Israel revokes residency of 140,000 West Bankers

Israel quietly revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank when they left to travel abroad in the years after the 1967 Six Day War, a rights group said on Wednesday. According to official documents obtained by HaMoked, Centre for the Defence of the Individual, the policy affected Palestinians travelling abroad for work or study in the period between 1967 and 1994 when the Oslo Accords came into effect.
Although HaMoked was aware of the procedure, it was never clear how many Palestinians had been affected until the group got hold of numbers through the Freedom of Information Act, in a story first exposed by Haaretz newspaper. The revelation sparked a furious response from the Palestinian Authority, with government spokesman Ghassan Khatib describing the policy as "illegal and inhumane."
"This policy is part of the Israeli strategy to remove as many Palestinians as possible while moving Israeli citizens into our lands," he said in a statement, adding that HaMoked's work to reveal the figures was "to be applauded." According to the documents, any Palestinian travelling abroad during that period would have to leave his or her ID card at the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan, and in exchange would receive an "exit permit" which was valid for three years. If a traveller did not come back before the permit expired, their documents were sent to the military administration in the West Bank which would re-register them as "no longer resident" - or NLR, Haaretz said.
But the process was never explained to travellers meaning that many were unaware that not returning 'on time' could see their residency status revoked. Those who arrived in the six months after the card expired were technically permitted to appeal to have their residency reinstated, but in practice, very few managed to reverse the procedure, HaMoked said.
"We knew this procedure existed but we never knew the scope of this policy," said Ido Blum, head of the legal team at HaMoked. "It is a very large number, representing about 14 percent of the residents of the West Bank, which is a huge number." He said the practice was stopped after 1994 when the Palestinian Authority took over the exit procedures, meaning travellers were able to leave for years without losing their residency rights. The number of people affected by this procedure was likely to be far higher than 140,000 as entire families would often leave to join an individual whose residency had been revoked, he said.