Israel Excludes Nonviolent Internationals Seeking to Protect Palestinians

By Katherine Metres Abbadi


Ann Petter in East Jerusalem—as close as she is allowed to approach Israel’s apartheid wall (photo by Paul Pierce).

WHEN AMERICAN peace and justice activist Ann Robinson Petter arrived at Israel’s Tel Aviv airport, she wasn’t expecting to be jailed by the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But after she presented her request for a visa at the airport, she was detained and questioned without being allowed to contact an attorney. Airport security, correctly assuming she had returned to volunteer again with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), moved to exclude her by sending her back to New York on the next plane.

Despite being threatened with force if she did not get on the plane, Petter asserted her right to legal process. While the Israeli judicial system considered her case, airport security held her in detention for 34 days, costing her $5,000 in unreimbursed legal fees and detention charges.

A 44-year-old graphic designer, Petter was barred from entry because of “secret evidence” that she and her lawyers never have been allowed to review. The grounds for her detention were “her guaranteed participation in hostile sabotage activity” and belonging to “a leftist organization.” A judge who handled her case called her camera a “weapon.”

The Israeli security apparatus had probably gotten her name when the army raided ISM offices in May 2003 and stole files related to the movement’s activities and volunteers. During her 2003 visit to Israel and the occupied territories, Petter had engaged in such subversive activities as taking pictures, talking to Palestinians in the destroyed Jenin refugee camp and elsewhere, seeking ways to support craftswomen with fair-trade agreements, and participating in nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s apartheid wall.

The judge who eventually ordered her released into Israel called the secret evidence against her “an embarrassment [to Israel].” Nonetheless, she mandated that Petter not enter the occupied territories (except East Jerusalem), be in any area of potential or actual confrontation with security forces, or approach the wall.

Internationals intending to visit the occupied territories always have faced increased scrutiny at borders controlled by Israel. Since 2002, however, Israel has begun to exclude any foreigner known to be associated with ISM, in addition to those associated with other institutions known to support Palestinians.

According to a July 12 ISM press release, “At least a dozen human rights advocates have been denied access to the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past month and turned back by Israeli authorities at Ben-Gurion [Tel Aviv] Airport in what the ISM is treating as a concerted effort by Israeli authorities to break the Freedom Summer Palestine 2004 campaign—a two-month campaign of active nonviolent mobilization for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation.”

Over this summer alone, 20 ISM volunteers were excluded.

In July, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior stated in court that being a member of the ISM is not a sufficient reason for exclusion. Experience suggests, however, that this decision effectively has been overruled by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, to which airport security answers. According to ISM, more than 80 of their volunteers have been excluded at the airport, and at least 40 have been arrested and deported after being allowed to enter.

Angelo Lazos, an Italian ISM volunteer ordered excluded, addressed a July 26 ISM press conference in Jerusalem via teleconference from the airport. On a hunger strike to protest the exclusion, he said that security had “threatened to kick my ass if I did not comply” with their putting him on a plane against his will.

The threat of force could not be easily discounted. In 2003, Israeli soldiers killed two ISM volunteers, American Rachel Corrie and Britisher Tom Hurndall.

As a citizen of the country most supportive of and able to influence Israel, Petter might have expected assistance from the U.S. Embassy. When she contacted the embassy for help at the beginning of her detention, however, she received the bizarre response that she had “forfeited her chance for help from the embassy when she refused to get back on the plane” to be sent home. ISM also tried unsuccessfully to get an embassy officer to visit Petter—a routine safeguard against the abuse of Americans in detention abroad—and was told that Israel had the right to decide who it wants to allow in.

Contacted for comment, the embassy gave a canned statement that it “makes every effort to assist American citizens with…arrest and detention cases.” Deputy Spokesperson Ruth Anne Stevens declined to comment on the embassy’s lack of support for Petter, citing the Privacy Act—which is intended to protect American citizens, not embassies. Stevens said there is “absolutely no policy” of refusing to support ISM members in general. According to an ISM spokeswoman, however, U.S. Embassy staff had not visited any of the five American ISM volunteers held in Israeli detention this summer, despite having been promptly informed of all arrests.

With legal, financial, and moral support from ISM and its friends, Petter successfully fought exclusion. The outcome was a victory of sorts: Petter became the first acknowledged ISM volunteer whose exclusion order was reversed by a judge.

Other pro-Palestinian organizations are not immune to Israel’s increasingly hard-line entry policy. Except for the Zionist ones, Christian institutions long working in the Holy Land are facing massive delays and denials of their requests for visas for their staff. The Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report on 2003 states, “The [Israeli] Government denied entry and residence to at least 80 Catholic clergy and seminarians assigned by the Vatican to fulfill religious obligations in Israel and the occupied territories.”

Mention Birzeit University, the flagship Palestinian university near Ramallah that brings international students to learn Arabic and get an eye- and earful of the Palestinian situation, and you are sure to get an immediate return trip—paid for by you, of course. According to Muna Giacaman, the Palestinian-American director of Birzeit’s Palestine and Arabic Studies program, at least 10 students affiliated with Birzeit have been excluded since 2002 at borders controlled by Israel.

Israel’s desire to exclude people who come to Palestine to help the Palestinians and return home to motivate people to work against repressive Israeli policies is understandable. In the case of volunteers who come to help meet some of Palestinians’ basic needs, including security, however, this policy is inhumane. Exclusions of volunteers based on secret evidence also fly in the face of freedom of speech and movement as well as the right to a fair trial—principles that a state claiming to be democratic is obliged to uphold.

Worst of all, the exclusion of advocates of nonviolence could fuel Palestinian violence. At the ISM press conference, Petter said, “What I witnessed [in 2003] is a situation so unbearable that resistance is inevitable. I also saw how the International Solidarity Movement enables the Palestinian people to create a space for themselves in which they can resist occupation nonviolently. By preventing international activists from entering the country, the Israeli government is sending the message that nonviolent resistance is not acceptable.”

Leah Tsemel, an Israeli attorney devoted to defending political prisoners, including Petter, warned that “Ann’s case has exposed the hatred of foreigners that Israel has developed lately. We should criticize airport security for considering ISM a terrorist movement. There is no evidence that ISM has supported terrorism, and there was no violent charge against Ann…. We call on progressives worldwide to save us from ourselves. We Israelis are not allowed to enter the occupied territories, so we need others to be our eyes and ears.”

Not All Jews Welcome to Israel

Jamie Specter, a Jewish American who came to volunteer for ISM, was, like Petter, stopped at the Tel Aviv airport in July, fought being sent back, and was held in detention for weeks. Unlike Petter, however, Specter lost her case and was excluded from Israel and the occupied territories. According to her attorney, Judge Sara Dotan ruled that ISM activists should be denied entry because their actions disrupt military operations and put soldiers at risk.

Neta Golan, an Israeli co-founder of ISM, clarified common misconceptions about her group and highlighted the Israeli army’s disparate treatment toward nonviolent resisters. “The ISM does not interfere with military operations,” Golan insisted. “We try to have internationals and Israelis present with Palestinians who choose to resist the occupation nonviolently….The fact is that Palestinians are not allowed to resist nonviolently. When [Jewish] settlers interfere with military operations, they are not met with force like Palestinians are.”

However much Judge Dotan may have been convinced by the Shin Bet’s arguments against the ISM, the rationale starts to fall apart when Israel’s exclusion of ISMers is compared to its exclusion of nuns, priests and students.

In spite of the difficulties they face, some progressive Americans and Jews consider it their duty to bear witness to the violence inflicted by Israel on the captive Palestinian population and to try to protect its victims. “As an American,” said Petter, “I do feel that I have a responsibility to nonviolently engage in this conflict because America plays a big role in perpetuating it.”

By teleconference, Specter, a 33-year-old social worker, asserted, “As a Jewish person, I feel it is incumbent to work not only for our rights as a minority but also for the human rights of all ethnic groups.”

Like any state, Israel has the sovereign right to decide whom to let enter and whom to exclude from the territory it controls. But since both its exclusion criteria and allegations that visa seekers are ineligible for entry are shrouded in secrecy, there’s no way to know whether Israeli policy is motivated by legitimate security concerns. Rather, there’s every reason to believe that the policy is aimed at silencing dissent and clearing the way for illegal practices like demolishing homes and violating the right to freedom of movement by building its wall on confiscated Palestinian land.

Katherine Metres Abbadi, based in Ramallah, Palestine, is a free-lance journalist and international affairs professional specializing in human rights.