07 August, 2017
The country says he was stripped of his citizenship because he was responsible for a vehicle and knife attack which injured four people two years ago. Human rights groups were quick to criticize the measure as setting a unsafe precedent.
Zayoud was convicted on four counts of attempted murder after ploughing a vehicle into Israeli soldiers and stabbing civilians in Octobe 2015.
Ynet reported that Zayoud told the court that he was not a terrorist, but rather that he lost control of his auto.
Alaa Raed Ahmad Ziwad, 20, was indicted on terrorism charges later in 2015 for the attack, in which he seriously wounded a soldier and moderately injured three others near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, northeast of Hadera.
The controversial ruling adheres to the recommendation of Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, filed past year, after it was approved by Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit. "One significant and meaningful duty is loyalty to the State, which includes the duty not to carry out terrorist activities that harm its safety and that of its residents".
Together with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah noted previous year in a joint statement that Israel's High Court refused to consider stripping former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's killer of his citizenship.
"We can not allow an Israeli citizen to impact the lives and dignity of other Israeli citizens, and whoever decides to do so in acts of terror removes himself from the general society of the country", he added, the Times of Israel reported. He will then be allocated temporary citizenship which can only be extended with the approval of the Interior Ministry when his sentence has been served.
Sunday's ruling immediately drew criticism from human rights groups.
Zayud's mother is an Israeli citizen while his father is a Palestinian with permanent residence in Israel.
The decision-based on Article 11 of Israel's Nationality Law-sets a precedent for future legal rulings against convicted terrorists who hold Israeli citizenship.
"There has never been a request to revoke the citizenship of a Jewish citizen, even when Jewish citizens were involved in serious and grave crimes", they said. As such, activists from within Arab society are concerned that this may become a more common method used against Arab activists and leaders, especially in light of the rhetoric used against Arab public figures following the most recent attack in Jerusalem.
