Palestinians at the mercy of Israel as they try to live in Palestine. See Update below

Aref Assaf,

September 30, 2006

I returned recently from an extended visit to the Middle East. Only in Israel was I, an American citizen, most unwelcome, and I was treated like a pariah, an ugly American. The inhospitable treatment we received at the hands of the Israeli border patrol and the suffocating restrictions on our movements are part of a repressive official Israeli policy to stifle the Palestinian economy and further isolate the Palestinians from the outside world. Israel is now fully engaged in breaking up families, excluding  non-Palestinians from working in schools, universities and non-governmental organizations, and preventing tourists from visiting the occupied areas. These restrictions affect more than returning Palestinians and the casual tourists. They will have serious impact upon the close to 50,000 American citizens who have no Israeli ID cards but have lived in the West Bank at various times since 1967. Since Israel would not issue them visas, they are subject to being prevented from ever returning to their families should they leave the country.

Israel’s discrimination against Americans of Arab descent has yet to excite the ambivalent American media. The State Department and the American Embassy in Israel have long known about this little secret. Our government appears to have succumbed to seeing matters only though Israel's prism. The lame excuse, literally accepted by our government, is that Israel has the right to deny visas to anyone it so chooses. Imagine, God forbid, if Egypt or Jordan treated American Jews visiting these countries in the same fashion! Our argument is not whether Israel has the final say on who should cross its borders but the discriminatory practices against Palestinian and Arab Americans in particular. Frankly, I have no desire to visit Israel but there is no way for me to visit my parents in Palestine without Israel's approval.

I recall that in 1985, after having finished my postgraduate studies and having secured a teaching position at a university in the West Bank, Israel refused to reissue my identity card (issued by the Israeli Army) simply because I was late by one month to return to the West Bank. Without an ID card, I could not  live or work in the West Bank. That fateful decision suddenly made me a persona non grata in my own homeland. Its implications have been enormously unbearable for I was unable to return to see my parent for several years. It forced me  to seek residency and citizenship in the United States despite untiring efforts by so many people and agencies to regain my ID card.

Now I can only visit my homeland as a tourist and not as a native son. My story is not an anomaly. This fate has befallen tens of thousands of Palestinians who can no longer live “legally” in their homelands. The painful irony of this is that I have to obtain a tourist visa to visit my homeland. Moreover, my American citizenship elicits no respect from the one country to which we annually give  over 4 billions in economic and military aid.

It is morally reprehensible that Palestinians, born and raised in Palestine or who can trace their ancestry to many generations before Israel was established on the ruins of Palestinian villages in 1948 are denied entry--let alone permanent stay in his or her homeland--while Russian Jews or tribal people from India or the Amazon are not only welcome to live in Israel but are extended every economic and human incentive to stay. Now, every time I return to visit my elderly parents and family in the West Bank, I have to dexterously reply to certain answers posed by their interrogating officers to ensure my entry. After hours of deliberately repetitious and humiliating questions by well-trained intelligence officers, and after being searched several times, solicitously pondering my fate, they would "welcome me to Israel,” to which I always respond quite viscerally, that I am not a visitor but a proud son of Palestine, my homeland.

The racist policy of depopulating Palestinian lands has been a cornerstone plan of Israel since 1967 and even much earlier. In fact, emptying Palestine off its indigenous Palestinian Arabs has been the both the strategy and ultimately the chosen policy to realize the fallacy of "people without land for a land without people."  One recalls with total disbelief former Israel Prime Minster, Golda Meier, who in 1969 said, “‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.' (The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969). History is replete with systematic pogroms to expel thousands off their ancestral lands, deny family reunifications, or disallow temporary visits by Palestinians.

Even after the creation of the 1993 Oslo Accords-mandated Palestinian Authority, Israel continued its omnipotent grip on the borders because it alone has the final say on movement of people and goods from and into the Palestinian areas. As Zahi Khouri recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “We do not know the reason for denying entry to Palestinian Americans. But we do know the result. In addition to breaking families apart ....,  it is discouraging investors. It is driving out the very people the U.S. State Department, the World Bank and other international organizations encouraged to return. We are the ones building businesses, creating jobs and inspiring hope for a better future.” By keeping Western educated and industrious Palestinians out, Israel’s pernicious plan seeks to undermine the creation of a viable and modern Palestinian society. This policy is inimical to peace prospects between Arabs and Israelis and will continue to destabilize the entire volatile Middle East- a region so critical to American economic and long-range strategic objectives.

True, many Arab American organizations have raised the issue of visa restrictions with the US Government. No change of Israel’s repugnant policy ever resulted, however. In fact, since the election of Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority, Israel has significantly reduced the number of visas issued to Arab Americans visiting Israel/Palestine. Stories abound about visitors arriving into Israel only to be held up for long hours of meaningless interrogations and without the benefit of seeking help from the American Embassy- after which they would be put up on a plane back to the US and told not to return.  To what extent our government encourages this maltreatment of its citizens is unknown. But it calls into question how some citizens can be systematically mistreated by a foreign country, let alone a so-called, ally, without a public or official outcry.

At a recent Candidates' Forum in NJ, I raised the question of the Israel’s treatment with the Democratic challenger to Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ). I asked if he would introduce legislation requiring Israel to treat  visiting American citizens equally, to which he so cavalierly replied that he could not comment on the issue because he has no knowledge of it actually occurring!

For most people in New Jersey, this year’s Senatorial elections will be a choice of the lesser evil of the two contenders. I have not decided whom to vote for yet. The Arab and Muslim community in NJ, their pressing issues relegated and their clout significantly undermined by factional strife, will have the daunting task of casting their vote for either of the two candidates. Israel's maltreatment of visiting American citizens ought to be a portentous matter and this travesty must be raised with all the candidates running for public office and seeking our vote and our money. 
Equal and respectful treatment of American citizens- all of us- ought to be sacrosanct. For what is America worth, if it does not protect its citizens.
Aref Assaf, President, American Arab Forum, Paterson, NJ.

Related articles

Update:

U.S. Consul concerned about Israeli refusals to issue visas
IMEMC - The U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Jake Walles expressed concern about the continuous Israeli denial of entry to several internationals including, Americans, and Palestinian Americans. (...) The Consulate has developed a form for U.S. citizens to register their treatment at Israeli border crossings and to document these cases of denial of entry. In addition, the Consulate and Embassy provided hotlines for those experiencing difficulties at Israeli ports of entry including Ben Gurion Airport and the Allenby Bridge.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=16554 

The American Arab Forum strongly encouraged Arab Americans who have encountered problems or been turned away when entering Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to report details to the State Department.  Those who have been affected by Israel’s recently implemented visa policy are urged to fill out the a consular form titled “Refusal of Entry Information Sheet,” which is available through American Citizen Services at the office of the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem. Completed forms can be e-mailed to jerusalemvisa@state.gov

 Israel restricts ‘foreign’ Palestinians
Charmaine Seitz-aljazeera.net-"Israeli human rights workers say the tightening of visa rules is an additional form of pressure on the Palestinian government. But Yehezkiel Lien, research director of ... B`Tselem says Israel`s main reason for freezing Palestinian residency petitions is the "demographic consideration" or the desire to maintain a Jewish majority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River." "
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=16549