Tucktuck, who is 33, met her husband Habib at the Anglican St George’s Parish in Jerusalem, where they attended Sunday school together. The couple maintained their courtship, sometimes over long distances as they each went abroad to study, until they finally married in 2005.
Habib lost his Jerusalem residency rights four years ago when, after studying in the United States, he became a U.S. citizen. Still, Tucktuck hoped that by coming to Jerusalem each year to renew her exit permit, a practice the Israeli Ministry of the Interior had accepted in the past, she would be able to maintain her legal residency status.
Her troubles began in 2007, when Tucktuck was pregnant and unable to travel to Jerusalem to renew her exit permit. Instead, she applied to the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. The Israeli consulate, now aware that Tucktuck was living in Las Vegas and not Jerusalem, sent back a tourist visa rather than a renewed exit permit. It was then that Tucktuck joined more than 4,000 Palestinians, including children of current and former Palestinian Authority government ministers, whose Jerusalem residency has been revoked over the past four years.
Wary of an increase in the Arab population of Jerusalem after it occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel gave Palestinians living there the special status of permanent residents. Although East Jerusalemites have the option of taking Israeli citizenship, which involves swearing allegiance to Israel and renouncing any other citizenship, many Palestinians opt to remain permanent residents. Such residents pay Israeli taxes, can vote in municipal but not national elections, theoretically have more freedom of movement with their Israeli identity card than other Palestinians, and are entitled to the same social benefits as Israeli citizens. When they leave the country, they must either have an exit permit or a travel document called a “laissez passez.”
Since 1967, some 8,000 Palestinians have lost their Jerusalem residency rights. Human rights groups accuse Israel of trying to reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem in order to have a stronger claim on the city that both peoples claim as their capital.
“Residency means living in a place,” said an Israeli Ministry of Interior spokesperson. “It is all spelled out in the law. If they don’t come back here to live in 10 years they can’t say their base is here while living in another place. They are not citizens. Citizenship cannot be revoked.”
The spokesperson said some Jewish permanent residents, such as Jews from the Netherlands who sometimes opt for this status over citizenship because Holland does not accept dual citizenship, also lose their residence status if they no longer live in Israel. A letter is sent to everyone whose residency is to be revoked and they have the right to appeal, the spokesperson added.
Still, it is ironic, says Israeli human rights attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of the HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, that the same laws of residency apply not only to East Jerusalemites who were born in Jerusalem but also to tourists and foreigners who come to Israel. “The Palestinians were born here. They didn’t come to Israel, Israel came to them,” said Ben-Hillel. “East Jerusalemites don’t have the luxury of going to live abroad for a time and then deciding to come back to live in Jerusalem.”
“I am a resident, not a tourist,” Tucktuck told Ecumenical News International in a phone interview from her mother’s home in Ramallah in the Palestinian territories. “Israelis can have an American passport and an Israeli passport, and they don’t have a problem but we can’t because we are not citizens, we are permanent residents.”
Palestinians can also lose their residency status if they move out of Jerusalem into the West Bank or even to suburbs just a few kilometers outside Jerusalem’s boundaries for more than seven years. The same is true if Palestinians acquire permanent residency or citizenship in a foreign country.
Tucktuck has a U.S. Green Card that gives her permanent residency in the United States, and a British passport because she was born in England while her parents were studying there. After she lost her Jerusalem residency rights, she lodged an appeal but the court rejected it. She can get the decision reversed only by coming to live in Jerusalem for two years without leaving but neither her eight-month-old son nor her husband can legally stay here without visas, so that is not an option.
“I am no longer in the computer as a resident of Jerusalem. Next time I come to visit my family I will have to ask for a tourist visa,” said Tucktuck. “No matter what they say, I am still a Palestinian and this is still my home.”
