Dov Lieber, TIMES OF ISRAEL
"The number of East Jerusalem Arabs obtaining Israeli citizenship has spiked so far this year, but thousands of families are still waiting for approval as officials deal with a massive backlog created by a near freeze in naturalizations in recent years.
Though there are still four months left in 2017, this year has already seen more East Jerusalemites obtain Israeli citizenship than the past three years combined, according to numbers provided by the Population and Immigration Authority of the Interior Ministry."...
โThe fact that such a relatively high number of applications were processed this year shows they were able to deal with them more rapidly. It shows something has been wrong in this area,โ said Adi Lustigman, an independent Israeli attorney who has worked extensively with East Jerusalemites seeking citizenship.