My Expulsion from Israel

On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

I
was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza
to prepare a report on Israel's compliance with human rights standards
and international humanitarian law. Meetings had been scheduled on an
hourly basis during the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the
president of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.

I knew
that there might be problems at the airport. Israel had strongly
opposed my appointment a few months earlier and its foreign ministry
had issued a statement that it would bar my entry if I came to Israel
in my capacity as a UN representative.

At the same time, I
would not have made the long journey from California, where I live, had
I not been reasonably optimistic about my chances of getting in. Israel
was informed that I would lead the mission and given a copy of my
itinerary, and issued visas to the two people assisting me: a staff
security person and an assistant, both of whom work at the office of
the high commissioner of human rights in Geneva.

To avoid an
incident at the airport, Israel could have either refused to grant
visas or communicated to the UN that I would not be allowed to enter,
but neither step was taken. It seemed that Israel wanted to teach me,
and more significantly, the UN a lesson: there will be no cooperation
with those who make strong criticisms of Israel's occupation policy.

After
being denied entry, I was put in a holding room with about 20 others
experiencing entry problems. At this point, I was treated not as a UN
representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an
inch-by-inch body search and the most meticulous luggage inspection I
have ever witnessed.

I was separated from my two UN companions
who were allowed to enter Israel and taken to the airport detention
facility a mile or so away. I was required to put all my bags and cell
phone in a room and taken to a locked tiny room that smelled of urine
and filth. It contained five other detainees and was an unwelcome
invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined,
which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life,
including dirty sheets, inedible food and lights that were too bright
or darkness controlled from the guard office.

Of course, my
disappointment and harsh confinement were trivial matters, not by
themselves worthy of notice, given the sorts of serious hardships that
millions around the world daily endure. Their importance is largely
symbolic. I am an individual who had done nothing wrong beyond express
strong disapproval of policies of a sovereign state. More importantly,
the obvious intention was to humble me as a UN representative and
thereby send a message of defiance to the United Nations.

Israel
had all along accused me of bias and of making inflammatory charges
relating to the occupation of Palestinian territories. I deny that I am
biased, but rather insist that I have tried to be truthful in assessing
the facts and relevant law. It is the character of the occupation that
gives rise to sharp criticism of Israel's approach, especially its
harsh blockade of Gaza, resulting in the collective punishment of the
1.5 million inhabitants. By attacking the observer rather than what is
observed, Israel plays a clever mind game. It directs attention away
from the realities of the occupation, practising effectively a politics
of distraction.

The blockade of Gaza serves no legitimate Israeli
function. It is supposedly imposed in retaliation for some Hamas and
Islamic Jihad rockets that have been fired across the border at the
Israeli town of Sderot. The wrongfulness of firing such rockets is
unquestionable, yet this in no way justifies indiscriminate Israeli
retaliation against the entire civilian population of Gaza.

The
purpose of my reports is to document on behalf of the UN the urgency of
the situation in Gaza and elsewhere in occupied Palestine. Such work is
particularly important now as there are signs of a renewed escalation
of violence and even of a threatened Israeli reoccupation.

Before
such a catastrophe happens, it is important to make the situation as
transparent as possible, and that is what I had hoped to do in carrying
out my mission. Although denied entry, my effort will continue to use
all available means to document the realities of the Israeli occupation
as truthfully as possible.