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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06295/731748-109.stmForum: Deporting hope
If Israel kicks out people like Sam Bahour, there is little prospect of peace with the Palestinians, says ZIV RAGOWSKY, a former Israeli soldier now living in Pittsburgh
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Sam Bahour was the first Palestinian I ever really talked to. I had spoken to many Palestinians before, especially when I was a young officer in the Israeli army, operating in the occupied territories while defending my country, my family and my wife-to-be.
But Sam was the first Palestinian I really got to know. And knowing Sam, I was surprised and confused when I recently heard that he was to be deported by Israel from his Ramallah home in the West Bank.
I got to know Sam while I was attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An undergraduate student who was disillusioned with how the politicians and warmongers had mishandled the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, I was looking for a way to help resolve the long, complicated conflict that continues to claim the innocent lives of my countrymen and our occupied neighbors.
I chose to study business, based on what I'd learned as I left the terror and checkpoints behind: One cannot force reconciliation on religions, or on nationalistic ideologies, but one can create the conditions for reconciliation by helping people to prosper, to improve their situation. Business, I believed, was a tool to deliver prosperity and possibly peace.
I decided to explore my theory -- which I do not claim as original -- in a senior seminar class. Looking for business people touched by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I found Sam's name and gave him a call in the West Bank, keying in the same first few numbers as I would for my family and friends in Israel.
Sam Bahour, I would soon learn, is a devoted husband and father of two beautiful girls. He is an American citizen, raised in Youngstown, Ohio. He felt the Oslo accords offered new hope for his people, so he left everything in the United States and returned to his family home in Ramallah.
His parents must have been as anxious about him leaving the United States and moving to the Israeli occupied territories as my parents were about me leaving an American university to serve in the Israeli army.
For my thesis, I spoke with Sam about Palestinian businessmen and their view of the conflict. I shared with him my interviews with Israeli business people. After talking to him and synthesizing other information, I completed my thesis and graduated.
This past summer, before moving to Pittsburgh to start a new job, I visited my family in Israel and decided to meet Sam in person.
I must say that I was a little tense standing at the checkpoint on the Palestinian side while waiting for him to pick me up. Then he arrived -- a tall, balding man who spoke with an impeccable American accent, and my apprehension broke down.
We spent the day touring Ramallah. At times he asked if I was familiar with the places he was showing me, to which I replied, "Yes, I was in some of these places as a soldier in uniform with a loaded weapon." We even passed the Mokata, the compound where Yasser Arafat spent his last days. At one point, my military unit had orders to conquer the place.
Like many other foreign nationals with Palestinian roots who returned home to build a Palestinian economy and, they hoped, a Palestinian state, Sam is seen as a Westerner. He received his MBA from Tel Aviv University, which partners with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He sees the world through pretty much the same eyes as you or I, and he believes in a national home for his people, much as I believe in a national home for mine.
Sam managed the construction of the first mall and supermarket in the occupied territories. When he finished, Palestinian activists asked him not to sell any Israeli products. Knowing that he would not be able to compete if he did, he chose a different route: He still carried Israeli products but put Palestinian goods on perpetual "sale" to support the nascent Palestinian economy.
Sam also was instrumental in the creation of the Palestinian Telecommunications Co. and Internet network, and he now is, among other things, a managing partner at Applied Information Management. Overall, his businesses contribute 2,000 jobs to a fragile Palestinian economy that suffers 80 percent unemployment.
Sadly, with the political sands in the area continuing to shift and with no clear positive leadership from either side, Israel has initiated Kafkaesque measures to prevent foreign passport holders in the West Bank and Gaza from staying in the territories.
For 13 years, Sam has been leaving every three months to renew his tourist visa, after applying for permanent residency to no avail. Sam now has been told that he can no longer renew his visa, leaving him the choice to become an illegal resident in his own city or be deported away from his Palestinian wife and family.
This visa crackdown will do most harm to people like Sam, the people who do the most to bring stability along the Israeli-Palestinian divide. As an Israeli who has firsthand familiarity with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and who is deeply concerned about the safety and future of my family and friends, I fear for the region if it loses people like Sam. I am worried that all the hard work he and people like him have done to bring prosperity and peace to the Palestinian people will go for naught.
As a man who knows Sam and admires his wonderful work in the territories, I am saddened to see his life effort, hundreds of jobs and prospects for peace in danger of ruin due to a thoughtless administrative action.
