Like her father before her, Zeina Ashrawi was born in Jerusalem. Her mother represented the city in the Palestinian parliament for 10 years.

But now the 27-year-old has been told Jerusalem is not her home.

Israel revoked her Jerusalem residency because she obtained a U.S. green card _ giving her residence in the United States. So, for a summer trip home from the U.S. to show off 10-month-old son Majd to his grandparents, Ashrawi was only granted a 30-day tourist visa.

“By revoking my (Jerusalem) ID, they have revoked all the rights I have in Palestine, as well as my son’s,” she said, cradling Majd as she sat in the toy-filled living room of her parents’ home here.

Ashrawi, whose mother Hanan is a well-known advocate of peace with Israel, is among a growing number of Palestinians _ some 4,000 since 2004 _ who have been stripped of their right to live in Jerusalem, a city whose future is a core question in settling the decades-old conflict over the Holy Land.

Israel’s critics say expelling Arab residents is just one way in which Israel has been trying to win a demographic race against Jerusalem’s Palestinians and fend off their demand to regain the Arab eastern sector that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

The critics point to the construction of 50,000 homes for Jews in east Jerusalem in the past four decades, tight restrictions on building permits for Palestinians in the eastern sector, and a zigzag barrier that Israel is building to block off the West Bank, which has sliced off several of the city’s Arab districts with 60,000 people.

“There is an ongoing and widely documented policy of discrimination in planning and building, land expropriation, home demolition, the whole issue of revoking residency,” said Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

Israeli Cabinet minister Isaac Herzog said maintaining a Jewish majority in Jerusalem is a key government objective but denied it has been pursued at the expense of the city’s Arabs.

“We believe in a Jewish majority in Jerusalem as such. It is the capital of the Jewish nation,” said Herzog.

He dismissed claims of systematic discrimination of Arab residents as “absolute nonsense,” but acknowledged the city’s Arab neighborhoods received fewer government resources.

Herzog also pointed to Israel’s willingness to discuss a division of the city in a new round of peace talks that began with a U.S. conference last November. He said bloody Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians over the past decade had delayed a solution.

Whatever lies ahead, a leading Israeli demographer says Israel is losing the demographic battle.

As the city has grown from 265,000 to 750,000 over the past four decades, the percentage of Jews has shrunk steadily, from 74 percent to 66 percent, mainly because of the Arabs’ higher birth rate and Jewish migration from the city, said Sergio DellaPergola. The ratio is expected to drop to 61-39 by 2020, and among school-age children, it will be close to even, DellaPergola said.

A division of the city is on the table in peace talks, but gaps are huge and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last week an agreement this year is unlikely.

At the same time, some top Israeli officials, including Vice Premier Haim Ramon, are portraying outlying Arab neighborhoods as a burden that Israel should shed.

“The Israelis tried to take Jerusalem out of the political game by using all their power to change the situation and consolidate their rule over the city, but they failed,” says Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem.

The demographic race was foreshadowed soon after the 1967 war. The Israeli government decided then not to annex just east Jerusalem _ an area of 2.7 square miles _ but to include 24 square miles of adjacent West Bank land to allow for growth of the city.

That move took in 28 Palestinian villages, putting 69,000 Palestinians within the united city. The annexation was not recognized by most nations, and while Israel says the 1949 Geneva Conventions do not apply in this case, these principles of international law prohibit an occupying power from moving its citizens onto occupied land.

In 1967, Jerusalem’s Arab residents were offered Israeli citizenship but _ with the city’s future uncertain and under pressure from Palestinian leaders _ most refused, accepting the less secure city residency that allowed them to live and work in Israel and made them eligible for health and pension benefits. The government says the citizenship offer remains open, but most Palestinians still reject it.

Israel’s Jewish citizens, and even visiting foreign Jews, wouldn’t face expulsion from Jerusalem. The country’s “Law of Return” entitles all Jews to live anywhere in Israel or, for that matter, in the West Bank Jewish settlements that Israel controls.

Zeina Ashrawi was born in an east Jerusalem maternity hospital in 1981 and received her Jerusalem ID through her father, Emile, who is from a Christian family with roots in Jerusalem and Nazareth in Israel. Her mother, Hanan, a West Banker, became a Jerusalemite through marriage to Emile.

Zeina grew up in Jerusalem and 10 miles north in the West bank city of Ramallah, her mother’s family home. After she left for studies in the U.S. a decade ago, she came home at least twice a year, her mother said. She obtained her green card in 2006 after marrying an American citizen.

Stripped of her Jerusalem ID earlier this summer, Zeina got a 30-day visitors’ visa, making her a tourist in her own land. Her mother says she could theoretically request West Bank residency but would then need special permission to enter Jerusalem.

Besides, “She was born there. I don’t see why she should change it,” Hanan Ashrawi said. “Just because we came under occupation does not mean they (Israelis) have the right to expel people.”

B’tselem, the rights group, said that from 1967 to 2006, Israel revoked the residency of nearly 8,300 Jerusalem Arabs. The group said there has been a steady increase in recent years _ 16 in 2004, then 222 in 2005 and 1,363 in 2006.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said about 4,000 Jerusalem Arabs have had their ID cards seized since 2004, many for accepting residency elsewhere. Judging by B’tselem figures, that could mean some 2,400 cards were taken since the beginning of 2007, another sharp rise.

The Interior Ministry says the increase is due to more efficient work methods, including better monitoring of border crossings.

Jerusalem Arabs can also lose their ID cards if they remain abroad for more than seven years without making regular visits home or if they move to the West Bank and cannot prove their “center of life” is in the city. Human rights lawyers say rules can change without warning. But Hadad said Israel would not take an ID from anyone who would have no residency elsewhere.

Outside the Interior Ministry in east Jerusalem, dozens wait in a slow-moving line under a hot sun as two men pound typewriters to help the Arabic-speaking applicants fill out forms in Hebrew. Some complain of being asked for long lists of documents and household bills going back years.

Others say their West Bank-born wives are afraid to go outdoors because they have been refused Jerusalem residency and fear arrest. Israel largely froze family-reunification permits for West Bank spouses in 2002, citing security concerns.