Arab U.S. Citizens : West Bank Has a ‘Little America’

There are no shopping centers or fast-food restaurants here, but in other ways, this is “Little America”--in the heart of what the Arabs still call Palestine.

According to former Mayor Youssef Ghannam, as many as half the residents of Deir Dibwan and of some of the smaller Palestinian villages nearby carry either an American passport or the so-called green card entitling them to permanent residence in the United States.

Ghannam said that Arabs from these villages, influenced by an early Quaker presence in neighboring Ramallah, have been emigrating to the United States to make their fortunes since the turn of the century.

High Standard of Living

Money earned in the United States and brought or sent back largely accounts for the relatively high standard of living here compared with that of most West Bank Arab villages. Some of the large, luxurious houses here would seem out of place in Beverly Hills only because of their distinctive architecture. The region’s economy is generally in the doldrums, but in this village, construction goes on almost everywhere.

Boys playing in the town square on a recent day--some of them from Lodi, Calif., Albuquerque, N.M., and Oregon--wore American-style T-shirts, jeans and baseball caps, and there were far more bicycles than in other West Bank villages.

All of this might seem to be the best of two worlds--the relative affluence of the United States mingled with the cultural anchor of an ancestral homeland. But according to Palestinian and diplomatic sources, new Israeli restrictions on the Palestinians’ movements are rapidly making the arrangement difficult.

Object of Discrimination

On April 9, an American consular officer formally protested to the Israeli Interior Ministry that Palestinian-Americans who want to return to the occupied territories as permanent residents are the object of discrimination.

American Jews are encouraged, through government subsidies and other incentives, to settle in the occupied territories, but Palestinian-Americans who were born here are routinely refused permanent resident status, according to the U.S. complaint.

Palestinian and diplomatic sources say that Israeli authorities are also clamping down on Palestinian-American tourists, insisting in some cases that the visitors leave their passports at the airport or post a cash bond as a guarantee that they will leave when their visas expire.

The sources add that visa violations once routinely ignored are now used as reasons to refuse re-entry to Palestinian-Americans, who cannot visit relatives here except as tourists.

The restrictions are not limited to the 130,000 or so Palestinian-Americans, who constitute the largest single group of Palestinians outside the Arab world. The vast majority of Palestinians living in Arab countries cannot come here under any circumstances.

Precise figures are unavailable, but diplomatic sources estimate that about 7,000 U.S. passport-holders live among the 800,000 Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank. About 1,000 of them have been refused the right to live here permanently or have come up against some other restriction, these sources said.

A spokesman for the Israeli administrator of the occupied territories said that “a few hundred” Palestinian-Americans have permanent resident status in the West Bank and that others are here either illegally or on visitor visas that must be renewed every three months.

The spokesman conceded that “we hardened a little bit our policy” regarding so-called family reunification cases and that “approvals . . . are given less and less.” According to official figures, 317 Palestinian requests for permanent residence status in the West Bank area were approved last year out of 2,937 filed, down from about 1,000 approvals the year before. Palestinians say they believe that even the figure of 317 is inflated.

Israeli ID Cards

Israel has controlled the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip ever since its troops captured the territories in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Three months after the victory, the occupation authorities took a census and issued Israeli identification cards to about 600,000 Arabs in the West Bank and 380,000 in the Gaza Strip. The cards entitled the holders and their children to permanent resident status.

As a humanitarian gesture, Israel established a procedure under which Palestinian residents who were not in the territories at the time of the census could apply for identification cards on grounds of wanting to be reunified with their families. Officials say that more than 50,000 Palestinians have obtained permanent resident status under this procedure.

“We think that the original aim of the policy was fulfilled, and today this reunification is another name for the request of foreigners to become West Bankers or Gazans,” the Israeli spokesman said. “We don’t know of other countries in the Free World, not to speak of Eastern Europe or other countries, where it is so easy to become a citizen.”

Question of Sovereignty

Those who regard the question of sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip as still unsettled find this a flawed argument, particularly since Israel continues to subsidize Jewish settlement of the territories.

Any Jew who claims Israeli citizenship is entitled to a subsidy and has the right to live in approved Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Israeli authorities consider that once Palestinians have taken the citizenship of another country, they have forfeited any right to residence here, even if they were born in the territories.

U.S. officials argue that, along with humanitarian considerations, the Palestinian-Americans who want to return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be a positive force in the area.

“These are basically moderate people,” a diplomatic source said. “They believe in democratic values. And they are people with money.”

Improving Quality of Life

Shmuel Goren, the Israeli administrator of the occupied territories, visited the United States earlier this year seeking $600 million in American aid to improve the “quality of life” for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But at the same time, diplomatic sources said, the authorities are refusing permanent-resident status to Palestinians who would invest in the region if they were permitted to come back.

Israeli officials cite security considerations to justify tight control over the movement of Palestinians, whether Americans or not, into the occupied territories. But Palestinian-Americans and some diplomatic sources attribute the changes to Israeli concern about demographic trends.

Including those in the occupied territories, Jews make up 65% of the population of “Greater Israel.” But the rate of Jewish immigration has declined sharply in recent years, and the birthrate among the Arab population is much higher than among the Jews. According to a recent forecast, if current trends continue, Jews could be a minority here within 30 years.

Gulf Jobs Fade Away

Meanwhile, economic and social trends are encouraging growth of the Arab population in the West Bank. The high-paying jobs in the Persian Gulf area, which used to lure Palestinians, have dried up along with the decline in oil prices.

Applications to return filed by Palestinians who left years ago are on the increase.

“Sons and daughters who went abroad in 1967 now want to come back to be with their aging parents,” said Mona Rishmawi, a Ramallah attorney specializing in human rights cases.

A Palestinian-American from nearby Turmus Aiya, who preferred to be identified only as Richard because of what he called the danger of Israeli harassment, said: “In America, we believe that when our children get to be teen-agers, they will be lost--to gangs, drugs and so on. So we want to return them here for their education.”

Richard, who emigrated to the United States in 1955 and acquired U.S. citizenship seven years later, has a wife and two teen-age children here, but he said he can travel back and forth only as a tourist. His wife, who is also an American citizen, stays here illegally, he said, adding, “She’s a hide-in.”

Petition to U.S. Consulate

Richard was among 100 residents of Turmus Aiya, all holders of U.S. passports, who recently petitioned the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to persuade the Israeli authorities to grant them visas for longer than the standard three months. He said there has been no reply.

An Israeli spokesman said that unless there is a security problem, tourist visas for these Palestinian-Americans are renewed routinely. But Palestinian and diplomatic sources said there has recently been an increase in rejections. There has also been an increase, they said, in the number of would-be Palestinian tourists turned back at the airport and at the frontier with Jordan because they had overstayed an earlier visa.

Last fall, these sources said, the occupation authorities ordered that no children be permitted to enter the first grade in West Bank public schools unless their parents have Israeli documents as permanent residents. The rule excluded about 400 Palestinian youngsters, 60% of them holders of U.S. passports, because their parents have only tourist visas.

The order was reversed after U.S. officials intervened.

‘Very Foolish Mistake’

The Israeli spokesman confirmed the incident but called it “a mistake--a very foolish mistake, if I may say so--of one of our junior officials.” He said the official was “an Arab, by the way, in the education office in Ramallah, and after our attention was called to it, the decision was reversed.”

Palestinian and diplomatic sources said a similar order was issued in the mid-1970s. It too was reversed after American intervention.

Despite the school incident, Palestinian-Americans here say it is a rare occasion when they get any help from the U.S. government. They see Washington as biased in favor of Israel and unwilling to stand up on their behalf.

Their U.S. passports, they say, do them no good in the West Bank. And they say they are sometimes treated with even more contempt than other Palestinians. A 17-year-old said that twice when he was stopped for an identification check and showed his American passport, the Israeli soldiers “threw it in the garbage” and called him names.

A Palestinian-American who would identify himself only as Abdullah said: “To us, an American passport was a way to make a living, and secondly a way to have a free country. But now it’s not serving any purpose at all. We’re the forgotten Americans.”