De voormalige plaatsvervangend burgemeester van Jeruzalem Meron Benvenisti schrijft in Haaretz: 'Those who plot to expel Mohammed Abu Tir from his home justifiably earned the condemnation and disgust.
It's been less than two weeks since the High Court of Justice issued its ruling maintaining the deprivation of the rights of Palestinians to reunify their families, and we already have the decision that Palestinian MPs from Hamas, living in Jerusalem, will be expelled if they don't resign within 30 days. The suspicious will find a connection between the two decisions and wonder if the government is deliberately attempting to try the public and legal system's patience for evil acts bordering on racism, as preparation for even more brutal steps. According to the reactions so far, there have been no firm demands for an end to this cruelty and the government can continue on its merry way; the security excuse serves as an effective fig leaf from any domestic criticism and foreign criticism can always be rejected as forms of anti-Semitism. Seemingly, there is no connection between the prevention of family unification and the threat of expulsion; but the two matters touch on basic perception of the status of Palestinians in their homeland: It's no accident that both issues fall within the realm of "entry to Israel," whether preventing it or stripping it. The Israelis, children of immigrants, who in the best case are only separated by a generation from the status of refugees - uprooted and expelled - impose on native Palestinians the status of foreigners, of living in a country to which they do not belong, forcing them to fight for the right to live in their home, and exposing them to an expulsion decree or banning their "entrance" on the grounds that they "do not belong." Not many years have lapsed since the Jewish yishuv fought for its legitimacy and was forced to defend itself from the argument that it was a collection of immigrants taking over a country they did not own, until the situation was reversed; now it is the Palestinian nation that has to fight for the collective legitimacy that this is their homeland and that they are not some collection of foreigners breaking into a country that is not theirs, and nothing but a gang of terrorists. The Palestinians seeking family reunification and the right to live in Israel are rejected because they are aliens and their presence here "could change the face of Israeli society." The Jerusalemite MPs, like all the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, never asked for their status as permanent residents; it was imposed on them. In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem and sought to annex the territory without annexing the inhabitants. The legal trick invented for the purpose imposed on the 70,000 Arabs of East Jerusalem the status of "permanent resident" as if they were new immigrants who had not yet been naturalized as citizens. But in this case, it wasn't the Arabs who emigrated to Israel, but Israel that emigrated to them. Under the conditions that prevailed at the time, it was a liberal approach, even if it was a contravention of international law, since on the one hand, their status as Jordanian citizens was not stripped from them - and it was important to them since the Jordanian kingdom was their economic, administrative, family and educational centers - and on the other hand, the "permanent residency" gave them the right to enjoy the benefits of Israel's welfare system, freedom of movement and relatively broader freedom of speech than existed in the occupied territories. It wasn't a favor being done by the Israeli occupiers, because the alternative - granting them Israeli citizenship as happened to the Arabs of the Triangle annexed in 1949 - was worse; and leaving them without any status in Israel would contradict the pretensions of "unifying the city" and would have perpetuated the occupation in it.' Lees verder: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-060106234712.htm
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