Israel has stripped two Palestinians of their citizenship and is preparing to deport them to occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip in an unprecedented move.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the decision on Tuesday, which affects Mahmoud Ahmed, currently detained by Israeli forces, and former prisoner Muhammad Ahmed Hussein al-Halasa, both from occupied East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said that “many more like them are on the way”.
Both men were convicted by Israeli courts of carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis, which authorities have cited as grounds for revoking their citizenship and deporting them under a law passed in 2023.
Ahmed, from the town of Kafr Aqab, is set to be deported immediately, after serving a 23 year-sentence and being released in 2024.
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Meanwhile, Halasa, a resident of Jabel Mukaber who has been serving an 18-year-prison sentence since 2016, will be deported after completing his time.
Adala, a Haifa-based legal centre advocating for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, said the decision was a “blatant violation of international law”.
“These deportation orders effectively enable the exile of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homeland,” the centre said.
“The government has turned citizenship into a conditional privilege that can be revoked at will,” it added.
“This unprecedented step contravenes the absolute prohibition on statelessness and undermines the fundamental protections that citizenship is meant to provide.”
Unlawful
In 2023, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing the government to rescind the citizenship or permanent residency of Palestinians accused of committing “acts of terror” and deport them to the occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
The decision on Tuesday is the first application of a legislation.
It applies to both Palestinian citizens of Israel and permanent residents of occupied East Jerusalem, the latter who widely refuse Israeli citizenship and are issued residency IDs by Israel’s interior ministry.
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Legal experts told Middle East Eye near the time of the law’s approval that the policy amounts to a war crime and contravenes international law.
Removing Palestinian permanent residents of Jerusalem, who are protected persons under international humanitarian law according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, “amounts to a grave breach of that convention and thus to a war crime”, Saba Pipia, legal adviser at the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Center in Jerusalem, explained.
In addition, compelling Palestinians in Jerusalem to show loyalty to Israel also falls foul of international humanitarian law.
“Article 45 of the Hague Regulations prohibits the occupying power from compelling inhabitants of the occupied territory to swear allegiance to it,” said Pipia. “Therefore, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are not obliged to be loyal to the State of Israel, the occupying power.”
The Israeli Supreme Court has previously acknowledged that the existing revocation law, which could render people stateless, contradicts international law, but ruled that such violations are not domestically unconstitutional.
The law has been criticised by rights groups as discriminatory, on the grounds that it creates separate legal tracks for citizenship based on racial identity.
