What will happen to the tens of thousands of Palestinian Jerusalemites living outside the city, in areas scheduled for Israeli redeployment? The Israeli strategy is obvious: it seeks to gradually relinquish the residency rights of these people inside Israeli state territory, including East Jerusalem. 

While in the past a petition against the confiscation of an ID card from a Palestinian Jerusalemite living in the occupied West Bank still had a fair chance of success at the Israeli High Court, this may not be the case from now on. The judges may simply no longer accept the argument that the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority are not a “foreign country”, and my thus rule that ID card confiscations according to Regulation 11 of the Law of Entry to Israel apply to permanent residents living in the West Bank. A legal precedent was created by the new Israeli National Insurance Law, which explicitly excludes non-Jewish permanent residents living in the autonomous areas from eligibility to welfare services. This law also states that such persons cease to be “residents of Israel,” even if they hold blue Israeli ID cards. 
The current Israeli population census (October - December 1995) does not include Palestinian holders of Jerusalem ID cards who reside outside the municipal boundaries. Palestinians, fearing that non-registration in the Israeli census will convey the loss of their right to state welfare, made a massive effort to register at their legal addresses inside the city. At the same time, the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank launched its own illegal census which is by no means part of the official Israeli census. Soldiers and border policemen enter Palestinian homes in West Bank communities bordering East Jerusalem and inspect people’s ID cards, obviously trying to clarify the number of Jerusalemites living in these areas. The Palestinian election registry defines a “Jerusalem district” which includes Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as well as areas outside the city boundaries heavily populated by holders of Jerusalem ID cards. The Palestinian leadership was counting on the strong participation of Jerusalemites to counter the “Israelization” of the city. 
However, Palestinian Jerusalemites have reacted in their own particular way. The registration turn-out has remained well below PA expectations even though the registration period in the “Jerusalem district” has been extended several times in order to convince more people to change their minds and register. The reasons for the reluctance are obvious. Jerusalemites, especially those living outside the city, fear that their participation in the Palestinian elections will disqualify them from access to Israeli welfare services. The permanent Israeli threat of suspension of National Insurance payments and ID card confiscations, as well as the absence of protection and guarantees by the Palestinian leadership, have lead to a situation in which Palestinian Jerusalemites prefer to protect themselves individually by abstaining from the Palestinian election registration. 
Unless the Palestinian leadership and its negotiators take up the challenge and pressure for an Israeli and international guarantee to freeze the residency status of Palestinian Jerusalemites living in the autonomous areas, Israel will use the interim period not only to cancel the welfare services to tens of thousands of its subjects, but also to revoke their status as residents of Jerusalem.