Palestinians living in Jerusalem are routinely deported to the West Bank, Al Jazeera reported.

According to the report, in March, Yisrael Katz, an Israeli member of the Knesset, submitted a bill to allow the state to deport family members of Palestinian attackers to Gaza. The bill has not been voted on yet, but is pending, despite the fact that Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, has previously suggested that such a policy would contravene international law.

At the same time, human rights groups say that forced transfers of Palestinians from Jerusalem have been ongoing for almost 50 years.

Ziyad Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights told Al Jazeera, “We have three groups of people who are forced out: those who have their ID cards withdrawn, those whose family unification applications were rejected, and those who settled in Jerusalem before 1987, when it was easy to enter the city, but who were never given ID or residency cards”.

Hammouri’s organisation has traced more than 14,900 cases where Israeli identity cards were revoked from Palestinians since the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem began.

For many Palestinian families, some who are not even given 24-hours’ notice of being forcefully removed, such an experience is traumatic and uprooting to say the least.

Abu Arafeh, one such Palestinian who was deported to the West Bank said, “I experienced true pain when I was deported from Jerusalem,” adding, “our children have been uprooted and go through hardship living their lives”.

(Al Jazeera, PC)