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Barred from Jerusalem for Crime of Being Palestinian
Engineer's battle to overturn loss of residency highlights plight of thousands
To say that Palestinian Murad Abu-Khalaf's roots are in Jerusalem is a serious understatement. His family lived in the Baka district of West Jerusalem until they were forced to leave in the war of 1948. They have since lived - and live - in the inner East Jerusalem district of Ras al-Amud. His family doctor father's clinic in East Jerusalem's main street of Salahadin is opposite three shops owned by each of his uncles. One of his brothers, also a doctor, works at one of Jerusalem's two main (Israeli) hospitals, the Shaare Zedek Medical Centre. The city is, in short, his home.
Samir Abu-Khalaf holds a photograph of his son Murad, whose East Jerusalem residency was revoked by Israeli authorities. (QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM) But when the next hearing of a case of fundamental importance to the future of this super-qualified young man takes place in the Jerusalem District Court today, he won't be there. At the age of 33, he has suddenly become, to use his own word, "stateless". His only "crime" has been to spend several years in the US doing an electrical engineering PhD, completing post-doctoral research funded by a division of the US Army, acquiring high-tech work experience with the sole purpose of bettering his future career prospects in the Holy Land, and being a little homesick.
Yet in 2008 the young Dr Abu-Khalaf became a statistic, one of a record 4,577 Palestinian residents to have their Israeli-conferred status as a resident of East Jerusalem revoked in that year and with it the right to live permanently or work in either Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories. It is this revocation which is being challenged in court on his behalf by the Israeli human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel today, and about which he says: "Losing my residency in my country is a source of pain to me... I feel I am being asked to choose between building my career and my homeland."
For Dr Abu-Khalaf has been told his only chance of having the revocation "reconsidered" - and it's far from certain this would succeed - is if he gives up his high-flying job as a software developer, leaves the US and stays here for at least two years - maybe "working in a café", as he puts it. So far Dr Abu- Khalaf has been told he will no longer qualify for an Israeli travel document. He would still be able to visit the country as a tourist, though not work or live in it, and then only if he obtains a US travel document.
If Dr Abu-Khalaf was an Israeli citizen he would be able to take up temporary residency for as long as he liked without losing his rights. But his case exemplifies the fragile status of more than 200,000 East Jerusalem Palestinians, who have Israeli conferred ID, and the right - denied to most West Bank Palestinians - to travel in Israel and access to certain benefits like Israeli health insurance, but not the security of full citizenship. According to Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO campaigning for an "equitable and stable" shared Jerusalem, the sharp increase in residency revocations are part of "an ongoing Israeli policy to reduce the Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem".
When Israel unilaterally annexed Arab East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War - an annexation whose legality has never been accepted by most of the international community, including Britain - it offered Palestinian residents citizenship. But the large majority refused, believing that to accept would reinforce Israel's claim on occupied East Jerusalem.
Part of Dr Abu-Khalaf's problem was that he applied successfully for a "green card" purely to maximise his job opportunities, but unwittingly reinforcing Israel's determination to cut off his Jerusalem residency. Dr Abu-Khalaf said when he was job-searching "many potential employers replied to me asking if I held a green card." They told him that "otherwise they could not employ me... I never knew it would cause all this fiasco."
His father, Samir Abu-Khalaf, wanted Murad to return and marry when he had laid the firm basis of a career. "It's injustice to deal with us in this way," he said. "It seems they want Palestinians only to be workers, cleaners." To his son it is illogical that in an age when academic and corporate life is increasingly multinational, he should be penalised for participating in it. The loss of residency "in my home country", he said, is "at best inconsiderate... extremely backward looking, and short-sighted."
An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said the law prescribed that East Jerusalem residents were treated like any other people with resident status, losing it if they are away for more seven years or take up residency elsewhere. Asked whether the position of native East Jerusalemites was not different from - say - those from France temporarily living and working in Israel she added: "If you want someone to justify the policy you are asking the wrong person. But it's the law."
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22 Comments so far
Show Allno aid to israel. they are our enemies, not our friends. count folke bernadotte was a swedish prince who freed jews from concentration camps, but the jews killed him anyway. google his name and weep.
You are an anti-Semitic jerk. "The Jews" killed him? No, it was three, possibly four fanatics who didn't even know the government already had rejected what the Count had proposed.
But I guess you couldn't take time out from your busy schedule of crystal meth addiction and racism to find that out.
Regarding this article, I love the way this point was mentioned:
When Israel unilaterally annexed Arab East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War - an annexation whose legality has never been accepted by most of the international community, including Britain - it offered Palestinian residents citizenship. But the large majority refused, believing that to accept would reinforce Israel's claim on occupied East Jerusalem.
Yes, the "annexation" was never accepted. Then again, as these comments show, Israel's existence wasn't accepted, either. Let's review, shall we?
"it offered Palestinian residents citizenship. But the large majority refused, believing that to accept would reinforce Israel's claim on occupied East Jerusalem."
Meaning, they believed that their Arab brothers would succeed in their ambition to "drive the Jews into the sea" and so didn't want to become Israeli citizens. Sort of like people in Georgia deciding not to become American citizens after the Civil War, because the South was going to rise again. Yeah, the US would have agreed to that. BTW - have you ever seen pictures of the desecration that was done to Jewish graves and holy places in East Jerusalem that was discovered after the "annexation"?
I didn't think so.
So, this educated gentleman, whose family decided not to become Israeli citizens, is now being denied residency unless he gives up his career, due to his extended absence from the country. If that's all there is to it, that's wrong. And, unlike most other countries, including pretty much all of the Arab countries, a JEWISH lawyer is fighting for his rights - an admittedly radical lawyer who supports the concept and validity of suicide bombers. But she's still allowed to practice law and pursue her own idea of justice.
Okay, all these posters feel that Israel is a terrible country and there is no other country in the world that engages in such horrific activities. Not the U.S., not the U.K., not Turkey. Not any of it's Arab neighbors - Jordan, who expelled Jordanian Palestinian citizens, Lebanon, who will not grant Palestinians basic human rights, or the Arab League who has instructed its members to deny citizenship to Palestinian Arab refugees or their descendants. Under the guise of it "being for their own good", of course, since it is "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland". How nice of them, don't you agree?
Final question: if there was a Native American uprising, using suicide bombers blowing up grade school buses, restaurants, and sports centers, just how many of these posters would be out in the street demanding we give back Manhattan or the Plains states?
Forgeddaboudit.
Denying the occupied the right to an education: one of the top tactics of genocide.
Every regime that has tried to obliterate a people, INcluding the US and UK, have denied their victims the right to educate themselves for their own purposes. The US did it to the American peoples, the UK did it to the African, Australian, and Maori peoples.
"If you want someone to justify the policy you are asking the wrong person. But it's the law."
How many times was that said in Berlin in 1938?
Waijin out of Hokkaido! Indo-Aryans out of India! Turks out of Turkey! Franks out of France! Normans out of Sicily! Anglo-Saxons out of England! Scots out of Scotland! Bantus out of South Africa! Magyars out of Hungary!
Why do you continue with this one-note vacuous post?
De-countrify israel.
"...loss of residency highlights plight of thousands..."
It's amazing how tables have turned from 75 years ago.
What began 65 years ago as the new residency of a people in plight has degenerated into a fascist system. Israel has developed into the CURSE of this planet.
When the second coming arrives Israel will atone.
These kinds of restrictions are but more in a long list of what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe.
Restrictions on where they can live even though their families have been there for centuries.
Restrictions on their education.
Restrictions on their occupation.
And the list goes on.
Why didn't the Israelis learn from the Holocaust that you should NOT do it? Why instead did they take the attitude that if it can be done to us, we can do it to someone else? Isaiah, RamBam, Hillel and the rest are beyond mortified that their teachings have been so completely ignored and twisted.
"At the age of 33, he has suddenly become, to use his own word, "stateless". His only "crime" has been to spend several years in the US doing an electrical engineering PhD, completing post-doctoral research funded by a division of the US Army, acquiring high-tech work experience with the sole purpose of bettering his future career prospects in the Holy Land- ."
Are you sure he didn't attend the School of the Americas?
Here is a broad, sweeping statement. I regard as a criminal any person who brings the knowledge and skills of any branch of engineering to the enterprise of waging war. I back that statement up with my own experience in Human Factors. Notwithstanding financial jeopardy, when the only contract available to me involved applying my knowledge to the improvement of Canadian military troop training methods, I turned the contract down, and hoped I could still meet the rent.
If the only work for a PhD electrical engineer in the Holy Land is military, that land is misnamed.
Trylon
Good for you Trylon for turning down amoral work contracts!! Maybe this man wants to rebuild the ruined infrastructure, re-wire a demolished house or school. As far as I know, Israel is not a nation run on pacifist principles. I am taking a wild guess that there are few lucrative opportunities for Palestinians in the high tech war related industries in Israel.
Joe
I second Joe's 'well done'.
It's possible that Dr Abu-Khalaf decided to work for the Army with a view to learning something that would be useful to the Palestinian people. I can excuse that motive.
I totally feel that after the Holocaust, and the lessons learned (do we really learn our lessons?)that it is just so wrong for the Israelies to do the same thing (almost) to a whole group of people that are really just like them.I can't believe that they would even consider such policies against any people.Why does the U.N. tolerate this behavior ? Is Palistein protected as a country....oh no! I guess not.Who's Holyland is it anyways? The Jews ,Christians, Muslims, at least the Buhda guy isn't in there,they don't care. Anyway to force people to stay on a strip of land and not be able to boat,fly,or drive anywhere else, to me, sounds like prison not a Country.Shame on you Isreal ...I actually think in their subconcience they enjoy the suffering they are causing, a bit of payback even if these particular people did not kill millions of them.Which was very very sad.....If Jewish people can not be kind to others after what happened to them, is there any hope for mankind to ever be rightous and loving.The fight between good and evil.. is it EVEN winable ?
Almost? What do you mean "almost"? The only thing missing here are the gas chambers and that's only because the white phosporous and depleted uranium are more effective and flashier. They haven't missed one Nazi trick so far.
The gas chambers were exactly what I was talking about."Almost" That takes on even another monster ,different than the other.Both so horrible....making wallets,and experiments,thats really sick !!!!
The slow genocide that the Palestinians endure is so much worse.
Yet this one has the red carpet laid out for him, is heralded as a hero and becomes the poster child for the jewry of the United States of Israel. Oh, my, what strange times we live in!
--------------
Judge grants ex-Israeli spy US asylum
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
06/30/2010 20:53
Son of a Hamas founder passes US immigration background check.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?ID=180032
WASHINGTON – The son of a Hamas founder who spied for Israel will be granted asylum in the US, a judge in San Diego ruled Wednesday.
Mosab Yousef, 32, had been threatened with deportation for engaging in terrorist activities, as detailed in his recent autobiography, though it was done in the service of Israel during his nine years as an undercover agent.
Wednesday’s hearing lasted 15 minutes, with the judge ruling that Yousef can stay in the United States – where he has lived since 2007 – after he passes a routine background check.
US Department of Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador said she was dropping objections to asylum, with no further explanation given of the rationale behind the decision.
RELATED:
Hamas spy unafraid, criticizes Islam
In response to a query from The Jerusalem Post concerning the case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brian P. Hale said that during the hearing, “DHS attorneys recommended to the court that Mr. Yousef be granted the requested relief.”
Yousef, who has been living in San Diego, was cheered by supporters as he left the hearing.
He said he loved living in California, wanted to become a US citizen and hoped to pursue a master’s degree in history and geography.
“I will keep fighting the ideology that is behind terrorists because I know how they think,” he said outside the courtroom.
Yousef said he could not explain the government’s abrupt decision, but that authorities may have had second thoughts after reviewing his case more closely.
“For 10 years, he fought terrorism in secret, hiding what he was doing and who he was,” his attorney, Steven Seick, wrote in a court filing. “He deserves a safe place away from violence and fear.”
Yousef had argued that he would be killed if he were deported, because he spied on Hamas for the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and abandoned Islam for Christianity.
Four months ago, Yousef published a memoir, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices, in which he claimed to be one of the Shin Bet’s best assets and to have been dubbed The Green Prince, a reference to his Hamas pedigree and Islam’s signature green color.
Yousef has said his intelligence work for Israel required him to do anything he could to learn about Hamas and that neither he nor Israel knew at the time that some Hamas men to whom he gave rides were suspects in a suicide bombing.
“Yes, while working for Israeli intelligence, I posed as a terrorist,” he wrote on his blog last month. “Yes, I carried a gun. Yes, I was in terrorist meetings with Yasser Arafat, my father and other Hamas leaders. It was part of my job.”
Yousef has rallied support from members of Congress and others. Former CIA director James Woolsey has called him a “remarkable young man” who should be commended for “extraordinary heroism and courage.”
Gonen Ben-Itzhak, Yousef’s former Shin Bet handler, traveled to the hearing from Israel, but no witnesses were called to testify because the government dropped its opposition to his asylum application.
“Basically, I wanted to say that Mosab was not a terrorist,” Ben-Itzhak said after the hearing. “He was not affiliated with Hamas. He’s a great guy and he should get asylum.”
Israel has not commented on Yousef’s claims, though members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee wrote him this month to thank him and recognize his work for the Shin Bet.
In his book, co-written with Ron Brackin, Yousef described growing up admiring Hamas and hating Israel, which led him to buy a couple of machine guns and a handgun in 1996. He said the guns didn’t work and that he was arrested by Israeli forces before he killed anyone.
Yousef said he had started working with the Shin Bet after witnessing Hamas brutalities in prison that left him disillusioned. He gravitated toward Christianity after his release in 1997, joining a Christian study group after a chance encounter with a British tourist at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.
Yousef said he had joined his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, at many meetings with Palestinian leaders and reported on them to the Shin Bet. His father, a senior Hamas leader who is serving a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison, disowned him in March.
Yousef wrote in The Washington Post Wednesday ahead of his hearing that he would face “a certain death” if deported to anywhere in the Middle East.
The piece, co-written with Ben-Itzhak, also warned that “gathering human intelligence in the war against terrorism will become impossible if the United States does not protect those who risk their lives on behalf of American values.”
Several members of Congress had called on the Obama administration not to deport Yousef, with close to two dozen signing a letter to Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano arguing that he would be in “grave danger” if he returned to the Middle East.
The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a Jewish organization that had championed Yousef’s cause, welcomed the ruling.
“EMET is enormously grateful to all those who played a part in standing with Mosab during this time, and in helping the Department of Homeland Security come to understand what a grave error deporting Mosab would have been,” the group said.
I don't support Hamas at all, fundie pillocks that they are, but it's reading something like this that lets me understand on a more visceral level why people punish collaborators. I hope I never knowingly meet this individual, because I'm sure I'd ruin a good pair of shoes on him.
NPR creamed their jeans over this guy. I've heard him interviewed at least 3 times on different NPR or American Public Media (but NPR-broadcast) shows. And there was the one HUGE white elephant in the room; the one looming question that teetered on some sort of quantum threshold but was never asked: "You were tortured by the Israelis. The Israelis have been routinely torturing Palestinians from day one. And when you saw someone affiliated with Hamas being brutal with a Palestinian who had sold out who knows how many people to these same Israelis, you turned your back on your people, your family, your suffering country. And you want us to believe that it wasn't due to the dollar bills being dangled in front of you?"
What a piece of shit.
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
America is doing de-educaion to it's own people,funny a country that likes to destroy itself...civil war...united we stand, devided we fall! We educate all kinds of people from other countries,Murad, Bin Ladin,but our own kids are loosing half their teachers.The powers that be, want their own people to be stupid that is disgraceful.If you keep them dumb, than you can control them.