“I didn’t want this moment. » In black jogging, physically marked by ten months of imprisonment, the Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri arrived, Sunday, December 18, at the end of the morning, at Roissy airport, welcomed by dozens of faithful and by his wife , Elsa Lefort, whom he had not hugged for a year and a half. A few hours earlier, he had been taken from his cell in the high security prison of Hadarim (Israel) and deported to France on the orders of the Israeli Minister of the Interior, Ayelet Shaked. The epilogue of a long journey through the judicial machine of the Jewish State: in recent years, the 37-year-old human rights defender has spent more than two years in administrative detention – that is to say without charge or trial – his phone was put under surveillance, via the Pegasus spyware, and his wife, French, was expelled from Israel, while she was pregnant with their first child, in 2016.
“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., he denounced. His expulsion thus creates a dangerous precedent, warn his supporters.
Like all Palestinians in Jerusalem, Salah Hamouri, born in the Holy City to a Palestinian father and a French mother, does not have Israeli nationality, but merely residency. The authorities of the Hebrew state withdrew it from him in October 2021, for “lack of allegiance” to Israel. This is the first time a Palestinian has been deported on this pretext since the law came into force in 2018. His lawyer, Leah Tsemel, believes that the Israelis took advantage of the fact that Salah Hamouri had another nationality and therefore a homeland to be sent back to.
“Crime of apartheid”
“It’s a deportation. Forced expulsions 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 expel people who do not pledge allegiance to Israel, whereas in international law an occupied population does not have to pledge allegiance to an occupying population., according to Jean-Claude Samouiller, the president of Amnesty International France. In early December, two UN experts ruled that the forcible transfer of the Franco-Palestinian, a civilian under Israeli occupation under international law, “could constitute a war crime”.
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