Most Palestinian Jerusalemites have a legal status that is unique in the world: Although they are indigenous, they are stateless. This situation creates a precarity that infuses every aspect of life and leaves the community perpetually afraid that their fragile residency status will be summarily revoked. Here we explore this untenable reality.

The Story in Numbers

366,800

Palestinians in Jerusalem (registered with legal status within the Israeli unilaterally declared municipal boundaries (2020)) [1]

20,000

Approximate number of Palestinian Jerusalemites who hold Israeli citizenship [2]

346,800

Estimated number of Palestinian Jerusalemites who have Israeli permanent-resident status, an inferior, conditional, and geographically restricted status that is revocable if residents cannot continuously prove that Jerusalem is their “center of life” at any point the authorities demand such proof [3]

14,701

Number of Palestinian Jerusalemites whose residency status was revoked by Israel from 1967 to 2020 [4]

5.3

Average number of Palestinians living in a single household in Jerusalem in 2018 [5]

77,913

Very rough estimate of the number of persons affected by the residency revocations over time; since the revocation of an individual’s residency also extends to his or her dependents. [5] Others have estimated this number to be significantly higher (86,000 in 2015, at which point the number of revocations was 14,565). [6]

Notes

1. Omer Yaniv, Netta Haddad, and Yair Assaf-Shapira, Jerusalem Facts and Trends 2022 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, 2022), 20. Reflects the number of Palestinians entered in the Israeli Population Registry (including both citizens and permanent residents). Unregistered persons and persons with Palestinian Authority (PA) IDs living in Jerusalem may number in the thousands or tens of thousands, but are not counted in this source.

2. The story behind this number is too complex for a note. See other Backgrounders in this topic.

3. Estimate reached by subtracting the total of item no. 2 from item no. 1.

4. See Precarious Status.

5. Calculation made by multiplying the known number of individual revocations over the years by the average household size for Palestinians in Jerusalem in 2018. Michal Korach and Maya Chosen, eds., Jerusalem Facts and Trends 2020 at a Glimpse (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, 2020). Clearly this is only a rough estimate given that the average household size would have changed over the years since 1967. The key takeaway here is that the revocation of a single individual’s residency also affects the status of all of his dependent children (see Precarious Status).

6. Tamara Tawfiq Tamimi, “Revocation of Residency of Palestinians in Jerusalem: Prospects for Accountability,” Jerusalem Quarterly 72 (2017): 37–47.

More on This Topic

Personal Story Reflections of a Returning Daughter of Jerusalem

The author returns to Shu‘fat to live in her ancestral home and finds happiness despite the emotional stress of living in a settler-colonial state.

Blog Post Yesterday, I Was a “Security Threat”—Today, I Am Welcome in Jerusalem

Israel tried treating Palestinian Americans like other US tourists, and I was finally able to visit my capital city.