Israel expelled a Palestinian human rights lawyer from Jerusalem to France, citing an alleged terror threat from the 37-year-old. The move has been condemned by Paris, which has labelled the decision as being a violation of International Law, but what else does this incident say about the predicament of Palestinians from the Holy City?
Salah Hamouri, a Palestinian-French lawyer who works for Addameer — a Palestinian legal aid and prisoners rights group — was deported by Israel to France on December 18, sparking a fierce response from the French foreign ministry that has labelled the move as being “against the law“. Paris claims it is “fully mobilized, including at the highest level of the state, to ensure Salah Hamouri’s rights are respected, that he benefits from all possible assistance and that he can lead a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born, resides and wishes to live.”
Although the response to this issue from the French authorities has made it clear that Paris views the deportation as a breach of international law, which was followed up on by leading human rights group Amnesty International, that called the expulsion a “crime of Apartheid”, the mainstream press has been more forgiving. Articles written for the likes of Reuters and the BBC give prominence to Israel’s claims that Salah Hamouri was a terrorist risk and part of a rights group designated as a terrorist organization by Israel.
Take the BBC’s description of the internationally trusted rights group of which Salah Hamouri is a part: “He works for Addameer, a Palestinian legal aid and prisoners’ rights group that was designated a terrorist organisation by the Israeli defense ministry in October 2021 along with five other Palestinian civil society groups.” Instead of following this sentence, which is true, with any context, the BBC actively omits the facts and states that “the [Israeli] military said they were linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian militant group that Israel considers a terrorist organisation.” This is a prime example of gutter journalism from British state media.
Addameer, along with the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees, were all labelled terrorist groups by Israel. Additionally, al-Haq, the oldest human rights group in the region was also labelled as such. At the time, Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz claimed that he possessed smoking gun evidence of the human rights groups connections with the PFLP, however, 9 EU States flatly rejected the notion that any such evidence exists. Later, a report from the CIA even concluded that no such evidence existed.
Desperate bad faith attempts have also been made by Western media to link Salah Hamouri to “terrorism”, including pulling up Hamouri’s past involvement with the PFLP. He was imprisoned for 7 years, released in 2011 only as a result of a prisoner swap, after being accused and convicted of aiding a plot to assassinate a prominent Israeli Rabbi that helped found the Israeli Shas Party, which aligns itself with Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra right wing bloc. This is where this claim must be placed in its proper context.
To begin with Salah Hamouri has always maintained his innocence in this case, despite accepting a plea deal where he admitted guilt in order to avoid facing a 14-year prison term. Hamouri had been detained in an Israeli military prison without charge for 3 years at that point, he was informed by his lawyers that a plea deal could halve his sentence, which is why he agreed to it. Then we have the Israeli kangaroo military courts which convicted him. The Israeli military prison complex is able to hold any Palestinian in administrative detention (AKA held without a charge) indefinitely, it also has a conviction rate of over 99.7%.
So what of Salah Hamouri’s alleged connection to a “terrorist organisation”, the PFLP? Well this part is unclear, as to whether he is still a member. However, when the media frame the PFLP as a terrorist organisation they are again feeding into Israeli propaganda. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Palestinian political party that was started in 1967, by Palestinian Christian George Habbash, it is one of the most popular political parties and maintains a Marxist-Leninist doctrine. To Israel, and almost every Western government, every single Palestinian political party, other than Fatah, is considered to be a terrorist organization. Prior to the early 1990’s, even the Fatah Party was labelled a terrorist organization by Israel, and today the revolutionary wing of the party is banned with its figure head Marwan Barghouti serving life in Israeli military prison.
If you are a Palestinian, you have one choice if you want to join a political party “legally”, according to Israel’s interpretation, you can join Fatah, but even if you do that you still risk arrest or assassination if you choose to engage in protests, strikes, boycotts, or armed resistance. As a Palestinian, you are prevented from having a voice, a democracy or representation, the only thing you can do is collaborate with the Fatah party’s collaborator wing. So when people claim that a Palestinian is guilty for belonging to a terrorist organization, this is often a weak assertion which is purely anti-democratic in nature and has no basis in reality. If you want to discuss this as ongoing “armed activity” against the occupier, that would be an argument rooted in fact. However, labelling such armed activity in this context as “terrorism” is contradictory to the facts on the ground. As the fourth Geneva Convention makes clear, occupied peoples have a legal right to armed rebellion in order to expel an occupying power. The UN has always maintained (and the facts clearly show) that Palestine is an occupied territory to this day.
Regardless of how you choose to interpret Salah Hamouri’s affiliation with the PFLP, the man was not deported by the Israeli authorities for any criminal action and had already served his time for that which the Israeli kangaroo court had convicted him. Along with 800+ other Palestinians, among them children, Hamouri had been detained since March in administrative detention by the Israeli occupation authorities and then deported to France without any charge. He worked for a human rights group, respected as such around the world by all but the Israeli authorities.
Salah Hamouri was also a life-long resident of East Jerusalem, holding a Jerusalem ID card, which was revoked by Israel’s interior minister Ayelet Shaked. Around 350,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem and hold ‘Jerusalem ID’. This ID is allocated to Palestinians in the city, making them Stateless and is exclusively for Palestinians, whilst illegal Jewish settlers are granted Israeli citizenship. The Jerusalem ID is also revokable at the behest of Israel, so if the Israeli regime suggests you are a security threat or that you have been outside of Jerusalem for too long, they can and will revoke your status and make you incapable of re-entering your place of birth. This is part of Israel’s campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the city of Jerusalem. Illegal Israeli settlers are rapidly attempting to make the city predominantly Jewish by either building illegal settlements, lobbying for the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes, and/or seizing Palestinian homes and expelling the native residents, as is taking place in neighborhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.
Ayelet Shaked, who revoked Salah Hamouri’s Jerusalem ID, enabling his deportation to France where he also has citizenship owing to his mother, said the following about Palestinians:
“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
This is the current interior minister, who is considered to be part of an Israeli moderate administration, which will soon be replaced by hardliners. Understanding that this is the language of a top official in a so-called “moderate” and “diverse” Israeli government, supposedly featuring “centrist” and “leftist” elements, says everything one needs to know about the state of Israel’s government.
It is the context mentioned above in which the deportation of human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri has to be viewed, any other representation of the situation that misses this depth is either propaganda or lacks understanding of the situation. East Jerusalem is considered an occupied territory according to international law, it was illegally occupied by Israel in 1967 and in 1980 the Israeli Knesset passed a bill to annex the territory, a move that was rejected by the United Nations. Israel has no right to even operate in East Jerusalem, let alone offer support for settlers to steal Palestinian homes and for the authorities to bulldoze houses there. Israel certainly has no right under international law to detain native Jerusalemite Palestinians without a charge and then deport them from their own country, this is an act of ethnic cleansing, one for which Israel should be receiving sanctions, not warnings, from France.
