JERUSALEM,  March 31, 2011 (WAFA) – More than 2000 international, Arab and local literary figures Thursday signed a petition supporting the right of a Palestinian resident of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem to live in the city of his birth and against an Israeli decision to deport him.,

The petition said that Munther Fahmi, 55, who runs a bookshop at the American Colony Hotel since 1998, has been threatened with deportation on the ground he had lost his residency right.

According to the petition, Fahmi travelled to the US in the early 1970s to study and has since obtained an American passport. It said when he had decided to return to live in Jerusalem, his original homeland, in 1995, he was told at the airport that he had lost his residency right and that he can stay as an American citizen.

However, it seems the Israeli Ministry of Interior had decided that he cannot stay in Jerusalem anymore and that he should leave the country.

The petition said it believes the decision to deport Fahmi had to do with his work at the American Colony and that it was part of a growing Israeli policy against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem with a goal to force them to leave the city to maintain a Jewish majority in the holy city.

W.S./M.A.