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Israel accused of ethnic discrimination after stripping Palestinians of East Jerusalem residency
Israel has acknowledged stripping a record number of Palestinians of the right to live in East Jerusalem.
The announcement came as a confidential European diplomatic report issued its most damning assessment of what it claimed was an Israeli strategy to create a Jewish majority in the city's predominantly Arab east.
Israeli government figures obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request showed that 4,577 Palestinians had been stripped of the right to live in East Jerusalem last year, a record.
Jerusalem's most senior European diplomats alleged that Israel had embarked on a strategy to alter the city's delicate demographic balance.
According to the European report, a confidential year-end briefing which was leaked to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, municipal officials have consistently refused to grant Palestinians in East Jerusalem building permits. At the same time, the report claimed, the government had connived with right-wing Jewish settler groups to buy up Arab houses and expand Jewish settlements "into the heart of the Muslim quarter." Annexed by Israel following its capture in the 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem is viewed by Palestinians as their capital and its status is a deeply emotive issue. Recent riots in and around East Jerusalem's walled old city, home to some of the world's most iconic religious landmarks, were partly fuelled by rumours of a Jewish plot to gain ownership of the area.