http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/11/israel-palestinians-residency-rights
Thousands of Palestinians who left the West Bank to work or study between 1967 and 1994 had residency rights revoked
(An Israeli soldier watches Palestinians flee the West Bank across the Allenby bridge into Jordan after the 1967 war. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)
Israel stripped 140,000 Palestinians of residency rights, document revealsThousands of Palestinians who left the West Bank to work or study between 1967 and 1994 had residency rights revoked
An Israeli soldier watches Palestinians flee the West Bank across the Allenby bridge into Jordan after the 1967 war. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Israel stripped thousands of Palestinians of their right to live in the West Bank over a 27-year period, forcing most of them into permanent exile abroad, a document obtained under freedom of information laws has disclosed.
Around 140,000 Palestinians who left to study or work had their residency rights revoked between 1967 and 1994.
Those leaving the West Bank across the Allenby bridge border crossing to Jordan were required to deposit their identity documents with Israeli officials. In return they were given a card, valid for three years, which could be extended three times for an additional year.
If they stayed abroad more than six months beyond the expiration of the card, Israel deemed them "NLRs" – no longer resident – and their right to return was revoked.
"The mass withdrawal of residency rights from tens of thousands of West Bank residents, tantamount to permanent exile from their homeland, remains an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law," said Hamoked, an Israeli NGO that filed the freedom of information request.
Some of the 140,000 were later allowed to return, but an estimated 130,000 are still deemed NLRs. "I doubt there is a family in the West Bank that does not have a relative who lost their residency rights in this way," Dalia Kerstein of Hamoked said. Requests to extend residency rights while abroad nearly always went unanswered, she added.
Saeb Erekat, the former Palestinian chief negotiator whose brother lost his residency rights after leaving to study in the US, described the policy as a war crime.
Israel was "engaging in a systematic policy of displacement ... to change the demographic composition of the occupied Palestinian territories", he said in a statement.
"This policy should not only be seen as a war crime as it is under international law; it also has a humanitarian dimension. We are talking about people who left Palestine to study or work temporarily but who could not return to resume their lives in their country with their families."
The process began at the start of Israel's occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and ended in 1994 when the Palestinian Authority was established under the Oslo accords.
However, the practice of revoking the residency rights of Palestinians in east Jerusalem has accelerated in recent years.
Following the annexation of east Jerusalem, Israel distributed identity cards giving residency status – not citizenship – to Palestinians living in the city. They were permitted to apply for Israeli citizenship, but the vast majority refused on political grounds.
However, if they leave the city for more than seven years, their east Jerusalem residency rights are revoked. Israeli citizens are allowed to leave indefinitely without penalty.
Since 1995, Palestinians have also been required to prove their "centre of life" is in east Jerusalem or face having their residency rights revoked.
In 2008, more than 4,500 Palestinians had their east Jerusalem identity cards revoked, compared with 229 the previous year, according to the Association of Civil Rights in Israel.
Richard Falk, an investigator for the United Nations human rights council, described this as "the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians ... [which] can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing".
In a recent high-profile case, the Palestinian owner of a bookshop at the American Colony hotel in east Jerusalem is facing deportation after having lost his residency rights. Munther Fahmi, 56, who left Jerusalem in 1973 for 20 years, has since been given a series of tourist visas which will no longer be renewed. Among the signatories to a petition demanding he be allowed to stay are the authors Ian McEwan, Roddy Doyle and Orhan Pamuk.
Israel admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians
source: Haaretz
Document obtained by Haaretz reveals that between 1967 and 1994 many Palestinians traveling abroad were stripped of residency status, allegedly without warning.
The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.
Israeli soldier checks Palestinians' identification.(Photo by: Baz Ratner )
They exchanged their ID cards for a card allowing them to cross. The card was valid for three years and could be renewed three times, each time adding another year.
If a Palestinian did not return within six months of the card's expiration, thier documents would be sent to the regional census supervisor. Residents who failed to return on time were registered as NLRs - no longer residents. The document makes no mention of any warning or information that the Palestinians received about the process.
Palestinians could still return in the first six months after their cards expired, or appeal to an exemptions committee.
The Center for the Defense of the Individual said yesterday it knew that a clear procedure was in place, but the details and the number of Palestinians denied their right to return remained classified. A former head of the Civil Administration in the 1990s was surprised to hear of the procedure when contacted by Haaretz.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Danny Rothschild, who served as coordinator of government activities in the territories from 1991 to 1995, said he was completely unaware of the procedure, even though it was in use during his term. "If even I wasn't told of the procedure, one may infer that neither were residents of the occupied territories," he said.
The Central Bureau of Statistics says the West Bank's Palestinian population amounted to 1.05 million in 1994, which means the population would have been greater by about 14 percent if it weren't for the procedure.
By contrast, Palestinians who immigrated from the West Bank after the Palestinian Authority was set up retained residency rights even if they did not return for years.
Today, a similar procedure is still in place for residents of East Jerusalem who hold Israeli ID cards; they lose their right to return if they have been abroad for seven years.
Palestinians who found themselves "no longer residents" include students who graduated from foreign universities, businessmen and laborers who left for work in the Gulf. Over the years, many of them have started families, so the number of these Palestinians and their descendants is probably in the hundreds of thousands, even if some have died.
Also, several thousands Palestinians with close links to the Palestinian Authority were allowed to return over the years, as did a number of Palestinians whose cases were upheld by the joint committee for restoration of Palestinian ID cards. As of today, 130,000 Palestinians are listed as "no longer residents."
Among them is the brother of the Palestinians' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat. Erekat's brother left for studies in the United States and was not allowed to come back; he still lives in California.
Erekat told Haaretz he had learned from his brother's experience, and when he himself left for studies abroad, he made sure to visit home from time to time so as not to lose his right to return.
The regulation's existence was discovered by the Center for the Defense of the Individual by pure chance, while it was looking into the case of a West Bank resident imprisoned in Israel.
The Civil Administration told the prisoner's family his ID card was "inactive." After a request for a clarification, Israel's legal adviser for Judea and Samaria said this was a misapplication of a certain policy by the census supervisor in the occupied territories.
The adviser added that three residents were mistakenly defined as no longer residents while in prison or in detention, and that their residency had now been restored. He wrote that their status had been changed not because of a policy but because of a technical error, without any connection to their imprisonment.
The Center for the Defense of the Individual said that "mass withdrawal of residency rights from tens of thousands of West Bank residents, tantamount to permanent exile from their homeland, remains an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law."
It noted that an unknown number of Gaza residents had lost residency rights in a similar manner, but that the exact number was still a secret the center vowed to uncover. "The State of Israel should fix the ongoing wrong at once, restore residency rights to all affected Palestinians and allow them and their families to return to their homeland," the center said.
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