Regularly Confronting Discrimination at Ben Gurion Airport

The recent Supreme Court rebuke of the Airport Authorities in Israel came as a shining light of hope. The treatment of Arabs at Ben Gurion Airport has caused many controversies over the last few years. For me, this is not something I simply read about in the newspaper — being a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem and a frequent business flyer I regularly experience discrimination at Ben Gurion. This discrimination takes a variety of forms, from extra security checks and humiliating requests such as taking off undershirts and pants to invasive personal questions about my relationships that have nothing to do with security.

Arabs undergo these procedures both when departing via Ben Gurion Airport and upon reentering the country, which is something most Israelis don’t know. While other passengers entering Israel claim their baggage and meet their loved ones after passport control, many Arabs undergo a different procedure. After getting my travel document stamped after a long wait, I am normally asked to accompany a security official to a special screening room. There I have to undergo another body search and my luggage is searched piece by piece, despite the fact that my luggage has already been searched prior to boarding the flight in the U.S.

The searches are not half as bad, however, as the attitudes of the personnel who perform the screenings. For instance, once security personnel mistook a bottle of alcohol I was bringing as a gift in my bag for a bomb. I was detained by security, forced against a wall, and forced to stand there for almost an hour until they realized they had made a mistake. No apology was offered.

A few days after the famous letter forbidding Jews in Israel from dating Arabs or renting to them, I experienced another example of discrimination at Ben Gurion. On this occasion, a female intern for George Mason University’s Center for World Religions Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution accompanied me to pick up one of our colleagues from the airport. Upon arriving at the checkpoint outside the airport, our car was pulled aside. The intern, who happened to be an Israeli Jew, was asked to sit in a rest area while security proceeded to check me based on my ethnicity, despite the fact that we were traveling together. Unfortunately the story didn’t end there. While our intern waited, she was questioned by a security guard who demanded to know why she was with an Arab man. He asked her why she was spending time with me, and if we were dating. When she explained she was interning for me in Jerusalem, the security official only became more upset and asked “Aren’t there enough Jews you can work for?”

Having said this, it is important to mention that not all of the airport personnel are racist. I have also met some fine and nice people, some of whom are themselves uncomfortable with these procedures.The problem stems from a system that creates these situations and makes separation and profiling acceptable. As a result, although the Supreme Court’s rebuke to security agencies is a good start toward fixing this system, the real test is still ahead. In particular, the government must decide if it is willing to make major changes in its treatment of minorities.

For the last 60 years Israel has claimed to be the only true democracy in the Middle East. However, the true test of a democracy is not just whether its people have the freedom to vote or the freedom of speech — a real democracy is judged by how it treats its minorities. By this standard Israeli democracy has a long battle ahead, because as long as Arabs in Israel are treated as inferior to Jewish citizens, Israel’s democracy remains fundamentally flawed.