Targeted Exclusion at Israel's External Border Crossings
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Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Pomona Senior Theses Pomona Student Scholarship 2016 Banned from the Only Democracy in the Middle East: Targeted Exclusion at Israel’s External Border Crossings Alexandra Goss Pomona College Recommended Citation Goss, Alexandra, "Banned from the Only Democracy in the Middle East: Targeted Exclusion at Israel’s External Border Crossings" (2016). Pomona Senior Theses. Paper 166. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/166 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Pomona Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pomona Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Goss 1 Banned from the Only Democracy in the Middle East: Targeted Exclusion at Israel’s External Border Crossings Alexandra Goss Readers: Professor Heidi Haddad Professor Zayn Kassam In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts in International Relations at Pomona College Pomona College Claremont, CA April 29, 2016 Goss 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements........................................................................................................4 Chapter 1: Introduction...............................................................................................5 I. Israel: State of Inclusion; State of Exclusion................................................5 II. Background of the Phenomenon...................................................................9 a. The Banning of US Citizens form Israel’s External Borders................9 b. The US and Israel’s Close Relationship..............................................12 III. The Legalizing of Jewishness: Israel as an Ethnocracy...............................14 a. Defining “Who is a Jew?”......................................................................14 b. Jewishness within the Law.....................................................................17 IV. Israeli Border Practices within the History of its Border, Theories of Sovereignty and the Concept of Border “Inscription”..........................19 a. The Creation of Israel’s “Borders”........................................................19 b. Exclusion Through Border Inscription...................................................21 V. Potential Explanatory Factors for Israel’s Border Practices........................25 a. Targeting of Identity Groups at the External Israeli Border Crossings..26 b. Geopolitical Rivalry with the US...........................................................28 c. The Use of Stealth Authoritarian Practices............................................28 VI. Methods........................................................................................................30 VII. Limitations...................................................................................................31 VIII. Thesis Structure............................................................................................32 Chapter 2: The Scope of the Phenomenon................................................................34 I. An Unexamined Phenomenon.....................................................................34 II. Demographics: Who, Where, When and Why?..........................................36 a. Who? Nationalities of those Denied......................................................36 b. Where Individuals were Denied............................................................39 c. When Individuals were Denied.............................................................39 d. Why?: Possible Reasons for Denial......................................................40 III. Overview of Interviewees...........................................................................42 Chapter 3: Targeted Exclusion...................................................................................51 I. Defining “Identity Group” in the Context of this Study..............................52 II. The Target Exclusion of Identity Groups at the External Israeli Border Crossings......................................................................................................53 III. Palestinian Americans and Arab Americans Denied from the External Israeli Border Crossings................................................................................59 a. US Acknowledgement of the Phenomenon...........................................66 b. Guilt by Association...............................................................................68 c. The Palestinian as the “Objective Enemy”.............................................71 IV. The Denial of Muslim Americans at the External Israeli Border Crossings.......................................................................................................74 a. The Threat of Islam: A Conflation of Identity........................................77 V. The Denial of Black Americans....................................................................79 Goss 3 a. The Position of Non-White Jews............................................................81 b. The Exclusion of Jews from Israel.........................................................85 VI. The Denial of US Activists..........................................................................87 a. Activists as a Population for Targeted Exclusion..................................106 VII. The Potential for Geopolitical Tit-for-Tat...................................................110 Chapter 4: Inscribing Borders Through Stealth Authoritarianism........................117 I. Background on Stealth Authoritarianism.....................................................118 II. Discretion and Selective Enforcement in Israeli Border Administration.....120 a. Israel’s Constitution...............................................................................121 b. Lack of Clarity in Israeli Border Administration...................................121 c. Selective Enforcement and Phantom Sovereignty.................................126 III. Increased Standardization as a Tool of Stealth Authoritarianism................127 IV. The Effects of Stealth Authoritarianism: Difficulty in Redress...................134 a. The Role of Confusion in Preventing Routes of Redress.......................130 b. The US’s Role in Preventing Redress....................................................140 V. Conclusion....................................................................................................146 Chapter 5: Conclusion.................................................................................................147 I. Results: Centering Palestinian Experiences in the Context of my Data......148 II. Stealth Authoritarianism and Ethnocracy in Israeli Policies and Law.........149 III. Border Regimes in an Increasingly Globalizing World...............................152 IV. A Practical Border Model? ..........................................................................155 V. Conclusion....................................................................................................157 Works Cited..................................................................................................................161 Appendix A: Dataset.....................................................................................................174 Appendix B: Documents...............................................................................................183 Goss 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank first and foremost Professor Heidi Haddad, Professor Zayn Kassam and Professor Dan Segal for their continual support in my research even in its nascent stages. I would also like to thank Professor Heather Williams for her help and guidance. I would like to thank Kara Placeck for lending her ear and expertise in statistical analysis. I would also like to thank Mimi Goss for her support and lending hand. I would like to thank all my interviewees for their openness with me and willingness to reflect on a potentially traumatic moment in their lives— and even find some humor along the way. I would finally like to thank those who felt too uncomfortable to be named in tangent with this research. I look in hope to the future where the subject of equal treatment under the law may be explored without fear. Goss 5 Chapter 1: Introduction He who has been banned is not, in fact, simply set outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandoned by it, that is, exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become indistinguishable. –Giorgio Agamben1 I. Israel: State of Inclusion; State of Exclusion On July 5, 2015, I was traveling from Amman, Jordan to Jerusalem. I got on a bus at Abdali Station in Amman at 7 a.m. We arrived around 8:30 a.m. at the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge border crossing that is the gateway to Jerusalem and the West Bank. At the border I underwent eight hours of waiting and questioning until I was finally presented with a “Decision Concerning Denial of Entry According to the Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952” in which I was denied entry to Israel for “prevention of illegal immigration considerations.” The exact implications of this denial are unclear, even within the text of the law officially published on September 5, 1952.2 However, one thing was made overwhelmingly clear: I was banned from the country for five years. This event did not occur in a vacuum.