Israel deports Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri to France over safety, inside ministry says By Reuters

By Emily Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel deported French-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri to France on Sunday, accusing him of safety offences, the Israeli inside ministry mentioned in a press release.

Hamouri, 37, a lifelong Jerusalem resident, was escorted to the airport the place he boarded an early morning flight to France together with his supporters saying there was no authorized recourse for him to take.

Israel revoked Hamouri’s residency on Dec. 1 on fees that he was lively within the Well-liked Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, categorized by Israel and its Western allies as a terror group.

He was beforehand convicted by Israel of trying to assassinate Sephardi rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the founding father of the ultra-Orthodox Shas get together, however he has at all times maintained his innocence.

“Throughout his life he organized, impressed and deliberate to commit terror assaults on his personal and for the group towards residents and well-known Israelis,” a press release from the inside ministry mentioned.

Hamouri’s supporters mentioned the deportation constituted a breach of worldwide legislation.

“Wherever a Palestinian goes, he takes with him these ideas and the reason for his individuals: his homeland carried with him to wherever he finally ends up,” Hamouri mentioned in a press release.

Hamouri, who was most just lately detained by Israel beneath administrative detention with out cost on March 7 till Dec. 1.

Hamouri was one in all 1,027 prisoners Israel freed in 2011 in trade for soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held captive by Hamas within the Gaza Strip for greater than 5 years.

Hamouri holds citizenship of France via his mom. The French consulate in Jerusalem didn’t reply to repeated requests for touch upon Sunday.

The overwhelming majority of East Jerusalem’s greater than 340,000 Palestinians maintain Israeli residency permits however few have citizenship in Israel, which considers the complete holy metropolis as its everlasting, undivided capital. The Palestinians have lengthy sought town’s east, which Israel captured in a 1967 warfare and later annexed in a transfer not recognised internationally, because the capital of a future state.

Jessica Montell, govt director of HaMoked, an NGO which represents Hamouri, advised Reuters that Hamouri’s case units a precedent for the deportation of Jerusalemites who maintain different citizenship.

“As a result of he holds a second nationality, that makes him extra susceptible to deportation,” mentioned Montell, including that she expects related instances will emerge extra regularly with a brand new right-wing coalition anticipated to type Israel’s subsequent authorities.

Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the Govt Committee of the Palestine Liberation Group, referred to as the deportation illegal.

“He didn’t commit any crime to be deported from his homeland and be expelled into one other nation, the place he had stayed for a brief interval even when he holds the nationality of that nation,” Majdalani advised Reuters.