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2019-05-19 Home Front: WoT
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Palestinian activists don’t understand why they can’t enter the US
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 | It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. |
[IsraelTimes] Hanan Ashrawi is the most recent of at least 3 barred from the United States this year, though the Trump administration has not announced a policy change.
In December 1992, about nine months before the first Paleostinian-Israeli peace accords were signed on the White House lawn, Hanan Ashrawi met with president George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office.
Now, 26 years later, she can’t even enter the United States.
Continued from Page 2
Ashrawi, a longtime Paleostinian spokeswoman and a current member of the Executive Committee of the Paleostine Liberation Organization, tweeted Monday that her application for a US visa was rejected.
"It is official! My US visa application has been rejected," she wrote. "No reason given. Choose any of the following: I’m over 70 & a grandmother; I’ve been an activist for Paleostine since the late 1960’s; I’ve always been an ardent supporter of nonviolent resistance."
Ashrawi is the most recent and most prominent of at least three Paleostinian activists to be barred from entering the United States this year. In February, activist Osama Iliwat was denied entry at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and sent home. In April, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, was not allowed to board a flight to the United States at the direction of the US government.
Iliwat and Barghouti held valid US visas. In March, Iliwat was told he was being deported due to a desire to immigrate to the US, which he calls spurious. Like Ashrawi, both Barghouti and Iliwat said they do not know why they were denied entry. Iliwat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Customs and Border Protection officials questioned him over the course of eight hours about his activism before canceling his visa.
Barghouti said he was denied entry due to his advocacy of an Israel boycott, and blamed Israel for motivating the Trump administration to ban him from speaking to American audiences. He also was traveling to attend his daughter’s wedding.
"[T]his ban seems to be an ideologically and politically motivated measure that fits in with Israel’s escalating repression against human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty ...
defenders," Barghouti wrote in a column in The Guardian. "With this denial of entry, Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding, this time to repress Paleostinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders."
Ashrawi was unable to respond to JTA for this article by press time.
The State Department told JTA that it evaluates visa requests on a case-by-case basis and visas are denied based on US law. Customs and Border Protection does not comment on individual denials of entry.
But former officials and experts said that the string of denials suggests there may be a de facto ban on Paleostinian activists, especially as US President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
’s team prepares to publish its plan for Israeli-Paleostinian peace. Experts stressed, however, that they do not know concretely of any change in policy.
"The Trump administration has not announced any change in US policy when it comes to entry of Paleostinians to the United States," said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a former US foreign service officer in Jerusalem. "One [denial] could be just a random happenstance, two could be a coincidence. Three, it’s reasonable to ask whether or not there hasn’t been a de facto shift in US policy that is denying visas to Paleostinians to come to the US based on their political views, which would be deeply troubling."
Visa denials are up across the board since Trump took office, said Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer, and are particularly high for people from Arab and Moslem countries. But he said US officials have broad latitude in deciding who to admit to the country.
"There may be policies that are going on, but there may be things that are not specific to any one nationality," he said. "It may very well be that they have been individually targeted."
Siskind said individual examiners have a great deal of discretion and there is no appeals process.
"It could just be fluky," he said, "if there’s one examiner who knew who she was and they’re going to create problems with her."
But Friedman said that in her experience, an everyday bureaucratic mix-up would be less likely for someone like Ashrawi.
"Someone with the stature of Hanan Ashrawi doesn’t just go through the regular diplomatic process," she said. "It gets noted. She’s had a visa for years. She travels here often, and over a long period of time. To not give her a visa this time is a significant change."
If the activists are being barred due to their ideology, it wouldn’t be the first time that has happened in the United States, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union. The report says the country has sought to prevent speakers from entering based on their ideology since at least the Cold War. Previous activists who were barred from entering include Pierre Trudeau, who later became Canada’s prime minister, and Mahmoud Darwish, the Paleostinian poet.
"The thing all these people have in common is their activism on behalf of freedom for Paleostinian people," said Diala Shamas, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group that advocates for Paleostinian causes. "It’s troubling to see that we are in a place where the US administration is choosing to revoke them from coming to the US to speak, to advocate, to meet with Americans."
Ashrawi’s denial is a bad move in light of the impending peace plan, said Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel under president Barack Obama
If you like your coverage you can keep it ...
. The Paleostinian Authority stopped working with the administration following Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Shapiro said the US should be seeking opportunities to hear from Paleostinians.
"The administration says it wants to mediate the conflict, but in order to do that it needs to have a dialogue with both sides," Shapiro told JTA, referring specifically to Ashrawi’s case. "You would think they’d be looking for ways to facilitate communication with Paleostinians rather than closing them off."
Liberal American Jewish leaders also have protested the actions.
T’ruah, a liberal rabbinic human rights group, said barring Paleostinians "only fosters hopelessness and extremism." Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, tweeted about Ashrawi that "We don’t need to agree with her (I often don’t) to recognize the value of hearing from her."
If US policy has changed, some suggest, it would be in line with an effort by the Trump administration to ratchet up pressure on the Paleostinians ahead of the expected release of the peace plan ‐ especially because the Paleostinians refuse to engage.
Trump has closed the Paleostinian diplomatic mission in Washington, DC, as well as the Jerusalem consulate that served as the de facto US diplomatic mission to Paleostinians. It has cut $10 million of foreign aid that was supporting coexistence programs between Israelis and Paleostinians; frozen $25 million in funding to Paleostinian hospitals in eastern Jerusalem; halted all funding to the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
refugee agency that aids Paleostinians; and slashed more than $200 million for humanitarian and development assistance in the West Bank and Gazoo.
Rabbi Jonathan Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Haym Salomon Center think tank, believes the US was right to deny Ashrawi’s visa because of the Paleostinian Authority’s record. He tweeted that the Paleostinian Authority is "incentivizing and rewarding terrorism, sanctioning public Jew-hatred, and not holding elections."
"The visa denial to Hanan Ashrawi is totally appropriate and should’ve been policy in every Western capital for every PLO leader since the Second Intifada," he tweeted. "Otherwise they enjoy the perks of recognition with none of the costs."
But even members of the Trump administration have called on Ashrawi to visit the US. Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special representative for international negotiations, tweeted in February that Ashrawi is welcome at the White House.
"Dr. Ashrawi- my door is always open to the PA & Paleostinians to speak," Greenblatt tweeted. "In fact, I’ve met many Paleostinians over the past 14 months & continue to. I’m happy to meet anytime- you, Saeb & all your colleagues are ALWAYS welcome to visit me at the @WhiteHouse to speak in person."
Greenblatt, however, has no authority over visa applications. 
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