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JERUSALEM, December 11, 2014 (WAFA) - The Jerusalemite Prisoners Committee Thursday said that Israeli court ‘Ofer’ Sentenced the Jerusalemite lawmaker who was exiled to Ramallah, Mohammed Abu Teir, 64, to 25 months in prison.

Abu Teir has been serving an illegal administration detention since July 2, 2013 and his detention was renewed multiple times.

In 2010, Abu Teir and other Palestinian lawmakers were arrested for entering East Jerusalem after the Israeli interior ministry stripped them of their residency permit in East Jerusalem. Abu Teir was forced into exile to Ramallah, prohibiting him from entering or living in Jerusalem.

Palestinian officials believe that such actions aim to drive Palestinians out of their land. Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, previously accused Israel of attempting to decrease the Palestinian population in occupied Jerusalem in order to turn it into a Jewish city.

According to a 2012 OCHA report, “Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem lack a secure legal residency status. Between 1967 and mid-2010, around 14,000 Palestinians had their Jerusalem residency revoked by the Israeli authorities.”

Israel has previously released details on a master plan for Jerusalem, including both East and West, which aims to empty the city from its Palestinian residents and replace them with Jewish settlers.

The master plan included a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, to be replaced by Jewish neighborhoods and tourism centers.

According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, “Israel treats Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem as immigrants who live in their homes at the beneficence of the authorities and not by right.”

It explains, “The authorities maintain this policy although these Palestinians were born in Jerusalem, lived in the city, and have no other home. Treating these Palestinians as foreigners who entered Israel is astonishing, since it was Israel that entered East Jerusalem in 1967.”

The arrest of Palestinians of Jerusalem and the revocation of their residency and right to remain in their homes and property contradict the international law.

M.H