Interior Ministry Data Are Incomplete 
In its answer (7-7-97) to the petitioners, the Interior Ministry explains the difficulties in calculating the data as following: 
- “Identification numbers issued to residents of East Jerusalem can no longer be  distinguished from those given to inhabitants of West Jerusalem: in the past, East  Jerusalem residents were issued identification numbers starting with the number 8.  This practice, however, was discontinued several years ago. 
- In the past, the decision to cancel a person’s resident status in East Jerusalem was   registered in the respective personal file; it was, however, not always entered into the  Ministry’s computerized database, so that the computerized record of lost residency  is partial only. 
- Moreover, identification of East Jerusalem residents whose resident status was  discontinued by means of their addresses in the city proved inefficient, because the  Ministry’s records of these addresses are partial only.”  

The Ministry’s Partial Record: Approximately 4,000 ID Card Confiscations 

Given the problems mentioned above, the requested data were finally calculated by crossing all computer records of cases of canceled residency with the Ministry’s symbol for Jordanian citizenship. Based on this method, the number of Palestinian Jerusalemites whose resident status in the city was canceled was listed (Chart of ID Card Confiscations 1967 - 1996). 

- 4,000 ID cards means 4,000 Palestinian families and their approximately 8,000 children are effected. The children have been made into foreigners by the bureaucratic strike of a pen and thereby stripped of the hope of ever establishing a family in their and their parents’ hometown. 
- The real number of victims of the Ministry’s policy during the 30 years of occupation - definitely much higher than the figure presented here - cannot be calculated from the Ministry’s data. 

Ministry Data Confirm Existence of New Policy of ID Card Confiscation 

The above data released by the Ministry on 7 July 1997, document the Israeli policy change towards systematic ID card confiscation targeting Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. The Ministry, in an effort to account for the drastic increase of cases (by approximately 600%) since 1996, explains the following: 
“The rise in the number of residents who were excluded from the registry file due to expiration of residency in the last year results, among others, from the reorganization of the East Jerusalem office in the course of which clerks received clarification concerning instructions and procedures pertaining to filing and data registration. Moreover, recent years have been characterized by the phenomenon that former permanent residents, who left to other countries, settled and established the center of their lives here for many years, have re-entered Israel as tourists (especially via Jordan) and - during their visit - approach the East Jerusalem office with the request for an ID card. If the examination of these applications shows that the person concerned has stopped being a resident, the registrar’s database is corrected accordingly. 
We would also like to add here that the above figures include all those cases of persons who were excluded from the population registry in the course of corrections of errors which had occurred in the years immediately  after 1967 (e.g. persons who were also registered by the census conducted in YOSH [West Bank] and Gaza).”