After months of legal sagas, Israel expelled Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri to France on Sunday December 18.

He had been held without formal charge in Israeli jails since March.

The 37-year-old lawyer was sentenced in March to three months of administrative detention, a controversial measure allowing Israel to incarcerate suspects without formal charges.

He arrived at Paris Roissy airport around 10:20 a.m. GMT, greeted by his wife Elsa and several dozen people mobilized on his behalf, noted an AFP journalist.

At the airport, supporters of Salah Hamouri unfurled a "Welcome Salah" banner and some waved Palestinian flags.

A dozen police officers were deployed on the spot.

"I changed places but the fight continues," he said, according to an AFP journalist.

"Today, I feel that I have a huge responsibility for my cause and my people. We are not letting go of Palestine. Our right is to resist," he added.

"It's a happy day for a family that comes together, but for the Palestinian people it's a sad day," reacted the president of Amnesty International France, Jean-Claude Samouiller, describing the expulsion of the East Jerusalem-born "crime of apartheid" lawyer.

The Quai d'Orsay, meanwhile, condemned the expulsion of Salah Hamouri, judging it "contrary to law".

>> To review: Elsa Lefort, wife of Salah Hamouri: "We want France to act to avoid his expulsion"

Deportation postponed several times

Suspected by Israel of links - which he denies - with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization deemed terrorist by the Jewish State and the European Union, Salah Hamouri had learned at the end of November that he was going be deported in December to France.

But his deportation was postponed after military court hearings, his lawyers challenging his deportation order and also the revocation of his status as an East Jerusalem resident.   

Born in this part of the Holy City, annexed and occupied by the Jewish state, Salah Hamouri does not have Israeli nationality but a residence permit, which the Israeli authorities have revoked, which he disputes.

However, at the beginning of December, the Israeli authorities confirmed the revocation of his status, thus paving the way for an imminent expulsion despite a new hearing scheduled for January 1.

Since Friday evening, the indications of an expulsion on Sunday morning had multiplied, the Arab Israeli deputy Aïda Touma-Slimane having moreover written on Saturday evening to the Minister of Defense Benny Gantz to prevent the expulsion, however decreed by the minister Interior Ayelet Shaked.

"It is a tremendous achievement to have been able to cause, just before the end of my mandate, his expulsion", commented Sunday Ayelet Shaked.

The expulsion of Salah Hamouri comes shortly before the formation of a new government in Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu, winner of the legislative elections of November 1, and his allies from the ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties.

A test for residents of East Jerusalem

The expulsion of Salah Hamouri is a "test" for the inhabitants of East Jerusalem, his lawyer Leah Tsemel recently pleaded, saying he fears that the future Israeli government will increase the revocations of residency permits for Palestinians born in the Holy City. 

"This expulsion is a maneuver aimed at hindering the work of Salah Hamouri in favor of human rights, but also an expression of the long-term political objective of the Israeli authorities, which is to diminish the size of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem. -Est,” Amnesty International and French NGOs said on Sunday. 

Israeli authorities deported Salah Hamouri from his hometown of Jerusalem to France for 'lack of allegiance' to an occupying power," his campaign supporters said. "We didn't think it was possible to deport a person from his native land.

He is a French citizen, he is more Palestinian.

He was born in Jerusalem, lived and grew up here (...) These roots are here", recently explained his mother, Denise Hamouri.

She had urged French President Emmanuel Macron to put pressure on Israel to suspend his expulsion and allow Salah Hamouri to travel freely between Jerusalem and France, the country where his wife, Elsa Lefort, and their two children currently live.

human rights defender

Salah Hamouri had previously been imprisoned in Israel between 2005 and 2011 for participating in the attempted assassination of Ovadia Yossef, Israel's former chief rabbi and founder of the ultra-Orthodox Shass party, before being released in 2011 as part of of an exchange of prisoners which led to the release of the Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Having become a lawyer himself, he worked for the NGO Addammeer, which defends Palestinian prisoners.

But this NGO has been placed in recent months, like a handful of others, on the Israeli list of terrorist organizations.   

And to add to the saga, Amnesty International had concluded, after analysis of Salah Hamouri's mobile phone, that it had been hacked by the Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO.

This last case had given rise to a legal complaint by the Franco-Palestinian in France against this cybersecurity company whose technology is suspected by a consortium of journalists of having been used to infiltrate President Macron's smartphone. 

With AFP

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