RAMALLAH, June 22 (JMCC) - For years the revocation of
Jerusalem residency has been the silent plight of Palestinians, receiving little attention from the outside world.
Every year hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Jerusalem's Palestinian residents are stripped of their right to live in the city of their birth by an Israeli legal system that is discriminatory in its practice.
Dr. Immad Hammada and Dr. Murad Abu-Khalaf are both lecturers in electrical engineering born in East Jerusalem. Their families have lived in the city for generations. They both left years ago, each one separately, to study in the United States, and after graduating and consolidating their careers they want to return to live in their home town.
But their right to be reunified with their families is being denied by the Interior Ministry, as Amira Hass reported in Sunday's Haaretz. Hammada has been living in his city for some three years illegally, without any rights and under constant danger of being arrested and deported, while Abu-Khalaf is finding it difficult to return, even for a visit.
Judge Noam Sohlberg of Jerusalem District Court is hearing their cases against the ministry this week.
Interior Ministry regulations provide for the abrogation of the rights of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who leave the city for a period of over seven years. Citizens of Israel can leave the country for any length of time, and their citizenship and all their rights are theirs in perpetuity. But when it comes to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, Israel applies draconian regulations whose covert intent is to bring about the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible from their home city...
Read the full story at Haaretz...