Public Hearing on Israeli Violations of Palestinian Residency Rights in Jerusalem, organized by the Lobby for Palestinian Women’s Rights in Jerusalem 

The participation of more than 350 persons, Palestinian and Israeli families, Palestinian and Israeli activists, political personalities, legal experts and media, made the public hearing conducted in the Palestinian National Theater (al Hakawati) on Friday 18 October 1996, a successful event. 

It underlined the wide-spread scope of the problems with ID card confiscations and denial of family reunification and the strong public pressure for action. “If Bibi Netanyahu was a Palestinian, he would never have become prime minister, because his right in Israel would have been canceled as a result of his twelve-year stay in the United States”, stated Atty Lea Tsemel/Alternative Information Center in an effort to convey to the Israeli audience the absurdity of Israeli residency laws and regulations applied against the native Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem. 
Palestinian victims testified to the large audience their personal tragedies: Faten Sandouqa and her one-year old daughter who cannot meet with their husband/father, a resident of Beit Sahour/West Bank, who has been refused family reunification and entry permits to Jerusalem; Sami ‘Aweiss and Maha Halawani and their families, who had finally been able to return to Jerusalem from Amman, only to find that their right to live in the city had been canceled, despite the fact that they had been careful to renew their Israeli re-entry visa. 
Although the audience was impressed with the official speakers’ eloquence, the laters’ suggestions for action did not satisfy expectations. Faisal Husseini, PLO Jerusalem portfolio, did not go beyond the description of the crisis caused by the Israeli policy of separating Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. MK Na’omi Hazan/Meretz raised that the current violations against Palestinian residency rights in Jerusalem contradict mutual human respect and thus destroyed the very basis for just and peaceful coexistence in the city; she called for joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts so as to raise the success rate of parliamentarians intervening on behalf of individual cases. 
MK Azmi Bishara/National Democratic Alliance stated that the violent clashes of September 1996 proved that Jerusalem is a point of strength which can mobilize the Arab world on behalf of the Palestinian agenda. This must be exploited, especially now under the Likud government which - lacking a plan and ruling by crisis management - is much easier to expose than a Labor/Meretz government: “We must convey to everybody that Israel is in fact permanently changing the status quo in Jerusalem, and that all the talk about final status negotiations is empty words.” He called for an international campaign against the Israeli apartheid system under construction: “Apartheid is the key, not just the violation of human and national rights, and Jerusalem is the strongest example for Israel’s apartheid policy in the post-Oslo era.”