Viewpoint

Editor’s Note:

Richard Falk is an American lawyer/professor/UN appointee
who happens to be Jewish and inspects the humanitarian
issue on Gaza and the West Bank.

This issue comes as no surprise to those who follow the
Middle East closely and gets outside the MSM press.

Thank you,
Editor

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My Expulsion From Israel
By Richard Falk

On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel
Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur
on the Palestinian territories.

I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West
Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel’s compliance
with human rights standards and international humanitarian
law. Meetings had been scheduled on an hourly basis during
the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president
of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.

I knew that there might be problems at the airport. Israel
had strongly opposed my appointment a few months earlier
and its foreign ministry had issued a statement that it
would bar my entry if I came to Israel in my capacity as
a UN representative.

At the same time, I would not have made the long journey
from California, where I live, had I not been reasonably
optimistic about my chances of getting in. Israel was
informed that I would lead the mission and given a copy
of my itinerary, and issued visas to the two people
assisting me: a staff security person and an assistant,
both of whom work at the office of the high commissioner
of human rights in Geneva.

To avoid an incident at the airport, Israel could have
either refused to grant visas or communicated to the UN
that I would not be allowed to enter, but neither step
was taken. It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me, and
more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no
cooperation with those who make strong criticisms of
Israel’s occupation policy.

After being denied entry, I was put in a holding room
with about 20 others experiencing entry problems. At
this point, I was treated not as a UN representative,
but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an
inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage
inspection I have ever witnessed.

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I was separated from my two UN companions who were allowed
to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention facility
a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and
cell phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that
smelled of urine and filth. It contained five other
detainees and was an unwelcome invitation to claustro-
phobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which
amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life,
including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were
too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office.

Of course, my disappointment and harsh confinement were
trivial matters, not by themselves worthy of notice, given
the sorts of serious hardships that millions around the
world daily endure. Their importance is largely symbolic.
I am an individual who had done nothing wrong beyond
express strong disapproval of policies of a sovereign
state. More importantly, the obvious intention was to
humble me as a UN representative and thereby send a
message of defiance to the United Nations.

Israel had all along accused me of bias and of making
inflammatory charges relating to the occupation of
Palestinian territories. I deny that I am biased, but
rather insist that I have tried to be truthful in
assessing the facts and relevant law. It is the character
of the occupation that gives rise to sharp criticism of
Israel’s approach, especially its harsh blockade of Gaza,
resulting in the collective punishment of the 1.5 million
inhabitants. By attacking the observer rather than what
is observed, Israel plays a clever mind game. It directs
attention away from the realities of the occupation,
practising effectively a politics of distraction.

The blockade of Gaza serves no legitimate Israeli
function. It is supposedly imposed in retaliation for
some Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that have been fired
across the border at the Israeli town of Sderot. The
wrongfulness of firing such rockets is unquestionable,
yet this in no way justifies indiscriminate Israeli
retaliation against the entire civilian population of
Gaza.

The purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the
UN the urgency of the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in
occupied Palestine. Such work is particularly important
now as there are signs of a renewed escalation of violence
and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.

Before such a catastrophe happens, it is important to
make the situation as transparent as possible, and that
is what I had hoped to do in carrying out my mission.
Although denied entry, my effort will continue to use
all available means to document the realities of the
Israeli occupation as truthfully as possible.

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Richard Falk is professor of international law at Princeton
University and the UN’s special reporter on the Palestinian
territories. Richard Falk is also Jewish.
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