ROISSY AIRPORT: French­-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri, held without charge in Israeli prisons since March accused of security offences, arrived in Paris on Sunday following his expulsion from Israel condemned by Paris.

Hamouri, 37, had been held in Israel under a controversial practice known as administrative detention, which allows suspects to be detained for renewable periods of up to six months.

He arrived at Paris airport on Sunday morning, the culmination of a lengthy judicial saga after his deportation.

“I have changed location but the fight continues,” an emotional Ham­ouri said at the airport, where he was welcomed by his wife Elsa, politicians, NGO representatives and supporters of the Palestinian cause. “I have an enormous responsibility to my cause and people. We can’t abandon Pale­stine. Resistance is our right.”

Israel’s interior ministry earlier on Sunday announced the deportation following Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked’s decision to withdraw his residency status.

“We condemn today the Israeli authorities’ decision, against the law, to expel Salah Hamouri to France,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

An Israeli military court sentenced Hamouri, who holds French citizenship, to administrative detention in March, accusing him of being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and said he “endangers security in the region”. Israel, the US and the EU consider the PFLP a “terrorist group”.

The French foreign ministry said Paris had been “fully mobilised, including at the highest level of the state”, to enable Hamouri to defend his rights, benefit from all possible assistance and lead a normal life in his native east Jerusalem.

“France also took several steps to communicate to the Israeli authorities in the clearest way its opposition to this expulsion of a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention,” it added.

“It’s a happy day for a family reunited but for the Palestinian people, it’s a sad day,” Amnesty International’s France chief said and des­cribed the expulsion as a “crime of apartheid”.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022