"Each and every one of them can come as tourists"

Link

Nowhere else but in Israel!

CNN, here

" ... On a 2006 trip to visit his sister and ailing mother, Israeli authorities informed Hujaij that his residency permit in Jerusalem had expired.

"They called me and said 'oh, you are not living in Jerusalem you are living outside the country,'" Hujaij recounts. "They said you have to give up your ID and leave within 30 days.'" ..... Hujaij faced a difficult choice, return to his wife in the U.S. or stay in Jerusalem to fight in court to win back his residency.

Thousands of Palestinian natives from East Jerusalem face similar scenarios.

The Israeli Ministry of Interior revoked the residency permits of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008. This marks a dramatic change in policy. From 1967 to 2007, with the exception of 2002 during which no statistics were available, Israel revoked 8,558 Jerusalem identity cards.

"Revocation of residence has reached frightening proportions," wrote Dalia Kerstein, of the Hakomed Center for the Defense of the Individual, an Israeli human rights organization which obtained these statistics through Israel's Freedom of Information Law. "The Interior Ministry campaign in 2008 is only a part of a general policy whose aim is to limit the Palestinian population and preserve a Jewish majority in Jerusalem,...the Palestinians are natives of this city, not residents who have recently arrived.".....

Meir Sheetrit, the former Israeli interior minister, insists Palestinians who lose their residency permits are always welcome to return to visit their families in Jerusalem by applying for 3-month tourist visas. "Each and every one of them can come as tourists," he says. "We are a free country."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 11:43 AM