Israeli High Court Postpones Decision on East Jerusalem Residency as ID Card Confiscation Continues

By Maureen Meehan

Some people call it the “quiet deportation,” while others are calling it “ethnic cleansing.” Whatever term is used to describe it, there is no doubt that the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from Jerusalem has been stepped up in the past three years. Between 1996 and 1998, Israeli authorities have stripped over 2,000 families, affecting an estimated 8,500 individuals, of their right to live in the city using the insidious bureaucratic tool of ID card confiscation, among others.

On April 22, the Israeli High Court heard a petition submitted last year by five Israeli human rights organizations for Palestinians whose residency rights had been revoked. In the face of growing pressure and media attention being brought to bear by a coalition of groups working on the so-called Campaign to End ID Card Confiscation in Jerusalem, the High Court postponed a decision saying it would await further details from the petitioners and the government respondents.

The petitioners, represented by attorneys Lea Tsemel and Eliayu Avram, argued that starting in December 1995 there has been a marked change in the criteria used by the Interior Ministry on Palestinian residency in Jerusalem and that, thereafter, more stringent criteria were applied to determine whether East Jerusalem Palestinians had the right to live in the city. The petition challenged both the substantive basis for revoking residency and the procedures being followed by the Israeli Interior Ministry.

During that period, Israel’s interior minister, Eliyahu Suissa, introduced a new and extreme policy which in effect turns Palestinian residents of Jerusalem into illegal aliens in their city of birth, explained Tsemel. Palestinians who leave the city’s overcrowded and underfunded neighborhoods to live in the West Bank, or even just outside the city limits, risk losing their residency. Since Palestinians are not permitted to build new homes or add on to existing ones, overcrowding and housing shortages have become acute.

“Imagine if you were born and raised in New York City then decided to marry and move out to the suburbs to raise your family, and you lost your right to ever live in New York or even to visit, for that matter…because with the closure, Palestinians can’t even visit Jerusalem,” said one woman who was demonstrating in front of the High Court. She asked only to be called Um Wajiha because, she explained, she has had to move into a village near Bethlehem recently to be near her two children who are studying at the university there.

“We still pay all taxes and utility bills in the city but we have to live outside for now…if they [Israeli municipal authorities] realize we’re not permanently living here, they will strip us of our right to live in Jerusalem, the city where my great-great grandparents, and everyone since, were born,” she said. “Natural expansion in our neighborhoods is not part of Israel’s urban planning policy for Jerusalem…In addition to snatching our ID cards, they are forcing us out by crowding us in and letting the garbage pile up.”

Also in attendance at the High Court hearing was an international delegation of jurists made up of European, Indian, Israeli and Palestinian representatives whose presence, according to activists, was to “professionally embarrass the Israeli Supreme Court, raise international awareness of Israel’s bureaucratic ethnic cleansing” and to collect data for an upcoming meeting in Geneva (June/July) where enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied territories is to be discussed.

The legal status of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem is worth pointing out here: Immediately following the war of June 1967, an Israeli population census recorded that there were 66,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank areas that were annexed to the new municipal boundaries created by Israel. Including the Palestinians who were evicted from their homes soon after the end of the war, an estimated 30,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes and from Jerusalem in 1967. Those who remained fell under the jurisdiction of Israel’s Law of Entry which classified them as “permanent residents of Israel.”

The 1952 Law of Entry defines entry to and residency in Israel as a privilege and not a right. Thus the application of the Law of Entry to annexed East Jerusalem turned the city’s Palestinian residents into foreigners and permanent tourists in their own home town.

“Take the Law of Entry and compare it to the Law of Return, and there’s your proof of ethnic cleansing,” said Um Wajiha, referring to the law that allows all Jews from anywhere in the world at any time to claim Israeli citizenship, regardless of where they were born.

Although the Israeli Interior Ministry rejects claims that there has been a change of policy, human rights groups, attorneys and legal experts concur that since 1996 the ministry has acted vigorously to reduce the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem. They point to some of the bureaucratic tools being used recently to restrict Palestinian population growth and ongoing residency.

These include revoking the residency status of people who have lived outside of the city for several years. The Law of Entry states that if a permanent resident lives outside the country for more than seven years, the person is liable to lose his/her resident status. As a result, thousands have lost their legal residency over the years. However, that stipulation has been shortened from seven to several years.

Revocation of residency, point out attorneys, is accomplished without giving the resident a meaningful opportunity to appeal the decision. In addition, Palestinians must prove that they live in and maintain their “center of life” in Jerusalem. Palestinians complain that the standard of proof required is so high that even people who have lived their entire life in Jerusalem find it difficult to meet. To add to the difficulty, proving “center of life” residence is not a one-shot deal. Any time a bureaucratic issue—insurance, education, driver’s license, taxes, utility payments—comes up, Israeli ministry clerks can demand that a person go through the rigorous process all over again.

Another tactic used by Israel to thin out the Palestinian population is refusing to register and issue identification numbers to children born to Jerusalem residents, even where the ministry had already recognized that the family lives in Jerusalem. Children born to West Bank Palestinian fathers and Jerusalemite mothers also have no claim to reside in Jerusalem.

Israeli Election Campaign and Judaization of Jerusalem

During the weeks and months that lead up to the May 17 Israeli elections, settlement activity and attempts to remove Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem increased by leaps and bounds. Many saw these efforts as part of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s campaign to demonstrate their resolve to Judaize Jerusalem. Pre-election time, say some Israeli analysts, is the best time to pursue such actions because the Likud knows that the international community will be sensitive to accusations of interference in domestic elections.

Currently, Israeli authorities continue to support violent attacks and evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem. Extremist Jewish-American millionaire Irving Moskowitz has made public his intention to obtain building permits for an additional 132 housing units in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Ras al-Amoud. Work has already begun on preparing foundations on this land, which Moskowitz claims to be his own property. There are already 65 Jewish families living in houses in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem. In addition, there are already 14 Jewish families living in illegally seized houses in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan. [See the Jan./Feb. 1999 Washington Report.]

In late April, the Israeli government underscored its desire to remove Palestinians by issuing an order closing much of the Orient House, the PLO’s offices in Jerusalem. The intention of the government is to close the offices that provide advice and protection for local Palestinians who believe they’re being victimized by Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies. One of the offices targeted for closure is that of Khalil Tufakji, who researches illegal Jewish settlement expansion and the consequences on the Palestinian population.

BADIL, a Bethlehem-based resource center that deals with Palestinian residency and refugee rights, recently published a report that seems to demonstrate that Israel is engaged in “a type of ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem, fully 50 years after it seized control of the Holy City.

According to Badil’s report, 200,000 Palestinians, not including their descendants, have been forced into exile over the years. In 1948, Palestinians owned as much as 80 percent of Jerusalem lands, including religious institutions and state land. Today Palestinians are restricted to 7.3 percent of the eastern parts of Jerusalem occupied in 1967. Badil estimates that about 8 percent of the Jerusalemites holding ID cards emigrate annually to the West Bank due to discriminatory Israeli administrative and legal measures.

“The grievances, hopes and demands of Palestinians do not start or end with dates and rules defined by powerful states or individuals at some negotiating table. Peaceful co-existence in the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city of Jerusalem will become a reality only if the issues of the Palestinian people are addressed according to international law, including United Nations resolutions,” concludes the Badil report.

Maureen Meehan is a free-lance journalist who covers Jerusalem and the West Bank.