Israel to End Residency Revocation Policy in E. Jerusalem

Nawal Joudeh was born and raised in East Jerusalem. Yet for more than a year, since a warning by the Israeli Interior Ministry that her residency permit would soon be revoked, she has waited for the day she would lose her right to live here.

No longer, Israeli officials say.

Israel pledged this week to halt a practice that has stripped thousands of East Jerusalem Palestinians, mostly in recent years, of the identity cards that allowed them to claim residency in the disputed city.

Palestinians and human rights groups had condemned the Israeli policy, under which, they say, 5,900 Palestinians lost their residency rights, as a form of “quiet deportation” intended to shrink the Arab population of East Jerusalem before talks on the city’s future begin.

Israel captured the eastern side of Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it. Each Israeli government since then, including that of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, has declared the city Israel’s eternal capital, never to be redivided. The Palestinians, in turn, claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their own longed-for state. The city’s future is to be determined in negotiations, formally launched last month, that are intended to produce a permanent peace agreement.

But on Sunday, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky announced that he had ended the policy under which permits were revoked for Palestinians who had moved abroad temporarily or who were unable to prove that they had been in the city continuously for the preceding seven years.

“The Interior Ministry’s new policy . . . is that we will not ask how many years a resident of Jerusalem has spent in Jerusalem and how many years he spent elsewhere,” Sharansky said on state-owned Israel Radio. “From today onward, we search no more.”

For those who have moved outside the city or traveled abroad, “we won’t use the excuse that they weren’t here in order to annul their residency,” Sharansky said. “We are stopping an impractical policy that served no purpose. . . . As one who believes that Jerusalem should remain under Israeli sovereignty, I must look after the human rights of all in the city, including those living in East Jerusalem.”

Sharansky was abroad Monday and could not be reached for further comment. Officials at his ministry said details of the new policy had not yet been worked out, but they said they would stop short of changing the 1967 law that allows Israel to revoke the residency rights of any Palestinian whose “center of life” is determined to have been outside the city for seven consecutive years.

The ministry’s new policy will allow Palestinians to maintain their residency, even if they have moved to West Bank communities or abroad, as long as they have maintained an “appropriate connection” to the city, including family ties or periodic visits, the officials said.

Human rights groups and many Palestinians were wary, saying they welcomed the new policy but were unsure if it would translate into significant change. Palestinian Authority officials urged Israel to restore residency to those who had lost it.

Interior Ministry figures indicate that about half of the revocations occurred under the previous, right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Literally, it is a very positive change, but it depends on whether Israel applies it or not, and whether it will be retroactive,” said Ziad abu Ziad, who represents East Jerusalem in the Palestinian legislature.

For Nawal Joudeh, 40, the new policy may mean the end of a period of worry that began with a visit to the Interior Ministry a year ago, when she applied for an identity card for her daughter, Hanadi, who had just turned 18.

Joudeh’s family had lived outside the city for several years but returned to a village inside the city limits. Family members were told to bring documents proving Jerusalem residency, including utility bills and school certificates. But Joudeh was told in a letter shortly after going to the Interior Ministry that the documents were not sufficient.

Fearful of losing her own identity card, Joudeh has not returned to the ministry. After Sharansky’s announcement, she said Monday, “I am more hopeful than before.” But she said she would wait a few days before trying to test the new policy.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem described the announcement as positive but said the government also must rescind the 1967 residency law. Otherwise, the shift in policy “may itself be altered by a subsequent minister of the interior,” said spokesman Tomer Feffer.