March 1993, Page 67

Arab-American Activism

By Catherine M. Willford

ADC Protests Arrest of Three Arab Americans by Israeli Authorities

On Jan. 25, two U.S. citizens from the Chicago area, Mohammed Jarad and Mohammad Salah, were arrested by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, while the men were visiting relatives in the West Bank. The Israeli government alleged that these men are high-ranking U.S. members of the radical Muslim group Hamas. The two, along with a third U.S. citizen, Mohammed Toufek Hajeh, who lives near Ramallah in the West Bank and was arrested separately and released Feb. 11, were not permitted to seek legal counsel while in detention, nor did Israeli authorities lodge formal charges against them.

U.S. consular officials were allowed access to the three American detainees only after they had been interrogated and allegedly had signed confessions—written in Hebrew. The detainees also were denied access to family members and physicians, leaving Jarad deprived of vital heart medication for over a week. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has condemned the arrests and called them "illegal and politically motivated to invoke fear about Arabs and Muslims.''

In justifying the arrests, Israeli officials told the media that the Dec. 17 expulsion across Israel's border with Lebanon of more than 400 Palestinian Muslims from the occupied territories had left the Hamas movement in disarray. The Palestinian Americans, Israeli officials charged, had traveled to the occupied areas to revitalize the Hamas infrastructure and to distribute funds collected for Hamas in the U.S.

As international pressure on Israel increased following the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 799, which demands the safe and immediate return of all those deported, the Israeli government escalated its rhetoric regarding Muslim activism. "Our struggle against murderous Islamic terror is also meant to awaken the world, which is lying in slumber," Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the Israeli Knesset. "Islamic fundamentalism is the real and serious danger which threatens the peace of the world in the coming years."

Amal Jarad, wife of one of the detainees, came to Washington, DC in early February to meet with State Department officials and her congressional representatives about her husband's case. At a Feb. 4 press conference organized by ADC, she described her feelings following these meetings.

"I thought that when you are an American citizen and you never do anything bad, you would be left alone to live your life the way you want," Mrs. Jarad said. ADC President Albert Mokhiber noted that the U.S.-Israeli Treaty of Friendship, Navigation and Commerce requires that due process be afforded all Americans regardless of religion or national origin.

"Had American Jews been taken by any Arab nation in this fashion, it would have been roundly condemned, and rightfully so," Mokhiber said. "We should not, and must not, use a double standard of human rights abuses."

Illinois Senator Paul Simon cabled Prime Minister Rabin following the senator's meeting with Mrs. Jarad and asked for her husband's release. On Feb. 7 Carl Chan, U.S. Embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv, said the State Department "protested against the delay in consular access and the condition of treatment'' in the case.

In a telephone interview with the Washington Report, Mrs. Jarad described Mohammed Jarad as a loving husband and father of six children who works hard managing a small grocery store in Chicago. Mrs. Jarad said her husband, as the only son in his family, had gone to Ramallah to settle the estate of his late father.

Relatives, describing her husband's arrest to her by telephone, said that the family home in Ramallah was surrounded by Israeli soldiers as Jarad was waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport for his flight home. Her husband has never been involved politically or otherwise with organizations overseas, Mrs. Jarad said.

"We will not be used to divert the eyes of the world as victims for political ends," said Mrs. Jarad, when asked about possible Israeli motives for the arrests. "We have never had or caused any trouble, and we will not be denied our human rights or our rights as U.S. citizens."

Arab Americans Call for Israeli Compliance with Resolution 799

Representatives of Arab-American organizations have denounced Israel's recent offer to repatriate 101 of the nearly 400 expelled Palestinians remaining in a tent camp just outside Israel's self-declared "security zone'' in southern Lebanon.

Calling the Israeli offer "inadequate," Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, asked the Clinton administration to "accept nothing less than full compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 799," which was unanimously approved with U.S. support on Dec. 18. "By sheltering Israel and allowing it to take this compliance-by-installment approach to U.N. resolutions, the administration damages its own credibility as well as the credibility of the United Nations,'' said Jahshan.

In a Feb. 1 op-ed in USA Today, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), warned that if the Rabin government refuses to take back the expellees, President Clinton will face an unavoidable early test of his leadership. U.S. support for a Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against Israel would complicate his fledgling administration's relationship with the Jewish state. If he seeks to prevent the Security Council from imposing sanctions, or vetoes them, the action would "compromise U.S. standing in the world body and antagonize the Arab parties to the peace talks."

Zogby cited ''the growing perception— and not just in the Arab world—that the U. N. has a double standard when it comes to enforcing resolutions." The world notes, Zogby wrote, ''enforcement is vigorous against Iraq, lax in the former Yugoslavia and non-existent when it comes to Israel.''

The AAI director urged the Israeli government not to test the resolve of the Clinton administration, but instead to offer a ''gift of good will" by fully complying with UNSC 799. "Rabin must understand that the issue is not, as he casts it, one of sanctions or veto," stated Zogby. " The issue is reverse the expulsions or derail the peace process."

ADC National Convention Scheduled for April

The Tenth Annual National ADC Convention, "Building Today for Tomorrow,'' is scheduled for the weekend of April 22-25 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The convention will feature panels on media criticism, education, legal issues, commerce and trade, Lebanese reconstruction and Palestinian statehood. Scheduled speakers to date include Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes," William Greider of Rolling Stone magazine, General Secretary Abdallah Dabbagh of the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce, and Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian delegate to the Middle East peace talks. For information and registration contact ADC at 4201 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC, 20008 or call (202) 244-2990.

Catherine M. Willford is the circulation director of the Washington Report.