#0202_A_View_From_East_Jerusalem

"Ghada went to visit her aunt in Issawiya and found herself in Gaza.

On the morning of January 13, the 14-year-old Palestinian girl Ghada got on a bus to Issawiya to visit her aunt, who lives in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. This visit was the last time Ghada was in the West Bank, where she was born and raised, before finding herself elsewhere.

Ghada was born in Ramallah in 2003 and since then has lived with her family in the town of A-Ram in East Jerusalem, her father was born in the Gaza Strip. The Border Police arrested her during her visit to her aunt because she was in Jerusalem without permission to travel around the city, which is under the control of the occupation.

The Center for the Defense of the Individual, Hamoked, reported that Ghada (whose family name was not published in accordance with the family's request) was interrogated by the Occupation Police and transferred to the Israeli Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem on January 15, without the presence of her parents.

Attorney Abeer Jubran Dakour, who handles the legal case of Ghada, noted that one of the relatives of the girl's parents was present at the hearing and that the Israeli judge ruled in the hearing that she would be released on bail of 1,500 shekels, provided she's present if there are other proceedings.

The morning after the hearing, the prison administration informed Ghada that she would be released near the Qalandiya military checkpoint, near her family's home in A-Ram. But after a few hours of driving in the Occupation police bus, she was surprised to see that she was in the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern Gaza Strip.

Attorney Dakur made it clear that the Israeli prison administration did not contact or coordinate with Ghada's family. The girl, who had never visited the Gaza Strip, managed to communicate with her mother through an official of the Palestinian District Coordination Office working at the border crossing. The lawyer stated that 'this is an illegal deportation.'

For the past 16 days, Ghada has been waiting to return to her parents in A-Ram after she took refuge with one of her father's relatives in the Gaza Strip.

Attorney Dokur noted that the Hamoked Center contacted the person in charge in the Israeli army and demanded that they immediately return Ghada to her family. 'If there is no response today, we will turn to the High Court of Justice next Monday, and we will file an urgent petition.'

The lawyer also emphasized that the child suffers from epilepsy and is under extended medical supervision, and warned that the stress the child is suffering being away from her family is liable to worsen her condition."

– Selected parts of an article by Al-Quds

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0202 Editor's Note:
[1] A-Ram is a town within the Jerusalem province under control of the Palestinian Authority, southeast of Ramallah. Part of the town is included in the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, but most of it is outside of the separation barrier.

For more information about the case on Ha'aretz, see https://goo.gl/TSXMmN

#East_Jerusalem #Issawiya #Aram #Gaza_Strip #West_Bank #Deportation #Border_Police

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