BEIT HANUN: Israel has deported a 19-year-old Palestinian from the occupied West Bank to the Gaza Strip, where he had not set foot in more than a decade, the teenager said on Wednesday.
Fadi Azazmeh is the second West Bank resident to be deported to Gaza since new military orders that Israeli human rights groups have said could result in the expulsion of thousands of people from the occupied territory.
Azazmeh was arrested in the West Bank town of Hebron and briefly held at a military prison before being released into Gaza on Tuesday night, he told AFP at a protest tent set up on the Palestinian side of the border.
"My entire family lives in Hebron. We left Gaza 12 years ago and I’ve never been back," he said.
The Israeli military would not immediately comment.
Azazmeh has joined Ahmed Sabah, a 40-year-old prisoner from the West Bank town of Tulkarem who was released from jail into Gaza last week. Both have refused to leave the border area.
The two deportations appeared to have been carried out as part of a new military policy that labels anyone in the West Bank without a permit an "infiltrator."
The new orders announced earlier this month drew fire from the Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups, who warned they could be used to deport thousands of Palestinians with Gaza identification papers who are living in the West Bank.
Israel has played down the orders, saying it has no plans to deport large numbers of Palestinians. The orders have been condemned by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which has vowed to confront them.
Israel and Egypt have sealed Gaza off to all but very limited supplies since Hamas seized power in June 2007 and have imposed tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians into and out of the territory.
Thousands of Palestinians with Gaza papers are believed to live in the West Bank. Both territories were occupied in the 1967 Six Day War and are expected to one day form an independent Palestinian state.
Identification papers in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are formally issued by the Palestinian Authority but Israel controls the population registry and must approve most changes, including relocation from Gaza to the West Bank.
Israel largely froze the registry following the 2000 Palestinian uprising, making it virtually impossible for West Bank residents with Gaza papers to change them, according to human rights groups.
