The Hebrew State had removed its status as a resident from Jerusalem for “lack of allegiance” in 2021. France condemns this expulsion, “contrary to the law”.
By Madjid Zerrouky and Clothilde Mraffko (Jerusalem, Correspondence)
“I did not wish this moment.” In black jogging, physically marked by ten months’ imprisonment, the Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri arrived, Sunday, December 18, at the end of the morning, Roissy airport, welcomed by dozens of faithful and by his wife, Elsa Lefort, whom he had not tightened in his arms for a year and a half. A few hours earlier, he had been extracted from his Hadarim High Security Prison cell (Israel) and expelled to France on the orders of the Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked. The epilogue of a long journey against the judicial machine of the Hebrew State: in recent years, the 37-year-old human rights defender has spent more than two years in administrative detention- that is to say To say without accusation or trial -, his phone was put under surveillance, via the PEGASUS spy software, and his wife, French, was expelled from Israel, while she was pregnant with their first child, in 2016.
“I have been their target for over twenty years. They wanted to deport me to France since 2005. I have always refused. They have forced me to leave. It is to make an example to show To young generations what awaits those who want to resist them, “he denounced. His expulsion thus creates a dangerous previous, warn his supports.
Like all the Palestinians of Jerusalem, Salah Hamouri, born in the holy city of a Palestinian father and a French mother, does not have Israeli nationality, but a simple resident status. The authorities of the Hebrew State withdrew it in October 2021, for “lack of allegiance” towards Israel. It is the first time that a Palestinian has been expelled under this pretext since the entry into force of the law, in 2018. His lawyer, Leah Tsemel, believes that the Israelis took advantage of the fact that Salah Hamouri had another nationality and therefore a homeland to which to be sent.
“Apartheid crime”
“It is a deportation. Forced evictions and forced detentions without charges, the separation of families, participate in the apartheid crime that we denounce. There is a desire for hegemony on East Jerusalem. People who do not allegiance in Israel, while in international law an occupied population does not have to make allegiance to a occupying population, “according to Jean-Claude Samouiller, the president of Amnesty International France. In early December, two UN experts judged that the forced transfer of Franco-Palestinian, a civilian under Israeli occupation according to international law, “could constitute a war crime”.
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