Arrival: Ben-Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Tuesday, June 26
“Detention!? This is a PROCESS not detention! Listen, how much do you know about this woman with you anyway? How do you know she has cooperated? And you should be careful too. We have allowed you to stay with her up till now… but…”
(Response of Israeli immigration official when Peter Vander Meulen, after four and a half hours, asked when Rana Saba-Hekman would be released from “detention.”)
As team leader, I was prepared for a few questions from Israeli authorities when sixteen of us entered Israel for the purpose of living with and learning from Palestinians. I was even prepared for a short delay as I explained that Rana Saba-Hekman was a US citizen, member of the CRC, and an integral part of our group.
But to Israeli immigration officials, Rana was a Palestinian-American – and that changed everything. Although the rest of the group cleared immigration and customs in less than a half hour, Rana’s ordeal lasted over five hours. The “process” she went through consisted mainly of long periods of waiting interspersed with shorter, uglier periods of answering identical sets of questions posed by at least four different officials in two different locations that can only be described as “holding areas” for various “undesirables” – almost all, of course, having the misfortune of wanting to visit close relatives in the Occupied Territories (OT) or Gaza.
After three hours (approximately 8:00 p.m.) and yet another refusal by Israeli immigration officials to tell us anything at all about “the process” or how much longer it might be, I was allowed to phone our local guides advising them to leave Rana and myself at the airport and to take the tired but patiently waiting bulk of the group to our Jerusalem hostel. Rana and I were able to join the group in Jerusalem some two hours later.
Although the “process” was ostensibly for security reasons, I had five hours to observe this “process,” to talk to other folks caught “in the process,” and to engage in polite discussion with various officials. Upon reflection, it is clear to me that the real purpose for putting Rana and many others through such treatment is to harass and intimidate them, to the end of discouraging visits by anyone with relatives living in Palestine.
As our journey progressed, the policy rationale for this became clearer, and clearer still when Rana was again singled out for special “processing” on our departure.
- Peter Vander Meulen, Coordinator, Office of Social Justice
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