HAIFA, August 7, 2017 (WAFA) – Human rights groups in Israel strongly denounced a Haifa court ruling revoking the citizenship of an Arab Israeli after he was convicted of attacking and injuring Israeli soldiers.
The Haifa District Court ruled on Sunday to revoke the citizenship of 23-year-old Alaa Zayoud, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Umm al-Fahem who is serving 25 years in prison after he was convicted of ramming his car into Israeli soldiers in June 2016 and then attacking them with a knife injuring four.
This is the first time an Israeli court has ruled to revoke an individual‘s citizenship.
The Haifa-based Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in a statement on this matter that with the revocation of Zayoud’s citizen, he will be left stateless in contravention of international law. They described the move as a “dangerous precedent,” vowing to appeal it to Israeli Supreme Court.
Adalah and ACRI had earlier demanded that the court reject Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri‘s request to revoke the citizenship of Alaa Zayoud.
If his citizenship is revoked, Adalah and ACRI have argued, Zayoud would become stateless since neither the interior minister nor the Israeli attorney general provided an alternative citizenship status for him, in contrary to the requirements of international human rights law.
Reacting to the Haifa court ruling, Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher and ACRI Attorney Oded Feller said in a statement that it is no coincidence that the concerned individual is an Arab citizen.
“There has never been a request to revoke the citizenship of a Jewish citizen, even when Jewish citizens were involved in serious and grave crimes,” they said. “Unfortunately, the court today did not follow the lead of the Supreme Court which refused to order the revocation of the citizenship of Yigal Amir, assassin of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and ruled that criminal law is the method by which serious crimes are confronted and denounced. Zayoud was tried and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Today‘s court ruling deviates from this approach, from the principles of international law, and from the general rule according to which an individual cannot be stripped of citizenship and left stateless. Adalah and ACRI will appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court.”
The Haifa court ruling was based on the 2008 amendment to Israel‘s Citizenship Law that authorizes the court to approve requests from the interior minister to revoke the citizenship of Israeli citizens for "breach of loyalty".
The amendment “is being applied in a discriminatory manner against Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel,” said Adalah. “A number of serious incidents in which Israeli Jewish citizens attacked Arab citizens have not resulted in any requests for revocation of citizenship status.”
Adalah said that “the revocation of citizenship has grave consequences given that the right to citizenship is the basis for other constitutional rights, including the right to political participation and socio-economic rights. Such a move therefore would result in the violation of the other rights that are guaranteed by the right to citizenship.
“Likewise, international law explicitly and unequivocally opposes the revocation of citizenship, as established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which Israel signed in 1961.”
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