The threat is real and imminent. Fahmi is due to find out in the next few days whether the Israeli ministry of the interior will order him to leave the city where he was born because, like many Israelis and Palestinians, he spent an extended period of his life abroad and his residency lapsed. Since returning from America in the 1990s, the 56-year-old has been living in Jerusalem on a succession of temporary tourist visas, which 18 months ago the authorities warned that they would not renew. His predicament has outraged two of Israel's most celebrated novelists, Amos Oz and David Grossman, who have signed a petition asking the authorities to allow Fahmi to stay. From the British Isles, Ian McEwan, Roddy Doyle and John Banville have also offered their support.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author of Jerusalem: The Biography, came across Fahmi and his bookshop while working in Jerusalem. "For me a bookshop is a sacred place, a temple which should be above politics," he said. "Some bookshops have an agenda; Munther's does not. He simply celebrates books about the Middle East, Israeli writers, Palestinian writers. He's exactly the kind of person a country needs to be staying and running this kind of business."
Grossman said that Fahmi was one of many Palestinians whose residence in Jerusalem was threatened by Israeli laws. "He was born in Jerusalem, he has lived most of his life in Jerusalem and his family lives in Jerusalem. What is being done to him is an outrage. It's part of an attempt to embitter the lives of Palestinians so that they leave."
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