Israel court blocks government attempt to expel Palestinian mother from Jerusalem

An Israeli court has blocked a new attempt by the Interior Ministry to expel the mother of a Palestinian who stabbed a Border Police officer outside the Old City in October 2015.

According to Haaretz, the Jerusalem District Court Judge Oded Shaham “rejected the state’s appeal against the ruling by the appellate court, that the mother could not be expelled”.

In 2016, Israeli authorities decided to “revoke the West Bank-born mother’s residency permit, which was granted to her in 1999, three years after she moved to the city, based on a family unification application her husband had filed.”

Human rights lawyers “appealed against the decision on behalf of the mother and in May 2018, the registrar Elad Azar ruled that the decision to revoke her residency permit had been made without authority, because the mother does not constitute a danger”.

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He added that “the law in respect to citizenship and entering the country does not empower the interior minister to revoke residential status for the purpose of deterrence, nor may the interior minister examine positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when considering whether to grant a permit to be within Israel”.

In July 2018, the prosecution appealed the ruling, saying “the appellate court’s decision in practice reined in the broad discretion of the interior minister to grant residency, limiting the minister to administrative matters such as timely delivery of documentation and meeting set criteria.”

“With that broad discretion, the interior minister may consider whether allowing residency in Israel could imperil the public’s security or well-being, state security or vital interests, and whether granting the permit…is in compliance with the state’s values as a Jewish and democratic state,” the prosecutor wrote.

Rejecting the state’s appeal, the judge “wrote that even the decision on residency relying on the broad discretion of the interior minister must meet the test of judicial review and not disproportionally undermine basic rights.”