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The Allenby border crossing, where Jordanian judge Raed Zueter was killed by IDF fire earlier in March. Photo by Lior Mizrahi
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Shin Bet barred 1,463 from crossing into Jordan in July, says Palestinian police.

By Amira Hass | Aug. 19, 2014 | 12:08 PM | for Haaretz

The Shin Bet security service has been preventing thousands of Palestinians from leaving the West Bank since June, without any explanation.

According to Palestinian police data, Israel barred 1,463 Palestinians from crossing into Jordan in July, or 2.1 percent of the approximately 68,000 who sought to leave. That is more than the total barred from leaving in all of 2013 – 1,266, or 0.18 percent of the approximately 695,000 who sought to do so.

The refusal rate rose again in the first week of August, when 924 Palestinians were denied exit – 3.25 percent of the 28,348 who sought to leave. In June, the refusal rate was 1.41 percent, while for the first five months of 2014, it was just 0.17 percent, according to the Palestinian police.

The Allenby Bridge into Jordan is the only route by which West Bank Palestinians can travel abroad, since Israel has barred them from flying through Ben-Gurion International Airport since 2000.

The Shin Bet hasn’t publicized its criteria for deciding whom to bar. But many of those turned back at the Jordan border have been students, academics and others who live or work abroad but spent summer vacations in the West Bank. When they sought to leave, they were told they couldn’t, “for security reasons.” Yet none have been arrested, questioned or summoned for interrogation.

Those who tried to leave in July were told the ban would be in place until August 1. But when they checked back in August, they were told it had been extended until September 1.

An Israeli source said the Shin Bet’s blacklist contains at least 27,000 names.

In June, Palestinians up to 50 years old from the Hebron area were not allowed to leave their area for two weeks, due to the search for three kidnapped Israeli teens and their killers. Israel suspected a Hamas cell from Hebron of perpetrating the kidnapping and focused its search for the bodies in the Hebron area.

The Palestinian police data shows that many of those barred from leaving in June were from the Hebron area. But in July, the blacklist was expanded to encompass people from throughout the West Bank.

Haaretz was unable to secure an explanation of the blacklist. The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories referred questions on the matter to the Shin Bet, while the Shin Bet declined to respond. But earlier this week, COGAT officials told Hanna Barag, an activist in the Israeli organization Machsom Watch, that the sweeping ban would be lifted later in the week.

Barag said she was contacted by dozens of Palestinians who were barred from leaving over the past two weeks. Others contacted Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, which termed the ban illegal collective punishment.

“It’s not clear what security purpose is served by this sweeping ban,” Hamoked executive director Dalia Kerstein wrote in a letter to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Moreover, she wrote, “The order to impose it ... was never published, as required [by law].”

B., 34, is a journalist from a media outlet affiliated with the Palestinian Authority. He said he regularly obtains permits to enter Israel, has never been arrested, isn’t active in any political organization and has never before been barred from leaving the West Bank. Yet two weeks ago, when he sought to fly to Europe to receive an award for his journalistic work, he was turned back at the Allenby Bridge, plane ticket and all. One of his five traveling companions was also turned back, as were 12 other people on the bus he arrived on, he said.

Barag managed to obtain permission for 12 of the Palestinians who contacted her to leave, including an artist who works in Norway and had vacationed in the West Bank, a doctor who had gotten a job in the United States and a mathematician who received a scholarship to study in Europe.

“These people sounded desperate,” she said. “They had missed flights, lost money and were in danger of losing a job or a scholarship.”

Many Palestinians said they thought the sweeping ban was simply an act of revenge for the war in Gaza that erupted in July.

Asked for data on how many Palestinians were denied exit, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman referred Haaretz to the Israel Airports Authority. But the authority said this data could only be obtained from either the Interior Ministry or the Shin Bet.