US Citizen and Four-Year-Old Daughter Return Home
01 March 2001
US Citizen and Four-Year-Old Daughter Return Home
ISRAELI AUTHORITIES GRANT EXIT VISA: OTHER AMERICANS STILL REMAIN STRANDED
On Friday, March 2 at 9:55 AM Katerina Araman, her two brothers, and her four-year-old daughter will arrive in Chicago O’Hare airport, Terminal 2, on Air Canada Flight 815 from Toronto.
What started out as a routine trip to Israel to attend her mother’s funeral in the West Bank and visit relatives, turned into a bureaucratic nightmare for her and her family.
Araman entered Israel on her US passport but when she returned from Jordan after visiting her sister, she and her brothers were told they had to apply for Palestinian citizenship and then apply for an exit visa from Israel in order to leave the country.
The first time she applied for an exit visa she was told by an Israeli official, Avi Shalev that “no exit visas are being given out today. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next month.”
Jerri Bird, President of Partners for Peace, spoke on Monday afternoon to a State Department official in Washington, DC who preferred to remain anonymous. He said, “the State Department can do nothing.” He also stated that there are many other cases like this involving Americans.
In a phone conversation on Wednesday, Mrs. Araman told her husband that the day she received her exit visa an American woman behind her in line was denied one.
Joseph Araman, her husband, the head of the Notre Dame University Security Department is thankful that the ordeal for his family is finally almost over.
However, he said, “there are other American citizens of Palestinian descent that are in a similar situation as my wife and they remain trapped in the West Bank and Gaza because Israel refuses to give them an exit visa.”
Jerri Bird of Partners for Peace knows of two other similar cases where U.S. citizens currently are being held in Israel against their will by being denied Israeli exit visas. Mohamad Sarsour, a naturalized citizen from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is married with several children (all American) has been denied an exit visa for more than a year.
He was detained in December 1999 but released with no charges after more than a month in prison. “He is very anxious to leave and take his family out of this war zone,” said Jerri Bird who spoke with him recently.
Luay Abdel Jaber, a U.S. citizen born in Chicago, now 21 years old, was detained on May 15, 1999 and eventually charged with membership in an illegal organization at Bir Zeit University at a time (1996) when he was not even enrolled there. He was subsequently released from prison on July 15, 1999 but the case is not closed. Court dates have been set and repeatedly postponed for now almost two years. He and his family are extremely anxious to return to the U.S.
His mother and two younger sisters are in Tormosayya near Ramallah.
“In each of these cases the American Consulate General refuses to make any effective pleas on their behalf or intercede in any way,” says Jerri Bird, President of Partners for Peace.
Bird said, “All U.S. citizens, regardless of whether they are of Palestinian descent, should be afforded equal treatment by the State Department. The State Department should file a formal protest with Israel and bring public diplomatic pressure to resolve these situations.”
