War on Gaza: Israel withdraws residency of Palestinian man in Jerusalem
Israel’s interior minister, Moshe Arbel, said on Thursday that he had withdrawn the permanent residency status of a Palestinian man in Jerusalem, according to local media.
Arbel said Majed al-Jubeh was part of Hamas and that the decision was taken after examining “security materials” and an interrogation session.
The decision was approved by the attorney general, Gali Baharav Miara, Kan reported.
According to Kan, Israeli authorities are now considering other requests to withdraw residencies from Jerusalem residents.
Since the start of the war on 7 October, three other Palestinians in Jerusalem have had their residencies revoked.
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Jubeh, a father of five children, works as the imam of the al-Adna al-Hamra mosque in occupied East Jerusalem's Old City and was previously imprisoned by Israeli authorities, who charged him with being a threat to security.
Almost 300,000 Palestinians live in occupied East Jerusalem and are forced to hold permanent residence permits issued by the Israeli Ministry of Interior to stay in the city.
According to Human Rights Watch, the residency system imposes onerous requirements on Palestinians to maintain their status, with significant consequences for those who don’t.
The rights group states that between the start of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the end of 2016, Israel revoked the status of at least 14,595 Palestinians from East Jerusalem, according to the interior ministry.
"Authorities have justified most revocations based on a failure to prove a 'centre of life' in Jerusalem but, in recent years, they have also revoked status to punish Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis and as collective punishment against relatives of suspected assailants," the organisation added.
In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state had the power to revoke the citizenship of a person convicted of offences that amounted to "breach of loyalty", even if the person would become stateless as a result and in violation of international law.
Crackdown on the West Bank
Israeli forces have cracked down on Palestinians in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities near Gaza that killed over 1,100 people.
Over 28,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's subsequent war on Gaza, with more than 380 deaths in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club, an advocacy organisation, has documented at least 7,000 detentions as of last week.
According to Amnesty International, Israel has unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and raids across different cities and towns.
The human rights organisation said Israel had “a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives”.
The UN has also called on Israel to end “unlawful killings” and settler violence in the West Bank, warning of a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation during intensified Israeli raids.
The UN Human Rights Office detailed a “sharp increase” in air strikes and military incursions into densely populated refugee camps, resulting in deaths, injuries and widespread damage to civilian infrastructure in the occupied territory.
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