To view original article, published in Haaretz on the 28th June, click here
The government’s decision last week to extend the validity of the Citizenship Law (Temporary Order), for another year, is evidence that the legal barriers preventing severe discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens and harm to their civil rights have been removed.
This extension is the eighth since the law was first passed in 2003, and it shows just how naive Justice Edmond Levy’s position was when he refused to join in the 2006 decision by five judges from the High Court of Justice, who stated that the law was unconstitutional, that it contravened the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom, and that it must be removed from the law books. Levy explained his refusal by saying that he saw no need to intervene because only two months remained until the law expired. However, at the end of the two months, the law was extended by a year, and now they want to extend it for yet another year.
Had Levy known that the law’s limited validity was nothing but a deception aimed at preparing a discriminatory and unconstitutional law, there is no doubt he would have joined the five justices’ majority opinion that it was unconstitutional and should be removed. We must hope that the High Court of Justice, when it rules on the new petition submitted against the law after it was extended in 2006, will take into account that the term “temporary provision,” which both the government and Knesset take pains to stress, is a deception. We are talking about, in effect, a permanent law.
The law stipulates that the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for a resident of Judea and Samaria (unless, of course, they are Jews – that is, settlers). This is so even regarding family reunions, meaning marriage, when it comes to Palestinian spouses who are younger than 35 (for men) or 25 (for women). In effect, the law prevents young Israeli citizens from marrying the spouse of their choice and living with this spouse in Israel, if the spouse is a Palestinian from Judea and Samaria.
It is obvious that this has barely any effect on the right of young Israeli Jews to live in their country with the spouse of their choice, because there are hardly any marriages between Israeli Jews and Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. On the other hand, these Palestinians constitute Israeli Arabs’ natural pool for choosing a spouse. For this reason, the law severely discriminates when comparing the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab citizens.
When the law was first passed in 2003, supposedly as a temporary one-year measure, it was accompanied by security reasoning – the risk of implanting terrorists in Israel via marriage. The reasoning was faulty even at that time: Every Palestinian who wishes to enter Israel must be addressed individually. It is the Shin Bet security service’s task to do this and thus carry out its mission – protecting the security of Israel’s citizens such that the country remains democratic, with equal rights for all. However, as the years go by, it becomes clear that the security argument and the term “temporary measure” are merely a deception aimed at “koshering” discriminatory legislation for demographic reasons.
The claim that there are indications of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel. However, we do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly the kind of practice that leads to the use of such a term, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.
The government decided to add the Gaza Strip to the list of countries for which the interior minister does not have the prerogative to approve residence in Israel on the grounds of family reunions, regardless of age. Both the list and the new addition are superfluous and harmful. Since Hamas gained control, no one enters or leaves Gaza anyway, and the new restriction harms couples’ cases from the time when there was passage between Israel and Gaza. There is no need for this affront.
In order to highlight the impact of the siege and closure of the Gaza Strip on the civilian population, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is publishing a series of “Narratives Under Siege” on the PCHR website. These short articles are based on personal testimonies and experiences of life in the Gaza Strip, and look to highlight the restrictions, and violations, being imposed on the civilians of Gaza.
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Narratives Under Siege: Swimming in Sewage
“I think the sea probably is polluted. Sometimes I get strange white marks on my skin; but we come down to the beach every day because we have nowhere else to go.” Samer and his friends are hanging out on the beach in Gaza city, next to the old fishing harbour, and just about to jump into the sea. One of the boys holds a plastic bottle with several small fish and a tiny crab trapped inside. The fish are all dead. Less than a hundred metres away, a sewage pipe pours mucky water into streams of dark waste that flows towards the sea where Samer and his friends swim.
Summer is intensely hot in the Gaza Strip, and families flock to their local beaches en masse. But on some beaches, bathers are now, literally, swimming in sewage. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since January this year, 50- 60 million litres of untreated and partially treated sewage have been poured into the Mediterranean Sea surrounding the Gaza Strip every day. “This sewage cannot be treated due to the lack of a steady electricity supply within the Gaza Strip” says a recent OCHA report on Gaza sanitation. Hamada Al-Bayari works for the Gaza OCHA office. “We’re very concerned that the sea is becoming dirtier and more contaminated because of the chronic shortages of fuel and spare parts” he says. “Gaza’s sewage treatment plants urgently need fourteen days of uninterrupted power in order to run a proper sewage treatment cycle, for the sake of Gaza’s public health.”
The Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility (CMWU) is responsible for providing drinking water across the Gaza Strip as well as managing Gaza’s three sewage treatment plants. Due to ongoing chronic shortages of electricity, fuel and essential spare parts, unfiltered tap water is saline and undrinkable throughout the Gaza Strip, and none of the sewage treatment plants are functioning normally. CMWU have recently been forced to increase the volume of raw and untreated sewage being dumped at sea to around 77 million litres per day, to avoid flooding densely populated residential areas, like Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where 3 million litres of raw sewage recently had to be pumped into a flood water lagoon. Despite last week’s signing of the Tahdiya, or ‘Calming’ between Israel and Hamas, normal fuel supplies have not been resumed, and CMWU has less than a third of the fuel it needs to run a full sewage and waste water treatment service in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel has severely restricted the entry of essential spare parts for Gaza’s sewage and waste water treatment plants since July 2007.
There is now widespread concern about the state of the Gaza Strip Mediterranean Sea. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently took samples from 30 Gaza Strip sea shore sites, and tested them for human faecal and animal faecal contaminants. Thirteen areas covering seven beaches along the Strip, were identified as polluted and unsuitable for swimming, including three beaches along the central and southern Gaza Strip and four beaches in and around Gaza city. The beach next to Gaza harbour where Samer and his friends swim every day, is one of them.
WHO has warned that, “Waterborne outbreaks are particularly to be avoided because of their capacity to result in the simultaneous infection of a high proportion of [the] community.” These outbreaks can include gastroenteritis, ear infections, dermatitis, dysentery, respiratory and urinary tract infections, eye infections, guardia and strains of e-coli. WHO health guidelines suggest that water borne pathogens are one of the world-wide causes of death and disease, and like OCHA, the organization has reiterated that Gaza’s sewage treatment plants urgently need upgrading, and need more fuel.
“These restrictions are a clear violation of the universal right to health and the right to a clean environment” says Khalil Shaheen, Head of the Economic and Social Rights Unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). “Under international humanitarian law, Israel, as an occupying power, is obliged to facilitate access to all amenities. Access to clean drinking water and sea water are nothing more than basic human rights.”
This recent research on the quality of Gaza’s seawater does not suggest any immanent deadly threat to public health: but the fact remains that Gaza’s sea is dirty and contaminated because the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) are denying Gazans the means to clean up their own sewage, and no-one yet knows how serious the health risks are. Collective punishment of a civilian population violates international humanitarian law, but Israel is blatantly continuing its violations, and now Gaza’s tap water is undrinkable, and its sea water increasingly unfit to swim in. The June 19 Tahdiya was signed in order to cease hostilities between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and eventually end the siege of Gaza. But to date, the crossings remain closed, and Gaza’s most basic amenities, like its sanitation services, are literally being stretched to breaking point.
I never anticipated these problems. I asked so many people, so many questions. When I entered Israel I thought I might be questioned because of my name but not what ended up happening. When I approached the non-Israel passport stand, the woman asked me my father’s name, probably because I was born in Iran that questions started coming. When I said Mohammad Reza I was pretty sure I would be questioned further. She asked me my grandfather’s name, I didn’t know, I didn’t have relations with him. She told me to stand on the side of the counter. I waited. Then I was taken to an office to be questioned. They asked me why I was coming there, where I was coming from, what I was doing there, who I knew here, how I knew them, did I have family here, what I studied, where I studied, my contact info, my friends’ contact info. Then I was asked to wait in this room. I was then questioned again, this time more aggressively. The woman again asked me the same questions, asked me about my flights, then she saw my papers, some of my papers were about volunteering in Nablus. The woman accused me of lying, saying I wanted to volunteer instead of sight see or visit friends. She wanted me to log into my email so she could go through it because she didn’t believe me and said since I emailed my friend that she wanted to see. I refused, saying I couldn’t “as an American.” This meant nothing here.
You mean nothing here. This was then followed by her taking my papers then me waiting more. Then I was taken to find my bag, they then went through all my things, x-rayed them, wiped them down for explosives, everything. They kept questioning me, the same questions, different people. Emptied my bags, excavated them. I was padded down, or frisked as well. They also x-rayed my jacket and shoes. Then after this humiliation I was made to wait again. I was told I wasn’t getting into Israel. I asked them why and the woman said that I lied, when I asked what I lied about she just told me to sit in the room. There’s a high arrogance about them. As if I was being let into the Garden of Eden or something. They are also extremely ignorant. For people with such official positions, I feel they barely had a high school degree. The women at the passport counters just looked like housewives. It is like a military state, where everyone has to run it, with no training except to intimidate and be aggressive. My mistake is to assume good, being naïve, being honest and open.
They fingerprinted me and photographed me at the airport. My other friend that I met in the cell didn’t let them do that, I wish I hadn’t either. But what did I know? I don’t think I’ll be allowed in ever now.
After waiting a long period we were taken to Tel Aviv immigration. I say we because there was also two girls from the U.S. that were Palestinian that weren’t being let in and a tourist girl from Germany. During this time they really told us nothing, one of the American-Palestinian girls asked where we were going, that is how we found out we were going to Tel Aviv Immigration. It was supposedly still on the grounds of the Ben Gurion Airport. The German girl didn’t want to go in because she knew they were going to lock us up. I was more naïve, thinking we were going to just get searched again and get released back to the airport. I wasn’t expecting what happened. Fortunately for the Am-Pal girls their mother had called the airport and the place where we were and they were able to speak with her and were going to be flown out that day to London. They would send you back to where you flew to Tel Aviv from not where you came from, unless you were a migrant worker, apparently. We were made to put our bags in a room and we couldn’t take any pens, cameras, glass objects, or our phones with us. At this point I still didn’t understand, I was too naïve. They put us in a cell. I thought we would just have to wait at the most that day for our flights. By the way my flight landed at 5am on the 17th. I was interrogated for around 7 hours at the airport until I was taken to Tel Aviv immigration around 1pm. After the Am-Pal girls left I inquired about when my flight was. The guard told me I was to leave on the 20th. At this point I completely broke down because I did not want to be there for 3 days. By the way I thought it was the 16th because that is when I flew out, I forgot I had landed the next day, so I thought it was four days. I was a little relieved to find out later it was a day less but it didn’t make much difference. The reason why I had to stay till the 20th was because they were only going to fly me back to the same city I came from on the same exact airline. Earlier flights were apparently booked. I asked them what about my rights; they didn’t allow me to contact the US embassy or my mom. The woman said that I was arrested (even though I wasn’t), not saying for what and I didn’t have rights because I never entered Israel (I was still at the airport). It is quite strange being in that position, as this is stuff I have studied. To be living it is another thing. I said what about international law and I know people at the UN, she said go ahead and contact them if I wanted. She grabbed my arm and screamed to “put her back in her cell.”
No one knew where I was. They knew I was supposed to be en route to Palestine. Some hopefully knew I had been detained. I texted some friends and my mom at the airport during my interrogation.
I had never felt so invisible, powerless and worthless, and so much hate.
I was never told why I was there, no one told me anything. I never felt so alone.
They treated us like criminals. Most or all don’t seem educated past secondary school.
If we complained about our conditions they would scream at us. The cell was dirty, the blankets they gave us were old, and nothing was cleaned. They barely took out the trash. When someone complained about the dirty cell the “big boss,” as they called him, started screaming at the woman and threw the broom and dust pan into the room and told her to clean it. There was a cleaning lady but she didn’t really clean well and made the room dirtier. She was also yelled at. He said that he cleaned his office so we should clean up after ourselves. There was some kind of attitude that we were in some kind of hotel. Even one girl was told she was being taken to a “mini-hotel,” another Am-Pal girl that came the night after the earlier ones left. Every night new people would come, 3-5 women. The room had 6 beds but often there would be 7 of us. It was a room of maybe 8×10, there was a bathroom and two showers. The bathroom looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for a long time. There was little air circulation. There was a window but the way the building was made no breeze came in and it had two layers of “bars” that also impeded air circulation. They would put on the air conditioning at night, not during the day, and it would get so cold, like almost 50ºF, and caused us to get sick. I started getting sick, wanting to vomit, probably because of the stress, the conditions. The only time we were able to leave the cell was to smoke a cigarette, which would be at the most three times a day. No exercise, fresh air or sunshine. And we would just stand in the hallway in front of the cell, in front of open windows to smoke the cigarettes. I would just pretend to smoke just to leave the cell. The floor was dirty, the blankets and this thin mattress cover were old. They didn’t change these things, and with people coming in and out from different countries who knows what was in the blankets. Sick people, bacteria. They gave some a toothbrush. This is about all we got.
The cells were mostly filled with migrant workers, with a few Palestinians who were trying to get to Palestine (who were coming from elsewhere). The migrant workers had come on different visas and would just overstay their time. There were women from the Philippines, Georgia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Nepal etc. They were all shocked when I told them I was American and just a tourist. They wondered why I was there. A lot of the migrant workers would be sent to jail, or Ramle, before they came to the immigration detention center. A woman from Nepal stayed in Ramle for 6 months just because she was waiting to get paid by her employer, then she came to the detention center to get deported. She didn’t want to leave. I doubt there are any inquiries as to what situation these people are deported back to, if their lives are at risk, from torture, etc. According to the migrant workers it appeared that Ramle was better than the detention center, as they had a small garden, and were allowed to walk around, and had better food.
A Filipino woman said: “This place makes you crazy. You’ll see. They tell you that you will leave tomorrow, then two more days, then more. You go crazy in here.” I probably would have gone crazy if I stayed any longer than I did.
They barely gave us water. They told us to drink from the tap when it didn’t seem drinkable; it tasted like paint or something. They had intense lighting in the room. Three large circular lights on the ceiling, that were probably 1-1.5 feet in diameter, with a high intensity, almost as a fog light, and then by each bed there was a large light, the shape of a football, attached to the wall, twice as big as a football, also with a high intensity. They would leave these lights on into the night to maybe midnight or 2am, and sometimes during the day. They would also sometimes turn them on further in the middle of the night when they were bringing in new people. When I asked for a bandaid for a sore I had on my foot they gave me some tape and gauze that wasn’t even packaged.
There was a consistent idea that we were in some kind of free hotel. One guard even said the cleaning was room service, even though my cellmate and I decided to clean just so we could have our door open and wait outside when the mopping was dry. When I asked if we could go outside to get sun I had to tap on the small window on the door and he said to stop tapping because it made him crazy, then yelled at me to open the window then walked away. We couldn’t leave the windows open at night because of mosquitos. I have bites all over my body from them though, and maybe other bugs. The worst is that they didn’t let us call anyone. No one knew we were there. The woman from the embassy was of no help, Eve Zukerman. My mom had called and emailed her because she received my text and didn’t hear from me. All she would tell me was what Israel had the right to do; she didn’t even help me speak to my mom. Although I told Eve what I was going through she said couldn’t do anything besides look up flights, confirming that I had to leave on the 20th and stated that I had to go to Barcelona on the same airline because that was the policy in Israel.
I couldn’t sleep because of lack of ventilation, unsanitary conditions. Whenever I put on the thick blankets they gave us, thick blankets for winter but given to us in the summer, I felt things crawling on my body and biting me. I couldn’t eat because of depression and the circumstances. I had no appetite even though I was hungry. I would eat maybe once or twice a day. I ate just so the hunger pains wouldn’t hurt as much. I saw about 18 people come and go because 6 new people would arrive every day and about the same number would leave that day. Some people were very depressing to be around. One lady wouldn’t stop complaining, all day and all night. It was increasing my stress. They would constantly yell at us. Screaming at everyone.
When I asked to get a change of clothes because I couldn’t keep wearing my shirt and jeans after two days, I couldn’t sleep, the guard said, “this is not perfection” in terms of the conditions. Later I was allowed to get a change of clothes, this is when I smuggled my phone in my jacket sleeve back to my room, because they searched the things that we took from the bags. I then texted my mom and friend again, so they knew what was going on and could contact people if they kept me there longer. I also used my phone to take pictures. They have cameras in the room, I don’t know how they didn’t catch me, maybe because I was really discreet.
Other cells had tvs but for some reason ours didn’t. Most of the people there were men. I think there were about 10 cells occupied. They would sometimes pack the cells with people. It made it hotter and loud.
I made some ‘friends’ in this experience though, as I met an American-Palestinian girl who I got along with well and she being there made the time go by faster. Also she developed a good rapport with the guards and whatnot, even the “big boss” which was good to be attached to. She was let into Israel though before I left so I was pretty much alone the last night. Every day and night people came but they usually left quickly. I also met a Columbian-Palestinian who was staying there fore weeks for his court day. He wanted to enter Palestine because all his family was there.
When they took me to my flight to Barcelona neither men appeared to be very educated. The driver, who turned out to be a policeman escorted me onto the plane, then handed my passport to the male cabin crewmember and just said “deport.” He was very ignorant and barely knew any English. He said who are you, and the guy said policeman, and he asked for id. The cabin crew person gave my passport to the captain, which furthered my treatment as if I was a criminal. Insult to injury. The cabin crewmember said he didn’t know what to do because he wasn’t given a letter and this had never happened before. It was all new to him, according to him.
The Israelis had a strong arrogance about their state; they acted like I wanted to stay. I am haunted by any Jewish symbolism and traumatized by these events. Who will compensate me for all the money I spent going home and getting there. I have spent basically $1,000 on this nightmare. Three days of my life have been taken away from me. How am I supposed to be compensated? Who will compensate me? No one should have to go through this, be treated like this. Not only did I pay around $600 for my ticket to Tel Aviv but also 247 euros to change my ticket as they only flew me back to Barcelona.
I was treated like an animal. Put in a cage, yelled at, not allowed out, not allowed to call anyone. They are the animals. Surrounded by such stupid people. They were like people off the street made policemen, made to guard immigrants. They treat the migrant workers like slaves, like dirt. To lock someone up like that.
I’ll never travel alone again. I used to feel free to travel alone, and comfortable. I’ve done a lot of traveling by myself, even in Iran.
When I gave my passport to the woman at the airport I should have known. What a sick state. Illegal, built on blood and conducting genocide, acting with impunity. It is sick.
After being back and speaking to my friends and my mom I found out even more sick information. When my mom or my friend in Palestine would call any Israeli authority they would not tell them where I was or that I was even there. They told my friend in Palestine that I was not even there and they told my mom that I was no longer being detained. This makes me even sicker.
Boaz Okon is a prominent jurist, was a judge on the Jerusalem District Court and registrar of the Supreme Court, and since his resignation in 2006 is the juridical commentator of Yediot Aharonot. The following article appeared not only on the op-ed page, but also with a box, containing a summary, placed conspicuously on the paper’s front page – which is quite exceptional. Exceptional in the opposite direction is the fact that this article, unlike many others of Okon’s, was not included in the Y-net website nor translated to English. This I have decided to do myself.
Adam Keller
Box on Page 1 – entitled “Don’t travel on Route 443”
There are acts for which in retrospect we would not be able to forgive ourselves. Moments for which we would ask ourselves how we could have been so stupid.
Our Supreme Court is approaching such a moment. On its desk is the appeal against the decision of the Defense Minster to block to Palestinian traffic the part of Route 443 which goes through the West Bank, and allowing passage to Israelis only. The Defense Minster gave the order to create a network of alternative roads for the Palestinians, which came to be knows as the “Fabric of Life Roads”. Which means: in the 1980’s, a narrow village road was widened into a full-fledged inter-city highway, the present Route 443. In order to achieve that, the land of Palestinian villagers was confiscated; now, these villagers are forbidden to use that route, and face new confiscation of lands in order to have new routes, with a tempting and cynical names, created for their use.
Had words been capable of dying of shame, the words “Fabric of Life Roads” would have died long ago.
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Main article on the op-ed page – entitled “The Apartheid Road – Silence of the Judges”
There are acts for which in retrospect we would not be able to forgive ourselves. Moment for which we would ask ourselves how we could have been so stupid. In order to overcome our shame and confusion, we will try to find support in the claim that “things were different than” or that “that’s the way everybody was thinking at the time” or with arguments of national security.
Such moments come also for elected institutions, legislatures and governments, which in stormy situations, out of righteousness or security hysteria, are passing laws or defining policies which afterwards could not possibly be explained. This also happens to courts, when they abandon their fundamental duty to uproot any manifestations of racism.
Such a moment in the history of the US Supreme Court was, for example, the Dred Scott Case (1856). The court in this case decided that a Black person cannot be a citizen, since he belongs to an inferior race. Another such moment was the notorious ruling of Justice Holms (1927) approving a Virginia State law providing for the forced sterilization of retarded persons, since “Three generations of imbeciles are more than enough.”
Now, our Supreme Court is also approaching closer to such a shameful moment. On its desk is the appeal lodged by ACRI (Association for Civil Rights) and by Palestinian villagers against the decision of the Defense Minster to block to Palestinian traffic on the part of Route 443 which goes through the West Bank (Modi’in – Jerusalem), and allowing passage to Israelis only. The Defense Minster gave the order to create a network of alternative roads for the Palestinians, which came to be knows as the “Fabric of Life Roads”. All for reasons of security, of course.
Had words been capable of dying of shame, the words “Fabric of Life Roads” would have died long ago. In the 1980’s, a narrow village road was widened into a full-fledged inter-city highway, the present Route 443; in order to achieve that, the land of Palestinian villagers was confiscated; now, these villagers are forbidden to use that route, and face new confiscation of lands in order to have new routes, supposedly aimed at their own good, with a tempting and cynical names, created for their use.
“Security” has been used, more than any other word, to justify acts of infamy. This word is like a suitcase with a false bottom, outwardly carrying a legitimate interest and in fact carrying a negative, illegal load.
For the time being, the Supreme Court ruled on March 3, 2008 not to deal with this appeal at all, and asked the Defense Minster to provide within six months information on the progress in construction of the “Fabric of Life Roads”. This week, the court rejected a request by ACRI to hold a hearing on the subject anyway. In this way, the court in practice endorsed the decision of the Defense Minster, a decision which is leading us beyond the doorstep of Apartheid.
The rolling thunder of that decision is strong that no one can but hear it. The judicial backing of the Supreme Court serves as it powerful amplifier.
Sometimes, we prefer to become voluntarily blind, and rely on various bodies to take the decisions in our place. “It is a fact” we tell our conscience “that the judges have convened and took a decision, we are no longer personally responsible”. Such a silencing of the conscience has a tendency to develop into a chronic disease, which through continuing erosion becomes a habit of obscuring even the most heinous of deeds.
Of course, the Supreme Court will continue to express its shock at individual act of discrimination (“An Arab was no allowed into the water park”, “Ethiopians were not allowed to register their children at a Petach Tikva school”) but will shrug at a comprehensive official policy which is systematically criminal.
So, what can we do? It is not always possible to rely on mass decisions, on institutions, on courts. It is possible to travel to Jerusalem by Route 1 only. ACRI should distribute stickers with text “I don’t travel by Route 443” and all of us should avoid using this road until the evil decree is removed.
Harmeet Sooden, travelling on his Canadian passport, was forcibly deported from Israel on June 18th after being held incommunicado for 4 days in Israeli detention. Harmeet was refused entry into Israel after being told by airport officials that he was a ‘threat to the security of the State of Israel’. Harmeet, along with Tom Fox, Norman Kember, and fellow Canadian James Loney, was kidnapped in November 2005 and held in captivity for four months while working with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq. Tom Fox was executed by his kidnappers.
When asked about his experience attempting to enter Israel, Harmeet replied, “It dredged up some old feelings. I told them (honestly) that I had come to revisit Yad Vashem, visit historic sites and volunteer for the ISM [International Solidarity Movement]. They never disclosed the official reason for denying me entry”. ISM is a Palestinian-led movement committed to non-violent grassroots resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Harmeet arrived at Ben Gurion Airport early in the morning on June 14th. He was immediately questioned by airport authorities who informed him that he was to be denied entry to Israel and deported that very night. He was then transferred to the “Unit 9” detention facility. He was denied access to his lawyer. While passively resisting the first attempt to deport him, Harmeet was subjected to physical and verbal abuse, all the while maintaining that he be allowed to contact his lawyer. Some of the violence against him was conducted in front of a shocked flight crew. The pilot then refused to fly with Harmeet on-board. He was eventually deported without incident accompanied by two airline security officers and finally arrived in New Zealand on June 20th.
Harmeet now says he is contemplating making an official complaint to the Canadian Government for his treatment at the hands of the Israeli authorities.
Harmeet said this visit was of special significance to him. He wanted to thank the people of Palestine and Israel who appealed for his release during the hostage crisis by supporting the non-violent movement in Palestine.
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Number of people denied entry into Israel up 61 percent since 2005
To view original article, published in Haaretz on the 15th June, click here
The number of people who have been refused entry into Israel rose by 61 percent in two years, from 1,828 in 2005 to 2,941 in 2007, according to the Interior Ministry’s Population Administration.
The Central Bureau of Statistics, meanwhile, shows a rise in the number of entries into Israel during that period, but by a much smaller rate of only 19 percent – from 1.92 million entries to 2.29 million.
The Entry to Israel Law grants the Interior Minister extensive powers to prevent foreigners from entering the country. It does not require the minister to elaborate on the reason for the refusal, but it is assumed that most people refused entry were those the authorities feared would remain here illegally either to seek work or join family members from the former Soviet Union.
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It is also possible that some people were suspected of planning protests. During the second intifada, groups of human rights activists were turned away.
For example, in the summer of 2002, 300 people from Italy were planning to take part in a human chain in Jerusalem, but were denied entry. The first 40 were turned away at Ben-Gurion International Airport, and the rest chose not to come.
At the end of May, an American political science professor, Norman Finkelstein, was not allowed into the country, although he is Jewish and would be allowed in by the Law of Return. The Interior Ministry explained the decision by saying it had followed the instructions of the Shin Bet security service. Finkelstein, a harsh critic of Israel, had met in Lebanon with Hezbollah activists and visited the graves of members of the group.
Among other examples is a Filipino woman, Daisy Baril, who last December was denied entry and held for three weeks in detention. The authorities said they were concerned that Baril would stay in Israel because she was in a romantic relationship with an Israeli man.
At the end of 2005, six Turkish nationals arrived at the Haifa port hidden in a shipping container. They had intended to reach Italy, and each had paid between 1,000 and 1,500 euros to be smuggled there. Israel sent them back to Turkey.
