Palestinians seek right to live, die in occupied homeland

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Ramallah – Ma’an – Ali is terminally ill; his doctors have given him about two years to live. Israel refused to give him a visa for even one.

Too weak to push himself, others helped the wheelchair-bound, 75-year-old Palestinian man enter a municipal office building near Ramallah last week.

"All I am asking is to be buried in Palestine; that’s all I want," he explained, lost in the bureaucracy of permit applications and special-permission forms at the municipality.

Two coordinators from Right to Enter, an immigrants’ and returnees’ rights campaign, agreed to help the dying man remain in Palestine. They also asked Ma’an not to reveal his real name or nationality as his latest appeal is being processed.

At the Al-Bireh Municipality building, coordinators met with Ali, along with more than 40 other Palestinians with foreign passports. Experts in immigration procedures were on hand to help each person on an individual basis.

The group holds weekly information sessions at Birzeit University, as well. Each week, dozens of Palestinian foreign-passport holders seek advice on obtaining legitimate residency status in the West Bank. Others call in or fax questions, too afraid of being caught at checkpoints on the way and deported.

Although Ali was born in Palestine years before the state of Israel had even been established, he lived in Europe for several years. When he was diagnosed with an incurable illness, Ali decided to return to his homeland to die.

"Because in Europe, a dead person with no living relatives is cremated. But I’m Muslim, and this is against my traditions. I just want to die in Palestine so I can have a real burial," he insisted.

But when Ali arrived at the border crossing from Jordan, Israeli officials told him that as a citizen of [an EU country], he was only eligible for a 90-day tourist visa, regardless that he was born and raised in what is now a West Bank city.

For three months, he was ’legal’ in his own country. His visa has long since expired but Ali remains in Palestine, hoping the Israeli Interior Ministry might sympathize with his plight. So far, it has not.

He needs a 27-month visa extension, the maximum length permitted to anyone with a foreign passport—from tourists to foreign doctors to indigenous Palestinians.

"I’m not a threat to anyone; I won’t even live for another 27 months. I ask only for them to let me die here, but they still refuse," he told Right to Enter organizers. The group hopes to help him appeal Israel’s decision, although one official later noted that Ali might be dead by the time he wins.

"His case is heartbreaking, but it is not by any means unique," coordinator Rasha Mukbil told Ma’an. She heads Right to Enter, which maintains a database of visa and residency refusals. Entry denials range in age from two to 80 years old.

A ’Deliberate’ Policy

Palestine’s borders, the internationally recognized borders of the future Palestinian state, are entirely controlled by Israel.

This has been the case since 1967, the year Israel preemptively attacked Jordan and Egypt, occupying the western bank of the Jordan River, as well as the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights and (until 1974) the Sinai Peninsula.

As is typical of any military occupation, Israel handles security and immigration procedures at Palestine’s multiple crossing points, though only one actually accepts Palestinian travelers. To enter the West Bank, Palestinians cross over the Jordan River via the Allenby Bridge, which is overseen by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

COGAT also sizes up tourists and foreign workers for security concerns, issuing visas and, increasingly, entry denials. Within the last 24 months, in fact, the number of would-be visitors refused entry grew 61%, according to the Israeli Interior Ministry’s Population Administration.

Right to Enter Coordinator Rasha Mukbil told Ma’an that Israel has become "increasingly reluctant" to grant visas to travelers en route to Palestine in recent years.

"While we cannot know for sure just how many people are denied [entry into Palestine] each day, our case file indicates that Israel’s policy is deliberate," Mukbil said.

The hardest hit are Palestinians who hold foreign passports. Israeli law dictates that once a Palestinian leaves the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem for two years or more, that person is no longer considered a ’citizen’ of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Those Palestinians, many of whom have obtained residency or citizenship elsewhere, have for years relied on a system of continuously renewing three-month tourist visas, a costly and time-consuming process.

"But people have dealt with this; we’ve seen cases of individuals entering and leaving the West Bank on tourist visas for years at a time," Mukbil said.

And although she admits that such a process is "obviously absurd, the fact is that it used to work—until January 2006," when Hamas won a 40% plurality in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Suddenly, Israel all but stopped allowing—or turning a blind eye to—individuals living on tourist visas, "literally stranding people outside the country they were born in, raised in, have families in, you name it," Mukbil said.

According to COGAT, the 1995 "Entry to Israel Law" grants Interior Ministry officials “extensive powers to prevent foreigners from entering the country.”

"For two or three years we didn’t pay much attention to this law," a ministry spokesperson Sabbine Haddad told the BBC.

"But now we’re enforcing it," she said, apparently in reference to the 2006 Hamas victory.

A ’Demographic’ Factor

Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), called the new enforcement "an unjust and stupid policy."

"Israel is cutting off its nose to spite its face because the majority of these people are not Hamas supporters," he said.

Baskin added that those affected are "middle-class Palestinians that Israel should want to do business with—investors, teachers, professors. It makes no sense."

But some Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups say that the upswing in denials and deportations of Palestinians has little to do with politics and everything to do with land.

Right to Enter’s Rasha Mukbil told Ma’an that the Hamas elections did not provide Israel a reason to escalate denials, but rather an excuse: "First of all, Israel doesn’t want us here. We stand in the way of settlement expansion and we own land that new Jewish immigrants want to live on," she said.

According to her, "It is when [Israel] discovers that a Palestinian holds a foreign passport, suddenly there is this supposedly legitimate pretext for kicking the person out."

"Obviously, it’s not actually legitimate, but it is used," she said.

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem said Mukbil’s premise is essentially correct. The group’s research director Yehezkiel Lien said many people assume Israel’s policy is some sort of punishment or pressure placed on the Palestinian Authority (PA), but the true catalyst is the "demographic consideration," he said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.

A ’Deportation’ System

B’Tselem claims that the most effective instrument of Israel’s policy of land seizure is its unwillingness to allow Palestinians living abroad to move back to their families in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

From 2000 until October 2007, more than 120,000 family reunification applications were submitted for Israeli approval. During that same eight-year period, Israel did not process even one.

B’Tselem estimates that Israel’s near-decade freeze on requests "splits tens of thousands of Palestinian families." In effect, "the policy amounts to deportation."

Even when an entire family lives in the West Bank, "it takes just one denial or deportation of a son or daughter to force the entire family unit to leave; they have no other choice," according to another Right to Enter campaign official. She too asked to remain anonymous due to her status as an ’illegal resident’ in Ramallah since January.

"I myself am one of these cases," having moved back to Palestine after a 17-year stay in the United States, she said.

"When I applied for residency, they said ’no,’ told me I’m American only—not Palestinian," Basima told Ma’an. The campaign is trying to help her remain in the West Bank through repeated applications for family reunification. Her first few attempts have failed and she is awaiting word on a recent appeal.

Speaking with a heavy Arabic accent, Basima told Ma’an that after her husband passed away, she returned to Palestine to move in with her sister.

"Unbelievably, the fact that I’m ’not married’ was their justification for rejecting me the first time. I’m a widow for God’s sake; where on earth are you treated worse for being a widow? Only here, I promise you," Basima insisted.

A ’Long-term Solution’

Basima is in good company: the Right to Enter campaign’s research indicates that "the overwhelming majority" of rejected applicants hold US passports. And American officials have reacted to the evidence piled against Israel, partly in response to demands from American citizens, themselves.

"As treaty obligations require, American citizens of all backgrounds traveling to Israel and the oPt (occupied Palestinian territories) are entitled to the same treatment that Israeli citizens receive [in America]," the president of the Washington-based Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, James Zogby, wrote in a letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"This is not a matter for negotiation, nor should it be seen as part of the broader issue of a Middle East peace process; this is about our right to be treated as fully protected American citizens," Zogby insisted.

For her part, Secretary Rice pledged in 2006 at an address to members of the American Task Force on Palestine "to ensure that Americans receive fair and equal treatment," insisting she would "do everything in [her] power" to resolve the problem.

But American officials in Jerusalem have long been aware of the treatment its citizens are subjected to at airport and border crossings. Israel’s denial-of-entry policy has expanded such that the US Consulate’s website now prominently displays a printable form to document abuses at points of entry.

State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said that "there are more than a handful of these cases, and it’s something that has got our attention."

It is something that has Israel’s attention, as well, according to a furious, high-level official quoted in a recent article by Ha’aretz correspondent Barak Ravid.

US Consul Jacob Wallace’s refusal to drop the issue "is really inflaming the atmosphere, causing public-relations damage to Israel and may even damage our relations with the US," the official reportedly said.

His outburst was in response to an official diplomatic protest by the American Embassy in Tel Aviv regarding Israel’s "new and deliberate policy that amounts to discrimination against American citizens," the Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported.

But the official’s recent statements are not the only sign that mounting international pressure is changing Israeli policy: "In response to requests from foreign missions," Israel’s Consular Affairs Bureau chief Yigal T’zarfati finally clarified Israel’s transit policy into the occupied territories.

In a letter to the US and European Union’s consulates, T’zarfati tried to diffuse the situation, while urging foreign missions to "demonstrate respect and understanding for the arrangements that this situation unfortunately requires."

In a major departure from previous years’ policy, T’zarfati added that "foreign citizens whose passports were stamped ’Last Permit’ in recent months may nonetheless leave the West Bank and submit a new visa request."

Back in Ramallah, Right to Enter’s Rasha Mukbil applauded the United States’ willingness to stand up to the policy: "This is a great thing. At least one consulate is paying attention to the problem."

"But our goal is not merely to help every denied person on a case-by-case basis," she explained.

"Israel’s policy isn’t just an inconvenience," she added. "We have a man stuck in a small village due to a checkpoint, another who hasn’t left his home in 13 years, wives separated from husbands, people who live just kilometers from their families in Jordan—but haven’t seen them in decades," she said.

Mukbil insisted that "it is for these (people) that we are pursuing an immediate, long-term solution to Israel’s deportation practices."

The Ramallah-based Right to Enter movement is a grassroots campaign for the protection of foreign-passport holders residing in or visiting the occupied Palestinian territories. It was founded at Birzeit University’s Center for Continuing Education in 2006, the same year that Israeli border police refused entry to over half of the university’s faculty.
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On the Net: Right to Enter site: http://www.righttoenter.ps

***The author is an American citizen. He lives in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.