U.S. Backers of Palestinian Cause Protest Their Treatment by Israel

Kristen Schurr had just come home with an Israeli deportation notice freshly stamped in her U.S. passport, an unexpected souvenir of a trip that landed her in an Israeli prison after 10 days inside the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Schurr claimed that she was assaulted by Israeli soldiers, jailed for a week without charges and forced to fly home without most of her belongings, including filmed records of her experience with about 150 Palestinians and nine fellow foreign “peace workers” who were holed up with little food or water inside the ancient basilica.

But she would very much like to go back, and in a news conference here Saturday she urged other Americans to follow her example. “I think that if more people here really knew what was happening there, they wouldn’t be so supportive of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon,” she said.

Schurr, a 33-year-old doctoral student and self-described peace worker, is one of a small minority of non-Arab Americans who have embraced the Palestinian cause. She traveled to the West Bank two months ago under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement, which organizes nonviolent protest actions against Israeli policies there.

Most of its members are Europeans, but Schurr’s predominantly American contingent scored one of the movement’s biggest coups this month by sneaking into the church during the 39-day showdown between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen there.

To Israelis, these pro-Palestinian visitors are an irksome annoyance at best, and at worst a serious security risk, as officials contemplate the political consequences of European or American casualties in places that can quickly become free-fire zones. To Palestinians, though, they are enthusiastically welcomed as proof of international support.

Limited Effect in U.S.

In the United States, the homegrown Palestinian solidarity movement has had limited political effect so far, acknowledged Adam Shapiro, a movement leader who joined Schurr at the news conference Saturday. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, and in Congress pro-Israeli sentiment runs even higher.

Shapiro’s parents received death threats after he appeared in news broadcasts worldwide as a spokesman for the foreign activists who had joined Yasser Arafat in his blockaded Ramallah headquarters. His father, a math teacher, was fired last week from a part-time job at a private Jewish academy in what the family believes was a reprisal for his son’s political activity, he said.

“I’ve been called a traitor; I’ve been called a ‘Jewish Taliban,’” Shapiro said.

But the publicity surrounding their recent endeavors has made it easier to recruit Americans for solidarity missions to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they say. In the last few weeks alone, they have recruited 30 volunteers in Michigan, 50 in San Francisco and 200 in New York, all of whom hope “to work against the occupation” in the Palestinian territories this summer, Shapiro said.

When the Manger Square standoff finally ended, the armed men inside the church--some from Palestinian Authority security forces, others from local militias--were expelled to Gaza and, for 13 whose ultimate fate still appears unclear, to Cyprus.

Only the foreign activists were taken into Israeli custody. “I was never arrested; I was never charged with anything,” Schurr said Saturday.

Five Americans in the group remain in Israeli custody in the Ramle prison outside Tel Aviv, according to Israeli press reports, relatives and movement spokesmen here. Most were detained by the Israeli army in Bethlehem’s Manger Square on May 2, after they deliberately distracted troops to let Schurr and nine colleagues sneak into the cordoned-off church with food.

Several still in jail are now on a hunger strike, protesting what they consider to have been their illegal capture by Israeli forces in Palestinian-governed central Bethlehem. But relatives and movement associates say that the only obstacle preventing the Americans’ release is their refusal to accept an Israeli deportation order. They are demanding written assurances from Israel that they will be able to return to the West Bank, which can be reached only from Israel, or through an Israeli-controlled border crossing from Jordan.

“The Israelis say they are free to go,” said Neil Musselman, the father of 24-year-old Nathan Musselman, who has been fasting in protest for 13 days. But after three years of postgraduate Arabic studies at a West Bank university, Nathan Musselman “hopes to return to the area to work for peace,” his father said in a telephone interview from the family’s Roanoke, Va., home.

Another jailed member of the group, Trevor Baumgartner, was released from custody by the Israelis on Friday, reportedly after falling ill from a prolonged fast, and arrived at his Seattle home Saturday, according to colleagues.

“They haven’t broken any rules or laws within Israel, and there is no legal reason that they should be deported by Israel,” Shapiro said.

But the pro-Palestinians readily admit to activities calculated to make them unwelcome in Israel, such as handing out Hebrew- language leaflets to Israeli soldiers that call on them to refuse service in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Shapiro met recently with his congressman, Anthony D. Weiner, whose Brooklyn district was previously represented by Charles E. Schumer, New York’s staunchly pro-Israel senior senator. It didn’t go well.

“He just wanted to lecture me on how misguided I am,” Shapiro said.