Israel almost entirely halts citizenship approvals for East Jerusalemites

[Little Tich]

Source: Times of Israel

The government claims to offer citizenship to eligible residents who came under Israeli sovereignty after 1967. In fact, after many years in which applications were handled relatively efficiently and about half were approved, the process has now all but stopped

About seven years ago, Sufyan Dabash applied to be a citizen of his country of birth, Israel. His application was rejected. The 37-year-old taxi cab driver — a lifelong resident of the Sur Baher village on the southeastern outskirts of Jerusalem — couldn’t prove he was a Jerusalemite.

“I have no citizenship. I have nothing,” he recently told The Times of Israel. “I want to feel like I’m from here. I don’t want to feel like I’m a second-class citizen.”

Since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, it has formally offered residents living in that area the option to apply for Israeli citizenship. Until around a decade ago, very few did, as the vast majority identified, and still do identify, as Palestinian. Recent years, however, have seen a surge in the number of Palestinians seeking Israeli citizenship. But Israel, which in the decade from 2003 to 2013 denied or delayed about half of the citizenship applications by East Jerusalemites, has more recently been failing to accept almost all of them, The Times of Israel has established.

Currently, there are some 350,000 Arab East Jerusalemites, around 37 percent of the capital’s population. As permanent residents, they pay taxes and are entitled to state benefits like healthcare and social security. However, they cannot vote in national elections, apply for an Israeli passport, nor run for mayor in their own city. They can vote in municipal elections, yet most choose not to, in protest of what they — and the broader international community — consider Israel’s illegal occupation of their land. Around 80% of East Jerusalemites live under the poverty line, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.



Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-almost-entirely-halts-citizenship-approvals-for-east-jerusalemites/

Note: Long article, but well worth a read.

[TubbersUK]

1. K & R n/t

[FBaggins]

2. So they're cutting back on something that you denied that they did at all?

The humor there is entirely lost on you?

[Little Tich]

3. Huh? The usual Zionist lie is that the Palestinians in East Jerusalem were offered Israeli

citizenship, but that they all declined...

I've never argued that Israel prevents all Palestinians in East Jerusalem from getting Israeli citizenship. However, Israel have always tried to make it difficult for those that do apply. But I wonder: if every East Jerusalemite applied for Israeli citizenship, how many of them would have their application accepted? 1%? 10?

What do you think?

[FBaggins]

4. Haaretz is spreading a "Zionist lie"???

What do you think?

I think that, once again, you aren't even reading the stuff that you're posting. They clearly went several years approving over half of the requests. That dropped off close to zero as peace talks collapsed and Palestinian terror attacks surged. Surely that's not surprising?

[Little Tich]

5. You and Israel's leaders have clearly forgotten what it means to be a democracy

and about the obligation for the administration to not discriminate on ethnic grounds.

Oh, the good old days in the Jim Crow South, eh...