The Israeli citizenship of a Palestinian charged with involvement in an attack in October that left four Israelis wounded has been revoked. A motion was submitted to the Haifa district court on Sunday.
Interior Minister, Aryeh Dery, announced the submission of the motion to the district court, stating that he had begun the process of revoking the young Palestinian’s Israeli citizenship immediately following the attack.
Alaa Zayud, 22, from Umm al-Fahm in the Israeli district of Haifa, had allegedly confessed to being involved in an attack that left two Israeli soldiers wounded after Zayud reportedly rammed his car into them. He then allegedly proceeded to stab two more Israelis near the city of Hadera.
Deri asks court to revoke Israeli-Arab terrorist’s citizenship: NGOs: Why wasn’t Yigal Amir’s citizenship revoked? https://t.co/Qx9iG3nLsJ
— njslea (@njslea) May 29, 2016
Zayud was subsequently charged with four counts of attempted murder, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
A 2008 amendment to Israel’s citizenship law allows the Interior Ministry to revoke the citizenship of any persons involved in security-related offenses.
Sawsan Zaher, an attorney for human rights group, Adalah, told Ma’an that, “This move will strip Zayud of any rights. Citizenship is something people are entitled to. When someone is stripped of their citizenship, the state has essentially made it so you are not entitled to any rights and you do not exist anymore,” Zaher added.
Israel's interior minister moves to revoke citizenship of Arab terror suspect https://t.co/eM2ArynExv pic.twitter.com/a15KpILn91
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 30, 2016
She added that revoking citizenship as in this case means that, “It is a way for Israel to tell its Palestinian citizens: ‘You must be loyal to Israel. You must be loyal to the Jewish state.”
(MA’AN, PC)
