On Sunday, December 18, Israeli authorities forcibly deported Palestinian lawyer, human rights defender, and father of two, Salah Hammouri, from his homeland. Born in Jerusalem to a French mom, Hammouri can be a French citizen and, till not too long ago, held a Jerusalem ID earlier than it was revoked by the Israeli authorities.
Hammouri’s deportation was ordered by Israeli authorities almost two weeks ago underneath allegations of affiliation with terrorist actions. Human rights teams have called on the French government to stop the expulsion.
On Saturday, December 17, the French Ministry of Overseas Affairs and Hammouri’s household in France had been knowledgeable by Israeli authorities that he could be deported to Paris. Neither Salah nor his attorneys had been formally knowledgeable, an nameless supply knowledgeable Mondoweiss.
“Justice has been performed to the terrorist and he has been deported from Israel,” Ayalet Shaked, Israel’s Minister of Inside, mentioned Sunday. “It’s a nice achievement to have been capable of trigger, simply earlier than the top of my time period, his expulsion,” the Inside Minister boasted.
“No choice of compelled expulsion or ethnic cleaning frightens me,” Hammouri mentioned in a remaining letter earlier than his imposed deportation.
“It neither stops nor deters us from our pursuit of resistance,” Hammouri said in defiance. “There isn’t any energy on earth which might uproot Palestine and the Palestinian individuals from our minds and our existence.”
From Jail to Exile
The French ministry condemned the deportation on Sunday. The ministry mentioned in an announcement that it had “taken full motion, together with on the highest degree of the State, to make sure that Mr. Salah Hamouri’s rights are revered, that he advantages from all authorized treatments and that he can lead a standard life in Jerusalem, the place he was born, resides and needs to dwell.”
Flown from Ben Gurion Airport, Hammouri arrived in Paris at roughly 10:00 a.m., the place he was greeted by his household, supporters, and reporters. Separated from his spouse and youngsters, Hammouri has been held in Israeli prisons since March, the place he confronted anti-Palestinian discrimination and mistreatment.
“One of many worst locations a human being will be put in is jail,” Hammouri wrote in July. “It’s a place which resembles nowhere else on the earth. It pulverizes us and flattens our desires, aspirations, and hopes just like the mashing down of an olive on the olive press.”
The 37-year-old has been illegally held in Israeli prisons with out cost or trial in what is thought in Israeli navy courts as “administrative detention.” This implies imprisonment by order of “secret evidence” that neither the accused nor their attorneys are capable of know or problem in court docket.
Hardly a stranger to Israeli abuses, Hammouri was a younger boy dwelling in Jerusalem on the time of his first arrest in 2001, solely 16 years old.
In Could, Hammouri submitted a case to the International Criminal Court urging them to research Israel for struggle crimes. That very same month, Israeli troopers shot and killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin as she wore her PRESS jacket, clearly marking her as a journalist.
From cell no.4 of Ofer navy jail in Betunia, he additionally authored a letter interesting to French president Emmanuel Macron. “What’s the motive behind your double commonplace within the therapy of individuals dwelling underneath oppression?” Hammouri had written. “I’ve seen you on a number of events defending the individuals of Ukraine and talking up for the ache and torture they’re going through, whilst you appear to have forgotten, or are intentionally ignoring, that we Palestinians have been going through injustices and occupation for 78 years now.”
For years, Hammouri has been experiencing judicial harassment and abuse. As a Palestinian Jerusalemite, his expertise is entwined with the overarching actuality of Palestinians within the face of intensified settler growth.
“All of us Palestinians of Jerusalem are thought-about strangers in our personal annexed metropolis, ‘residents’ with out citizenship. From the development of the wall to racist legal guidelines that discriminate towards non-Jewish populations relating to the correct to property and development,” Hammouri wrote for Mondoweiss. “We – my mates on the opposite facet of the wall in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan – are preventing towards plans for mass expulsion.
Loyalty Legal guidelines as an Instrument of Ethnic Cleaning
“We didn’t assume it was attainable to deport any person from his birthplace,” Hammouri’s mom Denise had said not too long ago in response to her son’s expulsion from his homeland.
But the authorized precedent for Hammouri’s eventual deportation was first set in 2016 underneath Israel’s “breach of loyalty” legislation, which on the time dominated that residency could possibly be stripped from Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs who had been discovered to be “disloyal” to the State. This identical legislation was not too long ago expanded in scope final July when the Israeli Supreme Court docket dominated that citizenship could be stripped from Israeli residents underneath the identical breach of loyalty.
On October 18, 2021, Hammouri first obtained a letter from the Israeli Ministry of Inside informing him that his Jerusalem residency was revoked. Many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem additionally face the identical risk of getting their residency revoked after the passing of this apartheid legislation, which constitutes a crime against humanity.
“This occupation doesn’t see us, or deal with us, as human beings with the correct to dwell as free individuals do,” Hammouri wrote from inside jail earlier in July.
The loyalty legislation is a contemporary instrument of ethnic cleaning. Increasing its scope to now embrace Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship (who comprise about 20% of the full Israeli inhabitants), the legislation is supposed to regulate the Palestinian inhabitants.
The deportation of individuals who doc and expose Israeli crimes, nonetheless, just isn’t unique to Palestinians. In 2019, the Israeli authorities deported Human Rights Watch Director Omar Shakir. Kenneth Roth, the group’s Government Director on the time, defined that Shakir’s deportation “reveals why the worldwide group should reboot its method to Israel’s deteriorating human rights file.”
“A authorities that expels a number one human rights investigator just isn’t prone to cease its systematic oppression of Palestinians underneath occupation with out a lot better worldwide stress,” Roth mentioned.
Upon arriving in Paris, Hammouri told the press: “we modified location however the combat continues.”
“We are able to’t abandon Palestine,” he emphasised. “Resistance is our proper.”
This text was initially printed in Mondoweiss
