After nine years in
Israeli jail, Ahmad Sabah, a 40-year-old Palestinian,
was sent to Gaza, instead of being released to the West
Bank where his family was waiting for him.
Israelis sent him to Gaza
because he had a Palestinian ID issued there.
His family said that
Sabah, who was arrested in 2001 for "security offences"
against Israel, has no connection to Gaza and he has
refused to leave the border crossing in protest at his treatment.
"It is my right to
return to my wife and family," he said.
'Inhumane policy'
The Israeli move drew
condemnation from Palestinian political leaders, who
denounced Sabah's deportation as "inhumane".
deported by Israel
Issa Qaraqi, the minister
of prisoner affairs in the government of Palestinian president
Mahmoud Abbas, said that Sabah should have been released to the West
Bank.
"He has no connection
to Gaza, no relatives there, nothing."
He said that the
deportation was an example of Israel invoking the controversial new
military orders that allow "illegal" residents of the
West Bank to be expelled.
But Israeli authorities
denied the orders were behind the decision. "The individual's
release to the Gaza Strip was done in accordance with the Prison
Service's decision and in light of the location of his place of
residence, and was not due to a repatriation order issued by any
military commander," the Israeli military said in a statement.
Sabah's case follows that
of Saber Albayari, who was deported to Gaza after seeking medical
treatment in an Israeli hospital on Wednesday.
Albayari had been living
in Israel for the past 15 years, but was returned to Gaza when
Israeli authorities discovered that he had been born there.
Some fear that the
expulsions could be the first in a wave of deportations
of Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank.
Up to 70,000 Palestinians
could be at risk of deportation under the military order, which
has been roundly condemned by Arab politicians.
Last week President Abbas
vowed to confront the order. "Israel has no right to deport any
Palestinian, and the Palestinian Authority will not allow it and
will confront it with various means."
Al Jazeera's Jackie
Rowland, reporting from Jerusalem, said that the individual
stories put a human face on what is a deliberate strategy by Israel
to treat the West Bank and Gaza differently.
"It fits into a
pattern of Israel's strategy to treat Gaza and the West Bank as
separate geopoliticial entities," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment