found to be involved in activities threatening the state.

Four Hamas officials were informed earlier this month that they must leave the city after four weeks have expired. The officials are trying to rally support against the policy, but the clock is quickly running down for their right to live in Jerusalem.  

The sources expect the deportation policy to be stepped up in Jerusalem, affecting as many as hundreds or thousands of Palestinians.

In response, the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights says that it is already hearing from young people detained in Jerusalem that Israeli officials are threatening them with deportation.

Among the activists who have been warned that their political activities make them a target for deportation include Nasser Qous, head of the Palestinian prisoner's society in Jerusalem, and Hatem Abdel Qader, a Fateh leader in the city.

According to statistics obtained from the Israeli ministry of interior, in 2008 alone, 466 Palestinian Jerusalemites were stripped of their Jerusalem ID cards.

Palestinians can lose their residency rights in the city if they fail to prove that their center of life is in Jerusalem, if they have been out of the country for seven years or more and if they are shown to be a political threat to the state.