Cross-Cultural Ties Complicate Campaign for Hostage’s Freedom

Nabil Razouk has footholds in many worlds: He is Jerusalem-raised, American-educated, a Palestinian with an Israeli passport and a European wife, a Christian who has spent most of his life among a Muslim majority.

But the 30-year-old Arab worker, seized this week by a group of Islamic insurgents in Iraq, seems in some ways like a man without a country -- or one at least whose allegiance and identity are matters of interpretation.

Now they are questions on which his safety may hinge.

His abduction highlights the limbo of conflicting loyalties in which many of Israel’s more than 1 million Arab citizens live. Razouk’s cross-cultural ties have always allowed him to move among many milieus but have complicated the campaign for his freedom waged by his frantic family, the Palestinian Authority, his Coptic church -- and, more discreetly, his American employer.

The fear is that Razouk’s captors suspect him of being an Israeli agent, based on Israeli documents he was carrying when he and another Arab were seized Monday.

“He is innocent of any crime,” said Razouk’s tearful 21-year-old sister, Lena, sequestered with her elderly, haggard-looking parents at their hillside home on Jerusalem’s outskirts. “He is not a spy. He went there to help the Iraqi people.”

Razouk, described as soft-spoken and serious, a basketball buff since adolescence, didn’t act much like an Israeli spy. His friends and family point out that an agent would be unlikely to carry an Israeli driver’s license and health-insurance card, even a discount card for an Israeli supermarket -- all shown on Iranian television, which carried the first footage of the captives.

Razouk’s family said he had been working in Iraq for three months -- first in Hillah, near the site of ancient Babylon, and more recently in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, a scene of conflict in recent days -- with a North Carolina-based company called Research Triangle International, or RTI. The company has a substantial U.S. government reconstruction contract.

In Iraq, people such as Razouk are in hot demand by U.S. contractors. In addition to his native Arabic, he is fluent in colloquial American English, thanks to his four years at Augusta State University in Georgia, where he received a business administration degree in 1996.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian street sentiment runs strongly against the American-led occupation of Iraq. More than a dozen angry protest rallies were held to mark the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

“May God give victory to our brothers in Iraq!” rang the cry from one Jerusalem mosque during Friday prayers. But upper-middle-class Palestinian families such as the Razouks generally have connections to the United States. Razouk’s many relatives in America include a brother in Sacramento, the family said.

Little is known about Razouk’s captors, a group called Ansar a-Din. But it is believed to be militantly anti-American and anti-Israel. For that reason, officials familiar with the case said, overt intercession by the U.S. or Israeli governments would probably do more harm than good.

Israel’s army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, told Israel’s Channel Two television station that his government was working behind the scenes to find out more about the case.

Israel has a long tradition of making strenuous efforts on behalf of citizens who find themselves in peril outside the country. The most recent example was the lopsided prisoner exchange that freed businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum from captivity by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

But an Israeli official said Razouk wasn’t regarded as someone the government would go to such lengths to repatriate. “He wasn’t traveling as an Israeli, and he wasn’t captured as an Israeli,” the official said. “So we can’t regard this as an Israeli affair.”

Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, by contrast, made a public appeal on Razouk’s behalf and was said to be engaged in mediation efforts.

“President Arafat has contacted our brothers in Iraq and other international bodies and friends ... to help in releasing two kidnapped Palestinians,” it said in a statement.

It was not known whether the other captured Arab had family ties in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, although reports said he also had an Israeli ID that allowed him to live there.

Reuters reported Thursday that the other Arab hostage had falsely identified himself and that the Canadian government had claimed him as a Syrian-born citizen named Fadi Ihsan Fadel.

Razouk’s Czech wife, Marketa, said that in addition to his Israeli papers, he had a Jordanian passport. Friday was the Muslim day of prayer, and Jordanian officials made no public statement on the situation.

Razouk’s sister said he had felt in no particular danger in Iraq. The two exchanged mundane daily e-mails, she said.

The Razouks, who have lived in Jerusalem for generations, are members of the Coptic minority, one of the smallest Christian denominations in the Holy Land.

As the Copts prepared to mark the Easter holiday, their archbishop took time during Good Friday rituals at the incense-scented Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem to call for Razouk’s release.

“He is one of ours, from our Palestinian community and our congregation,” said the archbishop, Anba Abraham, who is also the spiritual leader of the small Coptic Christian community in Iraq. “We pray he will return safely to us.”