About 200 pro-Palestinian activists have been barred from leaving foreign airports for Israel, where authorities are poised to deport others who manage to fly in, Israeli police said yesterday.
After Greece grounded a flotilla that hoped to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip this month, protesters mobilized to flock to Ben-Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv, in a challenge to Israeli curbs on accessing the occupied West Bank.
CRACKDOWN
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced them as provocateurs. His government ordered a crackdown, citing concern for public order at Israel’s main gateway to the world, or that foreign sympathizers would reinforce Palestinian rallies.
Discovering that they would not be allowed to board their Israel-bound planes from France, Germany and Switzerland, scores of activists decried what they called an abuse of power.
“I am absolutely shocked that it is even possible that I am being blacklisted without any evidence that I have done anything at all,” one of them, Cynthia Beat, said in Berlin.
“Apparently, it is sufficient to state that you would like to go to Palestine, to spend time with Palestinians, in order to be banned from Israel,” she said.
Palestinians have no airport of their own, making travel through Ben-Gurion, just 10km from the West Bank, the most direct route for visitors from abroad.
‘BLACKLIST’
According to Israel’s biggest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the government issued European airlines with a list of 342 suspected activists who would be turned back at Ben-Gurion, with the carriers expected to bear the cost of returning them.
“What we can confirm is that there have been approximately 200 people that have not gotten on the airplanes overseas,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
“That’s due to the fact ... that the international companies that are flying out realized that those individuals would have to fly back and won’t be allowed inside Israel and therefore financially it was not worth them taking the risk,” he said.
Two US women who flew in overnight were detained on grounds of “security problems” and deported, Rosenfeld said.
Police also arrested six Israelis who demonstrated against the clampdown at Ben-Gurion. One of them screamed “Free Palestine” in Arabic as she was dragged out of the terminal.
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