University employees tell how international sanctions kept their family apart
By KATE NAGENGAST
Associate News Editor
Joseph Araman, a captain for Notre Dame Security/Police, sat on the sofa in his home in South Bend with his 4-year-old daughter, Sarah. He was sweating.
"I'm sorry it's hot in here," Joseph said apologetically, gesturing toward the thermostat. "I get very upset when I talk about this problem."
The problem Joseph referred to began when his wife, Katerina Araman, who also works as an on-call monitor for Notre Dame Security/Police, traveled with Sarah to the West Bank Jan. 3 to attend her mother's funeral and visit relatives she had not seen since she immigrated to the United States from the West Bank in 1977. Katerina expected to return to South Bend on Feb. 12; however, when she tried to re-enter Israel from Jordan to fly home from the airport in Tel Aviv, she was held at the border. Israeli authorities denied her passport and claimed her American citizenship was invalid. Because Katerina had been a resident of the West Bank after 1967, she had violated Israeli law by not carrying Palestinian identification at all times.
The Consular Information Sheet for Israel, West Bank and Gaza that Katerina was given upon her detainment stated, "The Government of Israel requires all Palestinian Americans with current or past residency status in the West Bank or Gaza to obtain a transit permit to enter Israel from the West Bank or Gaza, including for departure via Ben Gurion airport [in Tel Aviv] … [They] may not be allowed to enter or exit Gaza or the West Bank."
Forbidden from leaving her deceased mother's home in Bir Zeit until she obtained a Palestinian passport and an exit visa from the Israeli Ministry, Katerina was trapped. To obtain a Palestinian passport she would have to travel to Gaza, a war-torn area geographically dislocated from the West Bank and surrounded by Israeli checkpoints. Katerina pleaded her case at the American Embassy and although the office could not eliminate her obligation to obtain the paperwork demanded by the Israeli authorities, the Embassy did connect her with the Red Cross as a means to transport the documents to Gaza on her behalf.
Seeking support
While his wife of 16 years and their youngest daughter were detained in the Middle East, Joseph spent two anxious and fearful weeks at home doing everything in his power — and then some — to bring them home safely.
"If he did not do all this here," said Katerina, "I would never get out of there."
Joseph found himself in a mess of phone numbers for possible contacts and assistants to those contacts in the Middle East, Washington, D.C. and even local government.
"First I thought, like any other sensible American would do, I should contact my congressman and senator," said Joseph. "You have this image that someone will swoop down and help you, but this was not the case at all."
Although he said the government officials were "very nice and compassionate," he needed more than their sympathy.
"I needed to drum up some support, so I got connected with a wonderful group in Washington, D.C. called Partners for Peace," said Joseph. "Actually two Notre Dame students [whose names he declined to give] connected me."
Partners for Peace tries to educate the American public about the conflict in the Middle East through current events. Thus, with the help of Jerri Bird, the organization's executive director, Joseph broadcast his story nationally through 28 different interviews for newspapers, television and radio — even the Associated Press and National Public Radio heard his story.
"In my heart I knew the American people would understand my plight because it's a human issue, naked from all the political views anyone has prior to understanding me," said Joseph.
After a brief scare on Feb. 28 when they were denied entry to Israel despite possessing the required papers, Katerina obtained an 8-hour exit visa and landed at the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. on March 2. There Joseph and the Araman sons, Nader, 14, and Tarek, 12, tearfully greeted their loved ones. Katerina's two brothers, both naturalized American citizens living in Cleveland also returned to the United States that day.
"Obviously there are some difficult situations for the Israeli people," said Joseph "But you cannot tell me that this woman and this little child were a threat to their security. The only reason they were holding them there was for collective punishment of the population. … They want to maintain a brutal occupation and break the spirit of the Palestinian people."
Reaching out for help
In 1964, when Joseph was still a little boy living in Jerusalem, Father Theodore Hesburgh paid a visit to his home for coffee. The Araman family lived near a plot of land in Tantur that Hesburgh was interested in purchasing as a site for Notre Dame's ecumenical and study abroad center.
"I remember my mom said to me, `You better behave yourself, we have a big important priest from America coming here to have coffee,'" said Joseph. "I said, `Hi Father. How are you?' and ran outside to play on my bicycle. I didn't know any better."
However, this was not the last time Joseph would encounter Hesburgh. Through a scholarship fund to assist Christians in the Middle East, Joseph and his older brother came to the United States as freshmen and graduated from Notre Dame in 1979 and 1973 respectively.
But Joseph's time at the University cost him his homeland. During each of his four years at Notre Dame he had to fly back to Israel to renew his 12-month transit permit — an expensive endeavor for any college student. "Eventually my status to re-enter Israel was denied so I could never go back and live there as a citizen. So I became an American citizen and I am happy," said Joseph. "It's good to be free, it's very good to be free."
When Katerina's freedom was in jeopardy this winter, her husband went back to the man whose influence originally freed him. Seeing Hesburgh's car parked in the Library Circle on Feb. 18, Joseph went up to the 13th floor to seek help from a man he described as "wonderful."
Joseph told Hesburgh of his wife's problem — and though Katerina told the South Bend Tribune she had never seen her husband cry before he greeted her at the airport in early March, he admits that he cried that afternoon on the top floor of the library.
"What Father Ted did specifically I'm not aware of," said Joseph. "But I'm sure he did a lot of things behind the scenes. … [He] is a generous and kind and loving person, and I'm sure he did whatever he could to help."
Looking at both sides
David Roet, deputy consul general of Israel to the Midwest, responded to both the Araman family's situation and the South Bend Tribune's coverage of the event with claims that Israel's security measures are valid and that the Israeli government is making genuine efforts toward peace.
"Under the current circumstances, with terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens within Israel itself … how can one blame Israelis for being cautions?" asked Roet in a South Bend Tribune "Letter to the Editor"that was published March 11.
Roet also wrote that Katerina and Sarah were at no moment "detained," "held hostage," "caught-up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," or "collectively punished" — he called these phrases inflammatory and incorrect.
The delay in Katerina obtaining the documentation she needed largely was due to a misunderstanding and cannot be blamed on any government, said Roet to the South Bend Tribune.
Others, however, who are not directly involved in the dilemma that the Araman family faced said it is not an unusual one for Americans, especially those of Arab origin or former residents of the West Bank or Gaza.
Despite the cancellation of this year's study abroad program in Jerusalem due to heightened violence in the West Bank and Gaza, a number of Notre Dame students have had the opportunity to travel and study in the Middle East since the opening of the Ecumenical Institute in Tantur in 1971.
Tim Bodony, a senior and a participant in last year's Jerusalem program, encountered problems when he attempted to travel between Jerusalem and Cyprus. Before he was permitted to board the plane, Bodony was subjected to intense interrogation and his suitcase was emptied so each item of clothing could be individually scanned with a metal detector, Bodony said.
"They repeatedly asked me where I had been in Israel and where I was going, and my answers never changed," said Bodony. "I looked around [the interrogation room] and noticed that indeed everyone in the room had similar features: dark hair, skin and eyes. … My American passport made no difference whatsoever."
"[The Israeli government's current security measures] are draconian, as they are with anyone `suspect,'" said Father David Burrell, director of Notre Dame's Jerusalem program.
Nathaniel Marx — a 2000 Notre Dame graduate who studied in Tantur during the spring of 1999 and now works as a public relations and program development volunteer with the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees — defined suspect as "all persons of Arab origin, especially Palestinians."
Often forced to answer "intense questioning"and "undergo humiliating searches,"Marx said, "This kind of behavior needs to be called for what it is — racist discrimination — not security. … [These searches] are the result of a long-standing policy of discrimination."
David and Goliath
Joseph disappeared into his kitchen and returned with a yellowed clipping from the South Bend Tribune that he keeps taped to his refrigerator. It's a photograph of a young, presumably Palestinian boy throwing stones at an Israeli tank headed toward him.
"This tank is demanding security," said Joseph. "But what about this little boy? Doesn't he deserve a peaceful place to live, to grow and learn, to travel?
"This happened to us because of our heritage and our ethnicity," he said. "We have a term for that in America and it is called racism. The Israelis do not see that. It certainly doesn't serve the cause of peace at all. … The issue is that our past, our history and who we are haunts us forever."
All News Stories for Thursday, April 5, 2001
