The Jerusalemite Prisoners Committee said, Thursday, that an Israeli court sentenced 64-year-old exiled Jerusalemite lawmaker Mohammed Abu Teir to 25 months in Ofer prison. According to WAFA correspondence, Abu Teir has been serving an illegal administrative detention since July 2nd of 2013. His detention has been renewed multiple times.
In 2010, Abu Teir and other Palestinian lawmakers were arrested for entering occupied East Jerusalem after the Israeli interior ministry stripped them of their residency permits in the city. Abu Teir was forced into exile to Ramallah, prohibiting him from entering or living in Jerusalem.
Palestinian officials point out that such actions are motivated by the desire to drive Palestinians out of their land.
Member of the Central Committee of Fateh, Mohammad Shtayyeh, previously accused Israel of attempting to decrease the Palestinian population in occupied Jerusalem in order to turn it into a Jewish city.
According to a 2012 OCHA report, Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem lack secure legal residency status.
Between 1967 and mid-2010, around 14,000 Palestinians had their Jerusalem residency revoked by the Israeli authorities.
Israel previously released details on a master plan for Jerusalem, including both East and West, which aims to empty the city of its Palestinian residents and replace them with Jewish settlers.
The plan includes a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, to be replaced by Jewish neighborhoods and tourism centers.
Related: 07/18/14 Top Israeli MK: ‘Solution’ for Gaza is to ‘Repopulate It with Jews’
According to Israeli Human rights group B’Tselem, “Israel treats Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem as immigrants who live in their homes at the beneficence of the authorities and not by right.”
The group further explains, “The authorities maintain this policy although these Palestinians were born in Jerusalem, lived in the city, and have no other home. Treating these Palestinians as foreigners who entered Israel is astonishing, since it was Israel that entered East Jerusalem in 1967.”
The routine abduction of Jerusalemite Palestinians, the revocation of their residency and right to remain in their homes and property continues to contradict international law, unabated by powers who could directly intervene.
