“I didn’t want this moment. » Tested and physically marked by ten months of imprisonment, the Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, detained without formal charge in Israeli prisons since March, arrived in Roissy, Sunday December 18 at the end of the morning. A few hours earlier, he had been taken from his cell and deported to France on the orders of the Minister of the Interior, Ayelet Shaked. Born in East Jerusalem, annexed and occupied by the Jewish state, Salah Hamouri does not have Israeli nationality, but a residence permit, which the Israeli authorities have revoked.
This measure has been described as a serious violation of human rights by Amnesty International. “It’s a deportation. Forced evictions and forced detentions without charges, the separation of families contribute to the crime of apartheid that we denounce. There is a desire for hegemony over East Jerusalem. We deport people who do not pledge allegiance to Israel, whereas under international law, an occupied population does not have to pledge allegiance to an occupying population,” considers Jean-Claude Samouiller, the president of Amnesty International France.
“I was removed against my will from my place of detention and sent into exile”, denounces the lawyer. “I find my family, my loved ones. But it’s hard to be torn from my homeland. Through my person, it is a process of ethnic cleansing in question. The Israeli state uses all means to ensure that there are fewer Palestinians on the land it occupies. »
“From detention to exile”
The expulsion of Salah Hamouri is a ” test “ for the inhabitants of East Jerusalem, had recently pleaded his lawyer, Leah Tsemel, saying that he feared that the future Israeli government would multiply the revocations of residency permits for Palestinians born in the Holy City.
“I have been their target for more than twenty years. They wanted to deport me to France since 2005. I always refused. They forced me to leave. By force. It is to set an example to show the younger generations what awaits those who want to resist them.adds the lawyer.
Salah Hamouri was placed in administrative detention in March, a controversial measure allowing Israel to incarcerate suspects without formal charges. The man who had already been detained between 2005 and 2011 for having, according to Israeli justice, participated in a plot to assassinate an Israeli religious and political leader, had learned at the end of November that he was going to be deported in December to France. Even if no concrete element appeared in the indictment, the young man had then, as many Palestinians do, agreed to plead guilty against a reduced sentence.
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