US Citizen Denied Return to US on American Passport
24 January 2001
US Citizen Denied Return to US on American Passport
US CITIZEN DENIED RETURN TO US ON HER AMERICAN PASSPORT BY ISRAELI GOVERNMENT AFTER ATTENDING HER MOTHER’S FUNERAL IN BEIR ZEIT
Katerina Araman, a naturalized US citizen (1988) from South Bend Indiana and her U.S. born, four-year-old daughter, Sarah Araman, were denied by Israel permission to depart on their American passports .
Katerina Araman emigrated to the U.S. 1977 and has lived continuously in the U.S. since than. She was 17 years old at the time and came as a permanent resident. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988.
Katerina and her daughter, Sarah Araman, left Indiana to attend the funeral of Katerina’s mother at Bir Zeit. Following the funeral she went to Amman to visit a sister.
When she returned to the King Hussein Bridge crossing, her 3 month visa slip was confiscated and she was told that she could not leave Israel on her American passport. Her two American brothers, also there for the funeral, were treated the same.
When she contacted the US Consulate General they told her that there was nothing they could do. They said that it is Israeli law and she must comply with it by obtaining a Palestinian passport and then must apply for an Israeli exit visa. The rationale for this determination is said to be the Oslo Accords, signed by the US, which allows Israel to treat any American of Palestinian origin as a Palestinian (a part of the security agreement in the Oslo Accord).
Mrs. Araman says that implicitly, the US government signed away the rights of the Palestinian American to protection as a citizen, and the Palestinian American public has not been so informed.
Katerina consulted an Arab Knesset member who managed to get her application for a Palestinian passport to Gaza. She now has the passport, but is still experiencing difficulties in getting the exit visas. Her brothers are Ibrahim Ebeid and Iskander Ebeid who own a grocery store in Cleveland, Ohio.
Her husband, Joseph Araman is the captain for the Notre Dame University Security Department in Indiana. He tried to work through the Department of State to get his wife and daughter back to the US without success.
He contacted a friend who is head of Diplomatic Security in Chicago who contacted the Department of State, and supposedly has, the agreement of the Department to intervene if she doesn’t have the exit visas in three days.
Joseph Araman (her husband) and Mrs. Araman are willing to be interviewed.
Mr. Araman is concerned that his wife and her daughter and her two brothers are being held in a war zone and are in danger.
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, married with several children has been denied an exit visa for more than a year.
He was detained and tortured 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 5-15-99 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 on July 15, 1999 but the case is not closed. Court dates have been set and repeatedly postponed for almost two years. He and his family are extremely anxious to return to the US.
His mother and two younger sisters are in Tormosayya near Ramallah.
“In each of these cases the American Consulate General refuses to make any pleas on their behalf or intercede in any way,”says Jerri Bird, President of Partners for Peace.
