The Israeli occupation authorities at dawn on Sunday deported Palestinian-French lawyer Salah Al-Hamouri to France after he was held in administrative detention for nine months.
The Israeli Ministry of Interior said in a statement that Salah Hammouri “was deported this Sunday morning to France, after the decision of the Israeli Minister of Interior to withdraw his residence permit.”
Salah Hamouri, who arrived in France on Sunday, after his deportation from Israel, confirmed that “the battle continues,” considering that “he has a great responsibility towards his cause and his people”.
Upon his arrival at Roissy Airport in Paris, he said, “I changed the place, but the battle continues,” adding, “Today I feel that I have a great responsibility towards my cause and my people. We do not abandon Palestine, our right is resistance.”
Hamouri added, after thanking those who supported him during his arrest, “Today I was brutally uprooted from my home because of this occupying force that has been continuing its ethnic cleansing since 1948.”
“My expulsion from Israel does not mean that we will not return,” he said, appearing affected.
France condemns Israel’s deportation of Salah Al-Hamouri
“Today we condemn the illegal decision of the Israeli authorities to expel Salah Hammouri to France,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday, noting that he was deported after the Interior Minister’s decision to withdraw his residence permit.
The French Foreign Ministry confirmed that since his recent arrest, France has taken full measures, including at the highest level in the state, to ensure that Hamouri’s rights are respected and that he benefits from legal appeals to enable him to live a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born, resides and desires to live.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry added that France has taken several steps with the Israeli authorities to express in the clearest possible way its opposition to the expulsion of a Palestinian resident in East Jerusalem, which is occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Who is Salah Hamouri?
Salah Hamouri is a lawyer and human rights defender, and he was one of the employees of the Adameer institution for prisoner care and human rights. His mother is French and his father is Palestinian from Jerusalem, where he was born and lived.
He is married to a French woman and the father of two children. He was subjected to a systematic campaign against him by the occupation authorities, starting with his administrative and arbitrary arrest, spying on his phone and monitoring it, and ending with the withdrawal of his Jerusalem residency.
Salah Hamouri was arrested several times between 2005 and 2011 and was released in 2011 before the end of his sentence as part of the soldier Shalit deal.
On October 17, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Interior revoked Hamouri’s residency under the pretext of a “breach of loyalty” to Israel, a step that led to his deportation from occupied Jerusalem.
In March 2022, Hamouri was sentenced to three months of administrative detention, a controversial measure that allows Israel to imprison people without any formal charges being brought against them.
