In 2017, the occupation froze Abbasi’s temporary residency in Jerusalem for 8 months due to his liking (like) reaction to a picture of a Palestinian martyr on Facebook, and in the last year, he was arrested several times until the occupation decided to expel him permanently.
Occupied Jerusalem- This morning, Friday, June 3, 2022, the Jerusalemite, Murad Ghazi al-Abbasi, tries to “delight” every minute with his parents, wife and six children in his home in the town of Silwan, south of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Al-Abbasi, 42, ate his usual breakfast of Jerusalem cakes, and tried to live with all his heart from the family’s morning meeting on Friday, then looked at the unique view of his home, before he was forced to leave for the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
On May 19, the occupation police handed al-Abbasi a decision to permanently deport him from Jerusalem, and that he must leave within 14 days, otherwise he would be arrested and imprisoned, with a fine of nearly any person harboring him in Jerusalem – even if he was from his family – to al-Abbasi. 1500 dollars.
Born and Lived Here
After he was born, studied and worked in the town of Silwan, Al-Abassi told Al-Jazeera Net, “I have lived here for 42 years, and overnight I am expelled forever.”
The man hails from one of the families of the original town, but the occupation decided to uproot him and separate him from his family under the pretext that there are “secret files” that require his expulsion.
Despite his roots in Jerusalem, Abbasi does not have the blue residency card for Jerusalemites. His grandfather was working in the city of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, when the rest of it was occupied in the 1967 war, and he missed the Israeli census of those inside it, which gave cards to the Palestinians in Jerusalem at the time, while he excluded who are outside.
reunion trip
Al-Abbasi married a Jerusalemite girl in 2001, and they had 6 children, so that he could then submit a request for “unification” to the Israeli Ministry of Interior.
If the occupation approves the request, this procedure brings together Palestinian families through official documents, and it concerns families in which one of the spouses is from the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and the other is from Jerusalem or the occupied interior.
The Israeli occupation prevents every Palestinian who does not hold Israeli citizenship or an Israeli identity number – permanent or temporary – from entering occupied Jerusalem except with a permit, or through a “unification” treatment listed with his Ministry of Interior, which includes several restrictions and conditions. Last March, the Israeli Knesset approved a law banning it permanently.
In 2015, after 15 years of marriage, Al-Abbasi was able to receive the “unification” treatment, and he used to go annually to the Ministry of Interior building in the Wadi Al-Joz neighborhood in Jerusalem to renew it.
Before that, he used to obtain periodic entry and residence permits, using his work at Al-Makassed Hospital in Al-Tur area inside Jerusalem.
The accusation of “like”
The matter did not last long. In 2017, Abbasi’s permit was frozen for 8 months due to his liking (like) a picture of a Palestinian martyr on Facebook, and his entry permit was not activated again until after he submitted a letter of apology for that.
The deported man reveals that he was repeatedly blackmailed by the occupation police and intelligence, and they told him, “Your cooperation with us determines the fate of the family unification transaction.”
Al-Abbasi lived in constant apprehension and anticipation until 2021, when he was arrested at the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, then from the Zaytuna checkpoint near Al-Tur, and was investigated and questioned in the occupation police stations about his official document and other matters, and he said that in that year alone he was interrogated 6 times.
expulsion decision
Since then, the countdown has begun, when he went to the building of the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem to renew his entry document to the city, but they told him that they were going to cancel the permit and “unification,” and the reason was that he “does not respect Israel and its laws,” and they have “secret information that supports that approach.” . Last March, Abbasi received a final decision to expel him from Jerusalem.
During his long quarrel with the occupation, Al-Abassi hired human rights organizations and lawyers at his own expense to protect his presence in Jerusalem, leading to an appeal against the decision to expel him. There, in the Appeals Court held in the settlement of “Givat Shaul”, something unexpected happened.
The deportee describes the details of the hearing, saying, “The judge asked me where do you pray? He would interrupt the session and go to an adjacent room to listen to people I don’t know. Then he came back to say that he saw credible information that I pose a threat to the national security of the State of Israel and the public street.” “The judge cannot interfere, because the decision was issued by the Shin Bet (the Israeli intelligence service),” al-Abbasi added.
Al-Abassi’s appeal was rejected, and to legally reactivate his case, he needs about 12,500 dollars, with no possibility of the decision to expel him falling, according to veteran lawyers.
Murad al-Abbasi was deported from Jerusalem for two years, starting in 2004, and arrested for two months based on the same vague justifications.
Since the beginning of this year, Al Jazeera Net has documented the deportation of 8 Palestinians from the city of Jerusalem, the last of whom was Murad al-Absi. Meanwhile, human rights organizations’ sources report that the Israeli Ministry of Interior has withdrawn the right of residency in Jerusalem from at least 14,500 Palestinians, under various pretexts, since the occupation of the rest of the city in 1967.
lost everything
Al-Abbasi worked for 17 years in a transportation office in the Ain Al-Lawza neighborhood, close to his home in the Al-Abbasiya neighborhood, and after his removal from Jerusalem, he will be without work and without a home or family, as he is the only breadwinner for his family, who will not be able to move to live with him in Ramallah for fear of withdrawing their residency documents In Jerusalem, he will spend his first days of deportation in a hotel to find a house to live in.
Looking goodbye to the flowering plants of his house, Murad Al-Abassi said, “This secret unknown file darkened my life and left me in a whirlpool. They killed me while I was alive. All the family’s responsibility will be on my wife. I’m happy without my father.”
He concluded, “Despite all this, I will not lose hope, no matter what they do, I will return in the end because my roots are here, I will only take out a body and my soul will remain in Jerusalem.”
