Israeli airport "profiling" to end - Arab lawmaker
28 Feb 2007 20:08:03 GMT Source: Reuters
By Dan Williams JERUSALEM, Feb 28 (Reuters) - An Israeli Arab legislator has won a pledge from the country's domestic security chief to change airport screening procedures that often single out Arabs for tougher inspections than their Jewish fellow travellers. Security at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport has always been strict, but Arabs regularly complain of being subjected to ethnic "profiling" that can result in particularly intrusive questioning, extra searches of clothing or baggage, and delays. The issue has aggravated relations already deeply strained by more than six years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Nadia Hilou, an Arab parliament member from the centre-left Labour Party, said on Wednesday she had met Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet homeland security agency, to demand an end to selective screening. "I have no problem with protecting passengers, no matter what their race, as long as all the passengers, no matter what their race, undergo the same inspections," she told Reuters. Hilou said Diskin promised new electronic detectors would be installed at Ben-Gurion within six month that all passengers would pass through, and that they would be so effective in identifying potential hijackers as to virtually eliminate the need for individualised checks. NEW EQUIPMENT A Shin Bet source confirmed Hilou's account of the meeting, but described the planned new equipment as "a pilot programme". "There is a big effort under way to preserve the dignity of passengers, but of course security has to be preserved too," the source said. Arabs make up almost 20 percent of Israel's population, and while generally sympathetic to a Palestinian revolt in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, seldom take up arms against the Jewish state themselves. But dozens of Israeli Arabs have been jailed for complicity in Palestinian attacks that an Israeli aviation security veteran said stoked a sense of suspicion among Jews. The security veteran denied there was an official policy of singling out Arab passengers for extra scrutiny at Ben-Gurion, but said the practice was nonetheless commonplace. "Our security screeners are trained to look out for stress, and by the nature of the situation this can be registered among the most innocent of Arab passengers," he said. "Also, there is a sense in security circles that keeping up strict security vis-a-vis this community has a deterrent effect." Hilou acknowledged the statistical risk associated with Israeli Arabs but said it had become warped into collective punishment. "Why humiliate entire families or young women travellers, for example? It only means Israeli Arabs return home from abroad with an extra burden of resentment," she said.
