Ramallah: In the last six years, the Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem have revoked the identity cards of 6,060 Palestinian residents of the occupied East at an average of 1,000 identity cards annually.
The Christian-Muslim Commission for support of Jerusalem and holy sites has warned that these recently released statistics reveals a hidden systematic strategy to expel Palestinian native residents from the holy city.
Dr. Hanna Eisa, the chairman of the Christian-Muslim Commission for support of Jerusalem and holy sites, argued that revoking the identity cards of native residents of the occupied East Jerusalem is a serious breach of international law and a violation of the rights of protected people whose right to live in their home land should be secured.
“The Israelis aim to fully control the holy city of Jerusalem and force the city’s Palestinian residents to leave. This is pure ethnic cleansing,” he told Gulf News.
According to Dr. Eisa, Israel had revoked the identity cards of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank between when Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 and 1994, when Israel signed the Oslo Peace Agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
During the same period in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities revoked a total of 108,878 identity cards belonging to Palestinians.
Israel revoked those identity cards under the pretext that those Palestinians had not managed to return to their homes towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza for three years.
In occupied East Jerusalem, he said, between the 1967 occupation and annexation and 2011, Israeli authorities revoked the identity cards of 14,087 Jerusalemites.
“A total of about a quarter million Palestinians have lost their identity cards from 1967-1994 in the West Bank, Gaza and the occupied East Jerusalem,” he said.
Dr. Eisa said that any Jerusalemite who attempts to travel abroad becomes a key target for the Israeli Interior Ministry which seeks to strip his/her identity card regardless of the time the Palestinian traveler attempts to spend abroad.
“Jerusalemites are confused about the way the Israeli authorities handle this particular issue, knowing that the identity cards are the key Israeli target as those who lose their identity cards will not be allowed even to enter the holy city,” he said. “The Israeli Interior Ministry does not handle Palestinians and Israelis of Jerusalem equally - Israelis are allowed to travel abroad and spend whatever time they wish without fearing to lose their identity cards.”
“Israel is putting in place clearly racist policies which basically differentiate between Palestinians and Israelis and aim to expel as many Palestinians as possible from their home city of Jerusalem,” he said.
