• Who are East Jerusalem’s ‘permanent residents’?
    They were born and bred in the capital, but they aren’t Israeli citizens and their status is anything but permanent. In some cases, it may even be revoked.
    By Ariel David | Dec. 9, 2014 |
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.630605

    (...) who are these permanent residents who are among those at the center of the storm? What exactly is their status and in what way can they be considered akin to immigrants in their own home?

    When Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Six-Day War of 1967, it granted the inhabitants of the newly captured neighborhoods permanent residency status and offered them citizenship.

    At present, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, out of a total population of 815,000, there are now some 300,000 Arabs in Jerusalem. Only 12 percent of them have Israeli citizenship, the Interior Ministry reports. Obtaining citizenship demands various procedures like swearing allegiance to the Jewish state and showing some knowledge of Hebrew, but rights groups say the main problem is the social taboo surrounding such a move: Palestinians feel that the process implies recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which they claim as capital of their future state.

    That is why most East Jerusalemites continue to live in the city as permanent residents, the same status afforded to non-Jewish foreigners who move to Israel (Jewish immigrants can easily obtain citizenship thanks to the Law of Return).

    (...)

    Despite its name, the residency permit is also not necessarily permanent. Figures compiled by the B’Tselem human rights group show that since 1967 Israel has revoked the residency of more than 14,000 Palestinians, often without warning. While links to terror groups have prompted such a step in the past, most revocations were done because the person had moved for a period to the West Bank or had gone to study or work abroad .