DISCRIMINATION ABROAD

"W elcome to Israel" and a smile is the way most of the passengers on my flight are greeted by passport control. I, however, am greeted with a look of disdain and a "Go stand over there and wait for the security officer."

What have I, a Reed College student, done to raise concerns? I have four hours in Israeli detention to consider this with three gray-haired women, a teary-eyed 8-year-old and a high school student. I have little in common with the other detainees except for one thing: Virtually all of us are Americans -- Palestinian Americans, that is.

I know from other Palestinian Americans who traveled to Israel before me that it is possible that I won't be permitted to enter.

An aunt and her daughters were held in detention for three days. Others have been put on the next flight out. I consider this as an Israeli officer calls me into an interrogation room and asks me questions ranging from what classes I took last semester to what my parents do for a living.

He writes my answers down before sending me to another officer who shows me digital photos of people and asks me to identify them.

Among the photos is one of my 80-year-old great-grandmother. When she has had enough of my "lies," she sends me away. After more interrogations, my passport is returned to me and I am told to make this my "last trip to Israel."

This was not a trip to Israel, however; I am traveling to the Palestinian West Bank to attend Birzeit University for the summer.

Because Israel controls all Palestinian borders, nothing enters the West Bank without first obtaining Israeli permission: not food, not medicine, not fuel and not people wishing to study, visit family or invest in the Palestinian economy.

The U.S. State Department warns U.S. citizens of Arab descent traveling to the area that they may be "subjected to harsh and degrading treatment" at Israeli border crossings and that "occasionally" Americans "expressing sympathy with the Palestinian cause" or seeking to enter the area are denied entry.

Palestinian Americans permitted to cross Israel's border find that the rights we hold dear in the United States are stripped from us. We are treated under the same system of discrimination and segregation that Palestinians living in the occupied territories are subjected to: a system of walls, separate roads, checkpoints and deprivations.

Still, U.S. citizens fare better than Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, who may be tortured or manhandled at the border, like journalist Mohammad Omer who had to be hospitalized recently after he tried to return home from a trip abroad to receive an award.

Why doesn't the United States -- which supports Israel with more than $3 billion of aid annually -- demand the same treatment for its citizens that Israeli Jews receive when they arrive at a U.S. border? It doesn't seem to be too much to ask for all Americans to be treated the same by Israel no matter what our foreign policy may be.

Celia Hassan is a sophomore at Reed College. She is attending the International Summer Program at Birzeit University in the Palestinian West Bank.

Related: Unwelcome in Israel, Aref Assaf