clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Legal rights group: Palestinian citizens routinely humiliated at Israeli airports

September 20, 2016 at 1:45 pm

Palestinian citizens routinely face humiliating and degrading treatment at the hands of Israeli airport security personnel, a legal rights group has claimed.

In a letter to the Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and Israel Airports Authority (IAA) Director General, Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel urged a halt to “the illegal practices of strip searching and forcing security escorts on Arab passengers in the airport.”

Adalah’s letter included three demands; to direct airport security personnel to act only in strict accordance with their legal authority; halt all practices in which passengers are required to strip or be escorted through the airport by security personnel; and establish a mechanism allowing fair and just compensation for those harmed by these illegal practices.

The IAA, in response to the initial letter, rejected “any attempt to claim that, during the course of security procedures at Ben-Gurion Airport, there are employed any improper practices including stripping passengers and/or obligating them to be escorted by security guards following the conclusion of the security procedures they are required to undergo.”

According to the Haifa-based legal centre: “For years, Israeli airlines’ security personnel have made a practice of frequently humiliating Arab passengers, requiring strip searches during check-in and security escorts throughout airport facilities until passengers board their flight.”

Adalah Attorney Fady Khoury claims that “the Israel Airports Authority is denying the multiple accounts by individuals testifying to use of these practices – including stripping Arab passengers and escorting them to their planes – by its security personnel, and also chooses to ignore the central charge in our letter which holds that these practices lack all legal basis.”