“Can you tell me why I've been instructed to deny you entry into Israel today?” This was the question posed to James* by an Israeli official in September as James attempted to cross the border from Jordan into the Palestinian West Bank. James is a U.S. citizen who works for an international nongovernmental organization that supports the Palestinian nonviolent movement and documents human rights abuses committed against Palestinians. In March 2009, James and a colleague were arrested while videotaping Israeli settlers as Israeli settlers constructed a road on privately-owned Palestinian land. The two Americans were held overnight, and taken to court in Jerusalem, where the judge found no evidence against them and dismissed the case. James and his colleague, who was also deported from Israel under similar circumstances at the end of September, were never charged with any sort of illegal behavior. Nevertheless, the incident raised their profiles and, James believes, is the cause of their deportation. As he told AAPER, “The charges were baseless, and the case was basically thrown out in court, but, nevertheless, it was enough to get our names in the system.”
James and his colleague are two examples among many these days. In a recent incident on January 12, that garnered a measure of international attention, Jared Maslin, an American Jewish journalist working as an editor for the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, was detained at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, questioned about his “anti-Israeli” views and subsequently deported. “They judged me to have anti-Israeli politics,” Maslin told reporters as he was boarding the plane that would take him away from Israel. “It’s outrageous that would even appear in a legal argument, that a person’s politics would be a relevant issue.” His partner, Faith Rowald, who also worked in Palestine, was deported along with him. The official reasoning provided by Israeli authorities was that both withheld information during their interrogations and did not cooperate with Israeli authorities.
Like most internationals working in the occupied Palestinian territories, each of these four individuals was relying on Israel’s three-month tourist visa in order to remain in Israel and Palestine legally, as longer-term work visas are nearly impossible to obtain. In fact, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported in January that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior has completely stopped issuing work visas to foreign nationals working in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. By doing so, Israel ensures that the international support network, which has established a strategic relationship with the Palestinian nonviolent movement, lacks stability and continuity. Overall, it weakens the nonviolence movement by denying it the resources and media attention brought by international workers and volunteers.
Internationals attempting to reside in Palestine for longer than three months are not the only ones who have difficulty entering Israel or the occupied territories. In January 2010, Sarah and Bob, volunteers with the Christian Peacemaker Teams and On Earth Peace, respectively, were detained, interrogated for 12 hours, denied entry and deported when attempting to enter Israel for a two-week delegation, which they were scheduled to lead. From his home in Indiana, Bob ascribed this phenomenon to “the Israeli government’s fear of anything that seems to value Palestinian equality or human rights, which means that those of us who are committed to nonviolent peacemaking are considered a threat.” He attributes their treatment not only to the nature of the visit, but also to Sarah’s Egyptian heritage. “During our time being held with Israeli security, we saw many other people coming under additional questioning as well. Almost all those pulled aside were people of color. Most were of Arab and African descent.”
If it is the goal of the Israeli authorities to demoralize international activists in order to put an end to the work they do on behalf of the Palestinians, they have not been entirely successful. James is exploring options that may allow him to legally return to the occupied Palestinian territories in the near future. In the meantime, he plans on doing advocacy work in the United States, as a way of supporting the Palestinian movement for freedom and equality and the internationals that participate in it. He admits that he doesn’t “really know what that will look like,” but his commitment to a free Palestine remains.
* Not his real name.
