welcome to israel

I arrived in Palestine this evening for a two-week trip with Interfaith Peace-Builders.

This is my first time flying into Ben Gurion Airport and interacting with Israeli border control/security of any kind.

Ben Gurion Airport may very well have the most unapologetic system of racial profiling in the world. Immediately off the jetway, one of the three people of color in our group is singled out by security--before we even get to passport control--for questions about his parents' names (designed to detect any trace of Arabness.) His grandfather's name, which is Jorge, apparently convinces them he is not a threat.

I expected to get some questions about why I have a Jordanian visa in my passport already, plus the normal bits about where I'm going, what I'm doing, etc. I consider myself pretty white. But apparently with dark eyes and dark wavy hair I am not quite white enough to avoid the Arab test myself at passport control. Or maybe the border control agent (who, I must point out, could pass for Arab herself) is just in the mood for extra questions.

"What is your father's name? What is your mother's name?"
I give their first names, neither of which sound Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern in the least. If they had, the border control agent might have asked to go further back in the family tree, looking for any damning trace of Arabness or alleged Arabness, which would surely have resulted in a trip to the back room for further questioning of indefinite length.
"Durkay...is that an American name?"
I want to tell her how absurd this question is. What the hell is an "American name?"
"Yes," I say. And shortly thereafter my passport is stamped.

While I make it through passport control fairly easily, three people are taken for additional questioning in the back room: our Palestinian co-leader, who is always, without fail, taken for extra questioning, sometimes for hours; a young Muslim woman of South Asian heritage; and a super-white guy who happens to have gone to an Arabic-speaking country deemed suspicious. We wait for them under the "Welcome to Israel" sign. He's out in a couple of minutes. Our co-leader is thrilled to only be held for an hour--last time it was five. The third person is held for three hours. Welcome to Israel, indeed.

By the time we leave the airport it's getting dark and a surreal full moon is rising. We are instantly in the midst of an apartheid system. Here is al-Lydd (Lod), the city from which the ancestors of the main character in Gaza Sunrise were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Here is Canada Park, a vast green space built to cover up the remains of destroyed Palestinian villages. Here is the wall, dividing the Palestinian city of Ar Ram in half. Here is Ofer military prison, with its own high concrete walls and a giant Israeli flag on the watchtower. And here and there and there, brightly lit up on hilltop after hilltop, are settlement after settlement after settlement.

We drive on Route 443, a modern highway from which Palestinians were banned until a month ago. While they are legally allowed to use it now, in practice the harrassment and delays they face at the checkpoints have kept almost everyone off the road. Our bus, with its yellow Israeli licence plates, skates through at least three checkpoints with hardly a pause.

It is not like entering Gaza at all. That was hours of anxiety followed by unmitigated joy. It is infinitely more depressing and sad, to see so much of the finished product of settler colonialism (which looks atrociously like southern California) and the grinding, implacable momentum of the process still at work today.