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Israel threatens to deport E. Jerusalem man to U.S

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  • Israel threatens to deport E. Jerusalem man to U.S

    The Palestine Telegraph

    Israel threatens to deport E. Jerusalem man to U.S.

    Sunday, 31 January 2010 11:25 Added by PT Editor pam rasmussen

    Jerusalem, January 31, 2010 (Pal Telegraph; reprinted from Haaretz, by
    Amira Hass) - The Interior Ministry is demanding that a Palestinian
    resident of East Jerusalem be deported for having spent too many years
    in the United States. Elias Khayyo - who holds no foreign citizenship
    - has been detained for three weeks at Givon incarceration facility in
    Ramle with other people deemed illegal residents and slated for
    deportation.

    Khayyo, 41, was born in East Jerusalem and currently resides in the
    Christian Quarter of the Old City, where his parents also live. He
    says he has no relatives in America, nor a home, property or
    employment there.

    The Interior Ministry, however, maintains that his permanent residency
    in Israel was revoked in January 2006, due to Khayyo having lived in
    the U.S. from 1998 to 2005 and receiving permanent-residence status
    there. Khayyo received bachelor's and master's degrees in biology over
    two extended stays in the U.S. He is now working as a translator in
    Jerusalem.

    The ministry claims Khayyo resided abroad for more than seven years,
    and that he returned to Israel in 2005 as a tourist by presenting U.S.
    travel documents.

    Khayyo was detained at the Qalandiyah checkpoint on January 10 while
    en route from Ramallah to Jerusalem, and his identity documents and
    mobile phone were confiscated. He was instructed to sign unspecified
    documents but refused, stating that the documents in question were
    written only in Hebrew.

    Khayyo was then transported to Givon by members of the Oz task force
    against immigration violations. Once there, he was informed that
    papers had been filed for his deportation from Israel.

    >From his incarceration, Khayyo told Haaretz by phone that he had
    studied in the U.S. from 1990 to 1996, then returned to Jerusalem. He
    replaced his expired ID card with a new one, and did not encounter
    problems with Israeli authorities.

    After capturing and annexing East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War,
    Israel granted Palestinian residents living there permanent residency
    - a status based on the Law of Entry to Israel," even though they and
    their families didnot enter Israel, but were born in Jerusalem.

    In 1998 Khayyo returned to the U.S. to pursue a master's degree. He
    married a U.S. citizen and began the naturalization process to receive
    citizenship. The day after the September 11, 2001 attacks he was
    dismissed from his job - in his view, due to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
    sentiment. In 2002, he and his wife divorced. Khayyo comes from a
    Christian family. His mother, Elizabeth, is of Armenian descent, whose
    family survived the genocide in Turkey.

    In 2005 Khayyo decided to return to Jerusalem. He said he had sought
    to have his Israeli-issued travel documents extended, but was told by
    the Israeli consulate in Philadelphia that due to his possession of a
    U.S. Green Card he had to enter Israel as a tourist, and have his
    American travel document stamped with an Israeli visa, valid for three
    months. Consulate authorities told him his status vis-a-vis Israel
    would be taken care of once in the country.

    In 1995, under Haim Ramon, the Interior Ministry began taking a harder
    line against East Jerusalem Palestinians, revoking the
    permanent-residence status of many of those living outside the
    municipal borders of Jerusalem (often due to policy-created housing
    shortages) and those living abroad.

    In 2000, after a long public campaign against the new measure,
    then-minister Natan Sharansky told the High Court of Justice that the
    Interior Ministry would return to its pre-1995 policy, and vowed to
    reinstate the permanent-residence status of those East Jerusalemites
    for whom it had been revoked, as long as they had been living again in
    the city for at least two years.

    After returning to his Jerusalem home, Khayyo contacted an attorney
    and understood from him that he fell within Sharansky's category of
    Jerusalemitee entitled to permanent residency status.

    The Interior Ministry maintains that his ID card was revoked in 2006,
    though Khayyo had used it throughout the four years since then without
    complications.

    Attorney Nabil Izhiman, whom Khayyo contacted when placed into the
    immigration authorities' custody, petitioned the Administrative Court
    to issue a preliminary order to prevent Khayyo's deportation and the
    revocation of his residency. For now, the deportation has been
    postponed.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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