Sent to BoingBoing by Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning independent Palestinian journalist in Jordan. He is the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, and founded AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station.
He has the distinction of having been jailed by both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities for his work as a journalist.
August 2, 2006
Trouble at the Border
By Daoud Kuttab, Ramallah, West Bank
For about three hours on Tuesday, I was really concerned. My sister
Grace and her four children were traveling from Jordan to see
relatives in the West Bank using the northern Jordan-Israel crossing
point. The source of my concern was a news item I saw on TV saying
that a Hezbollah rocket had fallen on Bisan in northern Israel.Bisan, literally on the other side of the border crossing that the
family was about to reach, is now called Beit Shean and is 100
percent inhabited by Israelis. I was debating whether to ask them to
turn back or or let them take their chances.When I finally called
Grace on her cellphone, she told me that they had almost reached the
crossing point. I told her what was happening. She said that they
wanted to continue on. I then advised her that once they crossed
into Israel, they should drive quickly south towards Jerusalem. I
never expected her to be denied entry by the Israelis for a completely
different reason.
Grace and her family, United States citizens who live in Brooklyn,
N.Y., were excited about visiting our relatives in the Palestinian
town of Beit Jala. Her husband, Khader El Yateem, Lutheran pastor of
Salam Arabic Church in Brooklyn, who was required by Israeli
authorities to travel a different route, has not seen his many
relatives for over eight years. The last time he tried some four
years ago to attend the funeral of his brother-in-law he was not
allowed to enter. He was told by the Israelis that he could not use
his American passport, only his Palestinian travel documents.This
time, the El Yateem family was careful to play it by the book.
Pastor Khader, with his Palestinian travel documents in hand, went
to the Allenby Bridge, while the rest of the family went to cross in
the north. My sister, like other Palestinians born in Jerusalem, has
never had any Palestinian documents because Jerusalem was annexed by
Israel and is therefore considered part of it.For two hours, my sister and her children stood in the hot sun at
Israeli passport control. She later told me that she could see smoke
billowing not far from the border. Without an explanation, an
Israeli police officer came up to my sister with her and her
children's passport and told her that she was denied entry into
Israel and that this denial applied to all crossing points. He
turned around and left without giving an explanation and without
responding to my sister's repeated requests.When she opened her United States passport, my sister, who was born
and raised in Jerusalem, saw that she was no longer allowed to
return to her birthplace, not even with a passport of the world's
superpower and Israel's best international friend.While I was relieved that my sister and her family would not risk
traveling near Bisan as Hezbollah rockets were being launched, my
sister was angry that her children would not be able to see their
relatives in Palestine, and visit Bethlehem's Church of the
Nativity, the birthplace of Christ.It seems that there are constant attempts to shroud the Arab-Israeli
conflict in military terms, political jargon or historical
arguments. We must strive, despite this, to remember the human
element in this conflict.
