A month ago, I said goodbye to my newly-wedded husband @JackDodson without knowing when we were going to see each other again. I'm a Palestinian citizen of Israel, he’s American. A thread re #FortressIsrael:
When we landed at Ben Gurion airport, I made the mistake of telling the passport control agent that Jack and I are a couple, and that we intended on getting married. “Have you started his immigration process at the ministry?” she asked.
I explained that we were told by a senior official at the Ministry of Interior to get married first, and only then begin the immigration process. Also, since there’s no civil marriage in Israel, we were entirely dependent on the church to start the process.
She gave me back my passport but held on to Jack’s. She told us to go to the border patrol area and wait for someone to see us. For two hours, we waited, without knowing why we were stopped or when they were going to question us.
In the waiting area, nobody knew what was going on. I was the only Israeli citizen there, so I felt like I could push back for answers. “Oh, you’re Israeli?” one officer asked after I approached her in my best Hebrew, so as not to blow my Arab cover. “Okay, I’ll check your case.”
The waiting area was tense, and mostly silent, except for two or three kids who were getting restless. Most of the people seemed to have arrived from Eastern Europe. They were couples, or grandparents with their grandchildren, or people traveling on their own.
We communicated with each other by briefly making eye contact every now and then. Sometimes, we would subtly shake our heads in shared frustration. (Petty side note: the officers there took about a dozen coffee breaks in this time.)
At some point, an older Muslim couple started giving out sweets. It was one of the last days of Ramadan, and they hadn’t properly broken their fast. This started a conversation in Arabic: “How long have you been waiting?” “Do you know why you are stopped?”
A man from East Jerusalem with American citizenship joined in. He said he gets questioned every time he visits the country. Later, a Palestinian mother who lives in Canada arrived with her three kids. The authorities wouldn’t let them in and kept accusing her of lying, she said.
After two hours of waiting, we got called to one of the interrogation rooms. The officer asked to speak with Jack alone. He said that because I was an Israeli citizen, I could leave the airport at any time. After some pushback, I stepped out and returned to the waiting area.
About five minutes later, Jack called me to come back in. They were going to deport him back to the United States, he said. Shocked, I asked for an explanation. “Tell your boyfriend his attitude is all wrong. I can arrest him for talking back to me if I want,” said the officer.
Later, I learned that Jack was briefly asked about our relationship, and then questioned in depth about my U.S. immigration status. Jack said he didn’t understand why this had any bearing on his entry to Israel, to which the officer replied, “you know nothing.”
When Jack got more assertive and asked for an explanation for why he was being interrogated, that's when the officer accused him of being rude, and said he was going to place him on a flight back to the US.
At this point, both Jack and I were nervous, confused and exhausted. We had been traveling for 24 hours. We realized things were bad, but we still hadn’t gotten an explanation for why Jack was stopped, or being deported.
The problem, the officer said, was that Jack did’t have a partner visa. Even though we weren’t married yet, Jack could no longer enter Israel on a tourist visa. (We later learned this was inaccurate.) Again, we pushed back, but the officer was adamant to send Jack back.
I started crying, and Jack begged the officer to revisit. He said his superior was the only person who could undo his decision, and that we could wait a few hours for her to start her shift, if we wanted to.
I called my family to consult with them on what to do. They had been waiting for us in the arrivals hall this whole time, and refused to leave. My dad called every contact he thought could help us in this situation.
He got a hold of a family member who works at the airport. She introduced me to guy who worked at a different department of the immigration office at the airport.
I asked him how common our case was, of couples traveling to Israel together to visit or get married. He said it was very common, but most of the couples who are stopped for questioning are Jewish, and they are let through without any problems.
And then he said this next gem: “I don’t understand why they’re giving you problems, it’s not like your partner is Ukrainian or Sudanese.”
Three hours later, the officer who questioned Jack called us back. At this point, my uncle, who is an embassy employee here and has clearance, was able to join us. After even more begging and pleading, the officer said Jack could enter the country, but with restrictions.
I was prohibited from starting his immigration process while he was in Israel.Jack would have to leave the country on a set date, not at the end of the 90 days tourists typically have. He wouldn’t be allowed in again until he receives a special permit which takes months to issue.
Now that we've consulted with several lawyers, it's clear to us that this was all an intimidation exercise. Not only was the reasoning for Jack’s questioning shaky, but throughout the whole incident, we couldn’t tell the law from the officer’s random, ad hoc decisions.
Harassment on the border isn’t limited to Shin Bet interrogations; when you’re Palestinian, the entire system works against you. Our war of attrition has only started. Israel has two separate systems for immigration: one for Jews, and another for non-Jews.
If Jack were Jewish, not only would he have been let in, but his path to citizenship would have been significantly easier, and he would have even received a generous stipend from the government.
But Jack is not Jewish – so he has to go through a rigorous, costly immigration process, by the end of which his entry to Israel is not at all guaranteed. Needless to say, the government won’t be excited to welcome him with any benefits package.
And yet, without the many layers of privilege – me having Israeli citizenship and communicating in Hebrew, Jack being American, and my family knowing people who know people, to name a few – Jack would have been deported.
Now that the Jewish Nation-State Law has passed, he wouldn’t have had a path to citizenship at all had he been Arab. I can’t imagine what similar incidents feel like to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
