Monday, September 10, 2001 Elul 22, 5761 Israel Time: 01:09 (GMT+3)
Cry for help
Rights of passage
H. is a member of the most persecuted minority in the Middle East: homosexual Palestinians. Four of them have been murdered in the past year and hundreds have fled into Israel for fear of meeting a similar fate. H. is hiding in Tel Aviv with his American companion, and there is no one to protect him - no country will grant him a visa and all the human rights organizations are helpless
By Vered Levy-Barzilai
The first four weeks went by without a hitch. H.'s Muslim family bought the basic story: The American guest, A., who came with H. to their home in the village, is a banker who is married to an Israeli Arab woman. They met in New York and became friends. Now the American friend is in Israel on business, and H. decided to invite him to stay with them so he could experience Palestinian village life in the West Bank.
A. received a royal welcome. It's not every day that an American tourist comes to the village, and especially in these dangerous times. The father of the family - a pious Muslim who used to be the muezzin in the mosque and called the faithful to prayer five times a day, and who is known for his gruff, hot-tempered character - was astonished at the guest's courage and treated him with great deference. H.'s mother, brothers and sisters constantly hovered around him. His every wish was fulfilled immediately; food and drink were served at every opportunity.
H.'s family is well established and a pillar of the village community. Dozens of dunams of land and several houses are registered in the father's name. The two young men stayed in an empty house, which was in fact H.'s future home. There, in the seven rooms of the house, they enjoyed complete privacy. They were happy. At last they could rest a little from the ordeals they had endured in Tel Aviv - from the constant harassment of the police, the arrests, the humiliations and the ever-present fear that their secret would be discovered.
But as the weeks passed in the village, H.'s father and brother gradually became suspicious. The door of their house was closed for too many hours a day. When they finally did emerge, they never left each other's side. There was no sign of the American's wife: no phone calls, no letters, nothing.
The father started to ask questions. What is it with your friend? Doesn't he have to go back to his wife? And what about the bank in New York? He's been here a month already, why doesn't he go back to his job?
One of H.'s younger brothers, who is mixed up with drugs and is not entirely stable, was the first to catch on. He went up to H. and grabbed him by his shirt collar. "Inta loti," he said straight to his face: You're a homo. H. shook himself free and denied any such thing.
"Have you gone crazy? How can you say something like that? Where do you get the gall?" But the brother didn't relent. You're gay, he hurled at him again, and you are desecrating the honor of the family. Bringing your fag friend to father's house. I will deal with you, he threatened, I won't let you dishonor us all.
H. felt the earth shaking beneath him. To be known as a "loti" in the village was tantamount to being condemned to death. He had no doubt that if the accusation were presented to his father as a fact, he himself would liquidate his son with his own hands. H. tried to buy a little time, vehemently denying the suspicion and insisting over and over that he and the tourist were no more than friends. Any other conclusion was a filthy lie.
Because the younger brother was not considered mentally balanced, his suspicions were at first not taken seriously. But then H.'s father also began to notice signs. H.'s rebelliousness against conventions that were ironclad rules in the house. His refusal to marry. They had a terrific match for him, a wonderful girl, a house on his father's land, the engagement was valid. Yet, at the last minute, the prodigal son canceled it all without offering a reasonable explanation. He was then 24, by all accounts mature enough to marry and have children.
Now, his father reflected, he was already 28 and still a bachelor. A few more days went by. The drug-addict brother was in Tel Aviv that week, and from there he called H. on his mobile phone: I will come home and waste you, he warned him. Get out of Father's house. You are desecrating the honor of the family. I will never forgive you. According to the Koran I have to liquidate both of you.
H. still denied everything, his brother vented curses, and finally H. turned off the phone.
The next morning, H. found a letter under the front door of the house. It was from the local Muslim council and looked like a document issued by the Palestinian Authority. H. knew at once what was up. At the request of someone from his family, the religious circles were ostracizing him. In practical terms, this meant that he was a marked man: From now on, anyone who killed him would not be punished. In such cases, the religious circles behind the letter also make sure that its existence is known far and wide.
Within a few days the rumors are flying. Whoever takes it on himself to save the honor of the family and the village by doing away with the sinner/s will be considered to have performed a commandment.
The document is replete with citations from the sacred texts, including detailed suggestions for carrying out the death sentence: stoning, dropping the person from a high cliff, burning, strangling and other forms of killing.
Documents of this kind are sent to Palestinians who are suspected of collaborating with Israel; to a woman who is suspected of committing adultery; and to a loti (from the biblical Lot, who was from Sodom), or a male who is suspected of maintaining sexual relations with another male.
A few days later, the younger brother returned home; wielding a knife, he laid an ambush for H. and his American friend. The mother also got involved, on the side of the assailant. A neighbor who was summoned to break up the brawl also supported the younger brother.
The twosome succeeded in getting away and that same day, entered Israeli territory. On the way, they used a mobile phone to call friends, one of whom agreed to give them refuge in his apartment in Tel Aviv. Now, two months later, they are wandering about in Israel, from one "safe house" to another.
A. sometimes goes out to get some air, but H. doesn't dare show his face outside even for a second. He is in Israel without a permit. He has already had some previous run-ins with the police during the two years when he lived with his companion in a rented flat in south Tel Aviv, until they decided to try their luck in his father's house in the West Bank. Every few weeks, H. was picked up by the police; once it happened when they were sitting on the beach, another time in the course of a walk along Dizengoff Street. A. would show his American passport and be sent on his way. H. almost always got some sort of beating.
If the policemen saw them holding hands, or embracing on a bench in the street, he would also hear that he was a "dirty homo," a "stinking Arab" and the like. There were a few times when he was made to drop his trousers for a rectal search. On other occasions, the interrogation would terminate with a punch in the face. Until he was finally taken into detention. Usually, when that happened, someone would show up at the detention facility in the middle of the night, place him in a vehicle and drive him to one of the checkpoints on the Green Line, where he would be dumped, bruised and hurting, at the threshold of the Palestinian Authority.
Strange as it may sound, if he was arrested, H. preferred to remain in an Israeli prison, because in the area controlled by the PA, he was as good as dead. He would never be able to return to his village. But his life was in immediate danger everywhere in Palestinian territory.
A., 33, and H., 28, met on the sea shore two and a half years ago and fell in love instantly. A, an American Christian who is a broker in New York, visited Israel five times in the past 11 years and gradually made many friends in the country. In 1998, he was in Israel for an extended stay, working for part of the time as a reception clerk in one of the seafront hotels. He had just broken up with a partner and felt that his life had reached a turning point.
The two recall their first meeting with tears in their eyes.
A.: "I was sitting on the boardwalk, on the beach, it was sunset, and I was thinking about my life. Nine months had passed since I came to Israel [on that trip]. What next? I asked myself. Where do I take my life from here? I sat there and gazed at the sea."
H.: "I was walking on the beach and I saw a guy sitting on a bench. Not seeing, not hearing, nothing. I stood behind him and watched him. Then I saw his face. A few minutes passed like that. I didn't say a word. I see him, he doesn't see me. We hadn't yet spoken a word. But I felt that I knew him. As though I knew him from before. And my heart felt that it was growing bigger and bigger, I didn't know what was happening. I don't know, I swear to you, to this day I don't understand it."
A.: "It was love at first sight. There is no doubt about it. It was strong in a way that is hard for us to explain."
H.: "After three days, we embraced once. I put my head on his chest and I said in Arabic, `Ana bahibak.' It just came out, I don't know how. I didn't say it in English, I was afraid he would understand. I didn't believe it came out of me."
A.: "But I understood right away. Who doesn't know what `ana bahibak' means? I asked him, `What? What did you say?' Nothing, he said, nothing, not a thing. I told him, `I love you.'"
"I have no connection with the Muslim faith," H. says. "I have known that since I was young. I would break the fast during Ramadan and my father would beat me. But it didn't do him any good."
Were you a rebel?
H.: "Yes. I brought friends home - Jews, Christians, Israeli Arabs. Everything I did bothered him. He is very religious. You can't talk to him, it's all just `Mohammed said this, Mohammed said that.'"
Did you every try to have a heart-to-heart talk with him?
"Many times. I told him to talk to me like a friend, to open his heart for me. But nothing helped. He would humiliate me again, hit me. He did things to me that I will never be able to forget. What really got him angry was when I said I would not get married. He said, `You can't live here like that, what will people say about you?'"
What does it mean for someone like your father, a pious Muslim, to find out that he has a gay son?
"For him, it is the end of the world."
When did you know you were gay?
"At the age of 17. How? I don't know. I knew. I would think about boys, not girls."
And before A., did you have a romantic attachment with a boy?
"Not really. Just a bit, for a short time. I knew that two men could do it, but I didn't know about love. I didn't know it was possible to live together, like that. I didn't know anything."
If you were to go to your father today and put your cards on the table, what do you think would happen?
"He would kill me on the spot. With his own hands. That's the truth. That is his religion - what can I do?"
It's your religion, too.
"No. I have nothing to do with it. I haven't felt like a Muslim for a long time. There is nothing left of that."
A. kicks him under the table and reminds him of something. They laugh.
H.: "When we were in the village, in the house, we would be hugging and kissing and we would hear the muezzin calling people to prayer, and he would say, `Don't touch me now.' But that is not from religion, it is just from habit. It's not that I am afraid that God will do something to me, really not."
If one of your unmarried sisters was to sleep with a man, what would you do?
"I would tell her to pack up and get out, don't stay in this house."
But your brothers would want to kill her, wouldn't they?
"Yes, for sure."
And you?
"Not me, I would tell her to get away from here, fast."
And if they tried to kill her, would you defend her?
"No. I wouldn't get involved. I would let them handle the problem."
But they would kill her, right?
"What can I do? If I would help her, they would kill me, too."
What kind of relations did you have with your mother?
"Not good. Of all the children, she didn't love me. I don't know why. She has a hard time, always afraid of my father. He is nervous, he behaves like a sheikh in the house. He always humiliated me, but she never protected me. We weren't close. I don't know why. She loves my sisters, not me."
Did you ever have it good at home?
"No, that was no life for me. What I have is love."
Since then they have been together. At first they were very naive and optimistic. They made plans emotionally for a life together in the United States, where they would be able to live as a couple. A. didn't imagine that he would encounter any special problems about bringing his beloved with him. If there is one country in the world that recognizes same-sex love, he thought, and where they would be received with open arms, it was his homeland, the cradle of democracy, freedom and equality - the United States of America.
But a very different answer awaited them at the American embassy in Tel Aviv. The police immigration official told them that, with all due respect for A.'s American citizenship, H. is a Palestinian who is a resident of the Palestinian Authority, his prospect of receiving a landed- immigrant's visa were very poor, and in any event, the embassy in Tel Aviv couldn't handle his case, he had to apply to the American consulate in East Jerusalem.
They went to Jerusalem and were received courteously. However, to their surprise, it turned out that H. did not meet even one of the criteria for receiving any sort of visa to enter the United States. He couldn't have a tourist visa because he wanted to immigrate (they didn't even think of hiding that fact from the authorities); he couldn't be issued a landed-immigrant visa because he had no relatives in the U.S.; he wasn't entitled to a temporary work permit because he didn't have a letter from an American firm requesting his professional services (he makes a living as a house painter and handyman when he can find work).
As a Palestinian, he had to be at least married and with a house or property registered to his name, for his request to be considered at all. He had no academic degree, no regular job, no paychecks to show. All he had to offer was his love for A. and his declared desire to remain by his side for the rest of his life, though this did not make a major impression on the American legations in Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem.
Having no choice, A. went back to the United States alone in order to settle his affairs there. Time passed, their longings increased. Finally, A. took his savings and came to Israel - this time, for an indefinite stay, until H. could find a way to leave the country. They moved into a rented flat in south Tel Aviv.
For the past two years, and more particularly since their lives have been under threat, they have sought assistance from every institution, person or organization that has anything to do with civil and human rights. In the past few weeks, they say, during which they have hidden out in various places, H.'s brother has been trailing them. He waited for them on the beach, and on one of the rare occasions when they dared to leave the house together, he attacked them, with a knife.
They have approached organizations of homosexuals in Israel and abroad, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Amnesty International, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, various refugee organizations that have branches in Israel (in an attempt to obtain political-refugee status for H. abroad), the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, and Israeli politicians and public figures.
In the best case, these groups have behaved like weary government departments. Most of them gave well-grounded reasons explaining why they were, unfortunately, unable to help them: "We have no mandate"; "the law doesn't let us"; "H.'s case falls between the legal definitions."
Some gave them a list of recommendations of other organizations that might be able to help. H. and A. gradually dropped their American dream and started to look into the possibility that H. could get a visa for another Western country. To their amazement, they discovered that no country was willing to issue him a visa, including countries known for their great humanity, such as Canada, Australia, Denmark, Holland and Sweden.
The only countries for which H. does not need an entry visa are Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. But those are countries where a homosexual couple is not likely to lead a better life.
Of all the associations and organizations that A. and H. approached, the only exceptional one so far was the Association of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender in Israel, called "Agudah" ("association") for short. The association took them under its wing and through it, all the applications to the other organizations and legations were made, and all the other clarifications.
The association contacted Knesset members from the Likud, Labor and Meretz. All of them replied that unfortunately the situation was difficult, the case was difficult and at the moment they were unable to help. Yes, even MK Yael Dayan (Labor), who is known for her activism on behalf of the gay-lesbian community, replied in a similar vein.
The chairman of Agudah, and Shaul Ganon, who is in charge of dealing with Arabs in Israel and Palestinians on the association's behalf, did not give up. Ganon did everything he could to help. When their lives came under threat and attempts were made to murder them, the association found them apartments in which to hide, enabling them to move about among different locations to throw H.'s relatives off the track. If it were not for Agudah, they would probably not be alive now.
Three weeks ago, they were on the verge of despair. They felt they were suffocating in the apartment, as though they were in a prison. They had lost all control over their lives. A.'s savings are dwindling rapidly. There is no solution on the horizon.
"I don't know what to do," A. says. "It's an impossible situation. I didn't believe that something like this could actually happen. Theoretically, I could be on a plane out of here tomorrow morning. I, supposedly, have no problem. But I am not leaving here without him. My freedom isn't worth a thing if it means having to leave him here. My country, which I loved so much, isn't worth anything either if it doesn't allow me to return home with my partner. The only home I have today is him."
"I have given up everything," H. says. "For me, there is no way back. I don't have a father any more, or a mother, I have no family. I gave my house, my land, my honor, my name, everything, I want to be with him. My dream is that we will get out of here and go to America or some other country. We will live in a house by ourselves, together. We will build our lives and build our love."
In a personal letter to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, A. stated that the ambassador was his last hope. My life and my friend's life are in danger, he wrote, "Please help me take my friend home, before it's too late."