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http://www.maannews.net 'Welcome to Palestine' deportee ready to try again SARASOTA, Florida (Ma'an) -- Laura Durkay spent 100 hours in an Israeli prison simply for declaring her intention to visit Bethlehem and its neighboring Aida refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. But the 29-year-old activist and filmmaker says, if she had the money, she’d gladly do it again. And she’s quick to add that her ordeal is “nowhere close to what happens to Palestinians” who resist the Israeli occupation. Durkay participated in the July 8 fly-in, a protest organized to call attention to freedom of movement restrictions that affect both West Bank Palestinians and those who dare to sympathize with them. As Durkay did, participants were to openly declare their intention to visit Palestine at Israeli passport control -- a small, peaceful action that could lead to deportation. According to organizers, 600 activists planned to participate in the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign, which was also dubbed the “flytilla” in reference to the flotilla that was intended to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Some participants were prevented from boarding their flights in Europe after Israeli authorities sent airlines a no-fly list, containing the names of more than 300 activists. Durkay, who lives in New York City and has visited Gaza, had no problem until she reached Ben Gurion. At passport control, she stated her intention to visit Bethlehem. When the clerk pushed her for details, Durkay said, “I have an invitation to stay at Aida refugee camp.” “That was all they needed to hear,” Durkay recalled during a recent phone interview. “Immediately after that, a female immigration officer came over.” Durkay and dozens of other activists were held in a room in the airport, where they sat for several hours. Eventually, police and border patrol entered. There were “25 to 40 of us,” Durkay says. “The sheer number of them was overwhelming.” When the officers tried to separate one of the activists -- a French national of Arab descent -- from the group, some of the participants held on to him, a non-violent act of solidarity and resistance. “That was all the excuse [Israeli officers] needed to start hitting people and punching people,” Durkay says. After the activists were removed from the room, they were searched and put onto a bus. It “looked like a normal tour bus from the outside. On the inside it was a paddy wagon,” Durkay recalls. “It was metal, it was hot, there was no air-conditioning, no water, no toilets. And there were roaches.” The group was confined to the roach-infested bus for several hours and then transferred to Givon prison in Ramla. After being processed, the protesters were fed. “They didn’t give us enough [food] for everyone to have their own meal,” Durkay says. “So we were sharing and [the Israelis] were filming us while we were eating to show how ‘good’ they were treating us.” Durkay shared a cell with five other women, all “Welcome to Palestine” participants. Activists were kept separate from Givon’s other prisoners, undocumented migrant workers and African refugees. One of Durkay’s cell mates had severe diarrhea which, in some cases, can lead to dehydration and death, and was denied appropriate medical care for the first three days of their imprisonment. The woman saw a doctor and received anti-diarrheal medication on the fourth day, not long before the group was deported. “I think [the Israelis] are really scared of non-violent protests and international solidarity. They don’t know how to respond to it,” Durkay reflects, adding that immigration officials repeatedly told activists, “‘You’re just here to hurt our image. You just want to make us look bad.’” Durkay points out that what makes Israel looks bad is denying entry to activists who simply wish to visit Palestinians in the West Bank. She adds that it was “stupid” of the Israelis to send no-fly lists to European airlines because it shows that “the Israeli siege of the West Bank extends all the way to France.” “Instead of actually looking at the policies that people are criticizing, [the Israelis] say, ‘Oh, stop embarrassing us.’”
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