Israel detains seven U.S. citizens because they’re “Palestinian”
The Ledger (Lakeland, Fla.) - September 6, 2007 http://www.theledger.com/article/20070906/NEWS/709060547/1039
political nightmare Lakeland Family Separated By Rules at Airport in Israel 7 children, declared Palestinians, must stay.
By Cary McMullen
LAKELAND | The summer wasn’t supposed to end like this for the family
of Steve and Wedad Yacoub.
The Lakeland family was separated on Aug. 18 at an Israeli airport as
they attempted to return home from a summer visiting relatives in
Palestine.
Although the Yacoubs are naturalized U.S. citizens and all their
children were born in America, Israeli officials told them they had
been designated Palestinian citizens.
They would not allow Wedad Yacoub and 10 of her children to board the
flight.
She was forced to choose between remaining in Palestine with the
children or return with the three youngest, leaving the other seven
behind.
“I begged them. I was crying, the kids were crying. I was very
angry,” Wedad Yacoub said Wednesday.
Finally, after arranging for the older children to be picked up by
relatives and hoping they would follow in a few days, she flew home
with her children, ages 10, 5 and 3.
The others, ranging in age from 11 to 22, were driven back to their
grandmother’s home in Ramallah, where they remain caught in a
bureaucratic and political tangle. The family says the U.S. State
Department has told them there is little they can do.
At a news conference Wednesday in Tampa, officials with the Council
on American-Islamic Relations, a civil-rights group, said the Yacoubs
have only two options: continue to press U.S. government officials to
persuade Israel to allow the children to leave, or to send them home
through Amman, Jordan, a lengthy and expensive process.
Ahmed Bedier, executive director of the council’s Tampa chapter, said
Continental Airlines has rebooked reservations for the children today
at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, but that is where they were denied
permission to return, and the family is not hopeful they will be
allowed to depart.
“They hate it so much. They are crying on the phone every day, ‘I
want to come back,’” said Wedad Yacoub.
The Yacoub family is well-known in North Lakeland, where four
children graduated from Lake Gibson High School and two currently are
enrolled there. Another two are enrolled at Lake Gibson Middle School.
“They’re good kids, excellent students, all honors-level,” said Ralph
Gilchrest, principal of Lake Gibson High.
“They’re very easy to get along with. They follow the rules, they’re
mannerly and involved with their school.”
Ramy Yacoub, 18, graduated from Lake Gibson in May. He was on the
school’s wrestling team.
A teammate, Brent Jorge, said he and Ramy would go fishing and see
movies together. He said he thought it was “ridiculous” his friend
had not been allowed to come home.
“He’s American to everyone here. His skin is different, but he’s just
like everyone else,” Jorge said.
Steve Yacoub, the children’s father, owns a convenience store in
Lakeland. He is a native of Palestine, but has been an American
citizen for about 30 years.
As they have each summer for the past four years, in June the Yacoub
family traveled to Palestine to visit relatives. They were admitted
entry into Palestine through Israel on three-month visas, said Wedad
Yacoub. This year, the visit included weddings. Twin brothers Ibrahim
and Yacoub Yacoub, 22, got married in Ramallah in July.
There was a hint of problems to come when Steve Yacoub, traveling
separately, was denied entry. He was forced to return to the United
States and enter the Palestinian territory through Jordan.
The Yacoub’s eldest child, a daughter, Palestine Yacoub, who is
pregnant, was also turned away and chose not to make the trip.
On Aug. 18, as they tried to return home, Israeli security officials
told the children their father’s Palestinian heritage disqualified
them from traveling as American citizens, Wedad Yacoub said.
A new rule was adopted by Israel in March, stating that citizens of
other countries who are of Palestinian heritage may be designated as
Palestinian residents and forced to leave the country through Jordan,
even if they possess round-trip airline tickets and, as in the
Yacoubs’ case, U.S. passports. For the Yacoubs, that means an 18-hour
wait at a border checkpoint, forfeiting their return-trip tickets and
buying new tickets at a cost of about $16,000.
Bedier, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the family
was told the problem could be solved if they signed a paper
renouncing their Palestinian heritage and all future intention to
become Palestinian citizens.
The Yacoubs immediately contacted U.S. State Department officials,
who were sympathetic, but told the family it was Israeli policy.
Bedier said his organization had sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice on Aug. 29, urging her intervention.
“Our organization has received a rise in complaints over the summer
from folks traveling in the West Bank as far as unfair treatment by
the Israeli authorities, either on their way in or out. … We find
that this treatment is unacceptable, that no American citizen should
be subjected to this kind of humiliation. We’re puzzled by the double
standard in the treatment,” he said.
Ariel Roman, director of media affairs for the Israeli Consulate
General in Miami, said his office was awaiting information from the
Israeli government but offices there were closed for the night.
Keith Rupp, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, who has
been working with the Yacoub family, said Wednesday that according to
information from the State Department, the Israelis were holding fast
to their policy, which they ascribed to “rising violence” in the
Palestinian territory.
“We’re not quite sure how they arrived at this decision. … Our goal
is to see an American family reunited,” he said.
Rupp said the State Department posted a notice to travelers on its
Web site about the new policy, then issued an enhanced warning in
July, but the Yacoubs said they had no hint the rules had changed and
had never encountered difficulty traveling to Palestine before.
The Yacoubs said they will not wait much longer to find a way to get
their children home.
“I can’t wait. I need my kids back,” said Steve Yacoub Wednesday.
“They’re missing school, they’re missing everything.”
[ Ledger correspondent Sarah Stegall contributed to this report. Cary
McMullen can be reached at cary.mcmullen@theledger.com or
863-802-7509. His blog, Scriptorium: A Religion Panorama, can be read
at religion.theledger.com. ]
The Ledger (Lakeland, Fla.) - September 7, 2007 http://www.theledger.com/article/20070907/BREAKING/70907026
Lakeland Children Return Safely From Palestinian Territory
TAMPA — Looking tired but relieved, six of the seven Lakeland
children stranded without their parents for almost three weeks in the
Palestinian West Bank have made it home.
The children of Steve and Wedad Yacoub arrived at Orlando
International Airport about 2 a.m. Friday on a flight from Amman,
Jordan through Chicago. Ranging in age from 11 to 22, they appeared
at a news conference at the offices of the Council on American-
Islamic Relations, a civil-rights organization that was assisting the
family.
A seventh child, 22-year-old Yacoub Yacoub, who was married in the
West Bank over the summer, remained behind. Family members said he
refused to get a Palestinian ID card, which Israeli authorities
required of the children before they were allowed to leave, even
though all of the Yacoub family are American citizens.
The children were separated from their mother on Aug. 18 at Ben
Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, as they attempted to return home
after visiting relatives. Israeli authorities said under a new
policy, Steve Yacoub’s Palestinian heritage designated him and his
children as Palestinians, and they refused to allow the seven oldest
children to board a flight.
Wedad Yacoub was allowed to return with her three youngest children.
The seven remaining were told they had to obtain Palestinian
documents and exit the country at a border crossing with Jordan.
After a second attempt to board a return flight in Tel Aviv failed on
Thursday, the family said they were forced to spend $15,000 for one-
way tickets for the children from Amman to Orlando.