“On December 6, Salah Hamouri must be released! »

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Tribune. Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri has been in administrative detention for months. On December 6, the State of Israel must decide on its fate. It is time for our compatriot to be freed and able to live in East Jerusalem, where he was born, surrounded by his family. However, Israel announces that it wants to expel him!

This expulsion, which would prevent him from returning to live in his own city, would set a catastrophic legal precedent for the residents of East Jerusalem. While Salah Hamouri has already suffered deprivation of liberty for two decades, it is therefore urgent that Emmanuel Macron and our government intercede as strongly as possible. And this, especially since the political context on the spot is particularly worrying, with the ongoing formation of the new Netanyahu government spurred on by and in coalition with a racist and supremacist extreme right.

Administrative detention, this procedural loophole brandished by the Israeli military authorities on the basis of “secret information”, like the joker in a card game, has in fact made it possible to leave room for arbitrariness and to deprive of liberty a human being, without charge or trial.

Hunger-strike

On October 19, several United Nations (UN) independent experts called on Israel to immediately release Salah Hamouri and denounced the detention practices: « [Elles] are not only illegal: they are sadistic. » And for good reason: in retaliation for a hunger strike started by Salah Hamouri with twenty-nine other detainees in September, the Israeli authorities placed him in Hadarim prison in inhuman conditions, in an isolation cell 4 square meters dirty and infested with pests, without fresh air or light, and deprived of all contact with the outside world.

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Several civil society organizations, including Amnesty International and the Association France Palestine Solidarité, demanded his immediate and unconditional release. And the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, herself underlined with clarity, during the meeting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs on October 4, that “Mr. Hamouri must be able to be released, [qu’]he must be able to lead a normal life, where he wishes, and if he wishes in Jerusalem, where he was born and where he resides, and [que], moreover, his wife and children must be able to find him there”.

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Unfortunately, despite these declarations, the French government and the diplomatic representation are content with a passive role, from consular visits to consular visits, without obtaining any real progress in this file or putting an end to a harassment that has lasted for more than twenty years.

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