A Palestinian-American’s story of being detained at Ben Gurion airport
I
was born in West Jerusalem (so-called the Jewish half of Jerusalem) in
1945. Under a shower of bullets that were flying over our heads, my
father grabbed me and the rest of the family and fled to his native city
of Nablus at the eve of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. We
remained in Rafidia-Nablus until 1952 and then moved to Ramallah where
my father got a job in the post office. I went to the parochial school
and then entered the Latin Seminary of Beit Jala in 1961 to study for
the priesthood. In 1968 I left the seminary where I studied French,
Latin, in addition to philosophy and theology. I came to the US in
September of 1969 and entered Seton Hall University in South Orange, New
Jersey where I graduated with a B.A. in French & Spanish, and in
1975 I earned a master’s Degree from the University of Montclair in New
Jersey.
I
moved to California in 1975 where I taught foreign language at the high
school level. I entered the Ph.D. program in theology in 1983 at the
Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California and I obtained my
doctorate degree in 1990. I have been teaching language at San Mateo
College, Skyline College, and Westmoor High School. I joined the
deaconate program in 2012 because I intend to serve the different Church
communities as a deacon in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
After
21 years of not visiting or seeing Jerusalem and my homeland Palestine,
I decided to go back, this time as an American citizen with an American
passport, which I was granted in 1975. The trip was intended to be a
religious pilgrimage with Father Bernard Poggi as well as a long overdue
visit my homeland to see friends and family I hadn’t seen in decades.
Once we arrived to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, they allowed Father
Bernard to enter. When it came to me, I was ushered by a young female
soldier to the “green room” for questioning.
The conversation that ensued is this:
An airport security agent (who I believe to be a Shin Bet agent) began:
Agent: “Oh so you came through Ben Gurion airport?”
Me: “Yes. What’s wrong with that?”
Agent: “You can’t do that.”
Me:
“Why? I have an American passport. I came with father Bernard, to spend
a few weeks in Jerusalem and that’s it. We are coming here on a
religious pilgrimage and to visit some friends and family.”
Agent: “No no, you cannot go to Israel. You should have gone through the Allenby Bridge.”
Me: “Why should I do that? I’m not coming through as a Palestinian. I’m coming as an American citizen.”
Agent: “No. You are a Palestinian. Why are you denying that you’re a Palestinian?”
Me:
“I’m not denying that I’m Palestinian. I am Palestinian from head to
toe. My father is Palestinian. My mother is Palestinian. My brothers are
Palestinian. My sister is Palestinian. My grandfather is an Orthodox
priest and I can trace my Palestinian roots for the last 500 years. What
do you mean I am denying? I am denying nothing.”
Agent:
“No no, you belong with the Palestinian people. This is our Israel,
this is for the Jews. No Palestinian should come to Israel. You should
have gone through the Allenby Bridge.”
Me:
“Why do you say that? Did I ever have a Palestinian passport? Did I
ever live under the Palestinian authority? When the PA was constituted I
was never in Palestine and I was never issued a Palestinian passport.”
Agent:
“But you have an Israeli ID.” [He is referring to the Israeli ID issued
to me after Israel began their occupation of the West Bank in 1967. I
had an Israeli ID until I left for the US in 1969.]
Me:
“An Israeli ID is not a Palestinian passport. The Israeli ID was issued
to me when I was in Beit Jala when I was studying for the priesthood
but you cannot equate that to a Palestinian passport. Juridically
speaking, I was never a citizen of a country called Palestine. I am
coming with an American passport and you should honor it.”
Agent:
“How do you want me to honor your American passport? Do you want me to
kiss it, to hug it, or to worship it? Moreover, you are rude and ill
mannered. How did you get to be so rude? You are a Palestinian and you
are rude and ill-mannered.”
Me:
“I am neither rude nor ill-mannered I’m just stating the facts. I’m
just telling you I’m an American, who has been an American citizen for
the past 40 years and I’ve lived in America for 46 years. So you
disregard all these legal facts and you only focus on my Palestinian
heritage?”
Agent:
“You will be deported to Jordan and come through the Allenby Bridge to
continue your visit to the West Bank.” [The Allenby Bridge is the
connection between Jordan and Israel. Palestinians can only enter the
West Bank through this bridge because they are not allowed in through
Israel proper.]
I
returned to Father Bernard who was waiting for me. I told Father
Bernard what happened with the Shin Beth agent and we waited. The man
returned with the deportation papers and made me understand in the
presence of Father Bernard that I will be deported to Jordan. I waited
until two other security officers came to me and told me, “You will not
be deported to Jordan but you should go back to where I came from.”
[Fiumicino Airport, Italy]. I said, “But I was just told that I will be
deported to Jordan.” They asked, “Who said that?”
I
answered, “I don’t know his name. Did you think he told me his name?
He’s the security man in the office who just had me sign deportation
papers.” They said, “No, you have to go back to Italy first. If you then
choose to come back to Jordan after landing in Italy then that is your
choice.” I was shocked but had no choice but to go along with it. In
front of the Israeli officials, Father Bernard gives me his Jordanian
phone number and we agreed we would meet in Jordan the following day.
Bernard
and I parted ways and I went back with the Israeli security officers.
They kept me (and the others) in the airport until 1:30 am on July 21st.
Eventually, they brought us a sandwich. Some of the others who were
with me during the ordeal were a Palestinian woman and her daughter (who
were Palestinian-born but US citizens). They had originally traveled
with her two other sons but because the two boys were American born they
were able to enter Israel. The Israeli officials told the two of them
that they would be deported back to the US but they would be deported
separately. They both broke down in tears and pleaded with them to at
least allow them to be deported together but to no avail. There was also
a young British woman who told me she was working with a human rights
group in Israel, a Korean and a young Russian woman neither of whom
spoke much English.
They
drove us about half an hour away from the airport. In the car being
driven by the Israelis, a young Korean who barely spoke any English,
hungry, and penniless, asked the two guards in an extremely feeble voice
and in bad English, “Are we going to die tonight?” We were being
transported in a van with bars – made for prisoners. They held us like
criminals in a detention facility they called emigration, which was
anything but–and should have been called prison–until we were deported.
They
locked us up, forbade me personally from keeping my iPhone, refused me
to take a book with me to that filthy room and threw me there with a
bunch of poor, hungry, and disoriented men from different national and
ethnic backgrounds. The time was about 2 am.
We
spent a whole Tuesday in the detention center not knowing when we would
be leaving. I was locked up in that room with the other men. There was
an Arab guard around the cell. I dared ask him “You know all of our
names and everything about us. What is your name?” He said, “My name is
George.” From his accent, he sounded like he was from Nazareth.” I asked
him, “Why are you treating us like prisoners?” He said, “That’s just
how it is.” He eventually let me use the phone to call my wife, Nariman,
to tell her where I was. If I had the right to a phone call at the
airport I was never told about it. The other guards remained totally
anonymous, insulted us by using disrespectful and abusive language, and
forbade us from speaking to one another from each other’s room separated
by a long corridor. I didn’t sleep a wink because they kept the bright
neon lights on the entire time.
At
4 am that morning, the guard came to tell me to get ready for my
flight. He heard me speaking in Arabic to the Palestinian woman with her
daughter who were held in the opposite room from where I was detained.
When he came back that morning Samar’s mother was saying that maybe they
were just roughing us up a bit but they really would eventually deport
us to Jordan. He was very angry and yelled, “I told you not to talk to
the others! I’m trying to respect you! Try to respect yourself. Get away
from the door!”
Then
around 8 am a guard came in the room and frantically took me saying
that my plane was ready. Like a madman, he drove me to the airport and
took me straight to the runway stairs rather than being taken through
the airport.
Just as I was getting on the plane I asked, “Where exactly are you deporting me?”
He said, “Bogota.”
I said,“Bogota!? Why?!”
“Aren’t you Carlos?” he asked.
“No, I’m George Khoury! Let me see the passport in your hands,” I demanded. It belonged to a Colombian man named Carlos.
The
guard realized his mistake and frantically raced me back to the
detention center. The rough ride exacerbated my sciatic nerve badly and
I’m still in great pain. We went back to the detention center, back into
the cell. He called out for Carlos. Carlos was sleeping and woke up. He
said, “I’m Carlos!” and he was taken away.
Without
going into every detail, at 9:30 am on Wednesday they came back and
picked me up. They drove me to the runway again and we waited for a long
time, seemingly until the entire plane was boarded and ready. They
walked me all the way up to moving stairs. Until this point, I was told I
would be flying to Italy so that I could return to Jordan. At the
moment before I entered the plane he held in his hand a set of tickets
that would fly me all the way back to the US via Italy, then NY, then
SF. The Italian agent told me that I would be given back my passport
once he made sure that I was in the plane heading to the US. That’s
exactly what happened. When I arrived to Italy, before I exited the
plane, I asked the stewardess for my passport. She told me that it would
be taken care of by a man waiting outside for me. An Italian officer
was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He took me in a jeep to an
unknown location away from the airport – some kind of a police station.
He put me in a room with about 5 or 6 people where our movement was
restricted. At 5pm, I got on my flight heading to the states where I was
handed my passport.
I
arrived to New York around 8 pm that day. I would remain in the airport
until the next morning where I boarded a 6am flight. The entire time I
had my bag in my lap, trying to close my eyes for brief moments, sitting
on a hard bench counting the minutes and the hours until flight time at
6 am all along holding on for dear life since the bag contained my
insulin, my wallet and my iPhone. I am a diabetic and parting with my
medicine would be fatal.
I
arrived home exhausted on Thursday at 11:37 am. I called my travel
agent to find out if I could be reimbursed for my stolen bag and the KLM
return ticket I hadn’t used. He found out that those funds had already
been used to pay for my deportation back to the US.
I’m
back in San Francisco now. They took something that was suppose to be a
vacation from my long work hours, a reconnection with my homeland and
old friends, and made it a nightmare from hell. I was disrespected,
demeaned and treated like I committed a crime. I tell you my story so as
to encourage people to visit Palestine to challenge the thuggery of
this racist entity and do it here in the USA as well as in Israel.
Though somewhat extreme, this is is not a very unique story. Many other
instances of Arab Americans being racially profiled by Israelis at any
entry point into the Israeli state or West Bank have been documented.
Harassment, detainment, and interrogations are part and parcel of the
Israeli states’ efforts to keep Palestinians out of Israel-Palestine and
bring more Jews in. It is my own US tax dollars—over 3 billion dollars
of both economic and military aid—that finances the oppression of the
Palestinian people. Without the US’s blind and unconditional financial
and political support of the state of Israel, the occupation and all its
tragedies against the Palestinians would not continue.
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