Dubai: Identifying Israeli nationals

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Identifying Israeli nationals

In response to the murder of a Hamas commander, allegedly by Israelis carrying fraudulent passports cloned from Israeli dual nationals, Dubai's police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim has barred Israeli citizens from the emirate even when they are traveling on non-Israeli passports. It's a good idea in principle but will it work?

Apparently, Dubai's immigration officials are to be coached in profiling methods; taught to recognize Israelis by their facial features, mannerisms and accents. But that's easier said than done. It's one thing to be able to spot the accents and speech patterns of sabras (native-born Israelis). I can do it myself with a high-level of accuracy because I happened to grow up in an area of London to which Israelis tended to gravitate during the 1960s and 70s.

But how will profiling solve the problem when the majority of Israeli dual nationals were born elsewhere? In any event, now that Israeli intelligence is aware of the new stipulation and proposed profiling techniques, next time — if there is a next time — it will, no doubt, be selective when choosing agents to infiltrate Dubai.

Israeli features, hair color and eye-color vary widely; even Israelis can't always pick-out other Israelis. I know that first-hand. Some years ago, I was having my lunch in an Egyptian restaurant in Bangkok when a smiling Israeli couple approached me and greeted me in Hebrew. It was so surreal that I almost choked on my molokhiya. They quickly realized their mistake, switched to English and explained that they had taken me for a fellow Israeli. All I could say was, "Sorry! I'm Welsh."

In general terms, I believe profiling at airports is wrong, mainly because it discriminates between passengers, makes false assumptions based on nationality, religion or appearance and operates on the basis of stereotypes. Very often it is innocent people who are humiliated and hassled while the bad guys have been devious enough to beat the system.

 

The Israeli national airline El Al and Israeli immigration officers have been profiling travelers to Israel for decades with anyone with Arab stamps in their passports, known Palestinian friends or Arab ethnicity being subjected to special scrutiny. And following the attempted Detroit plane bombing, the British Home Secretary Alan Johnson says he is considering using passenger profiling according to race, religion, age and gender, which has civil rights groups up in arms.

If he proceeds, no prizes for guessing which people will be hassled. Certainly not Israelis, who, if Prime Minister Gordon Brown has his way, will be exempted from appearing before British courts to answer war crimes charges.

Then, as far as I understand it, the exercise of weeding out stereotypical Israelis (although there is no such thing) will be specific to Dubai. In that case, what's to stop Israeli dual nationals flying into Abu Dhabi or Sharjah then taking a taxi or driving a hired car to Dubai?

A far better system would be for the UAE as a whole — and any other country for that matter that is serious about its security — to set up a data-base with the names and details of all dual nationals. This would require the cooperation of governments that accept the premise of dual nationality under the umbrella of "war on terror" intelligence sharing. If the US can demand electronically transmitted pre-flight information on incoming passengers that includes their "country of residence" then there is no reason why the rest of the world shouldn't follow suit.

Not every nation recognizes dual nationality; Saudi Arabia, China, India, Germany and Japan have resisted doing so. And the topic is currently being debated in several countries, such as Pakistan where the majority of National Assembly members are calling for the removal of dual-national civil servants "in the national interest." The Netherlands is currently bucking the trend in Europe by considering a controversial draft bill that, if passed, would force a new Dutch citizen to renounce his or her former nationality.

There is one school of thought that views dual nationality as a contradiction in terms. In essence, the word "national" implies that the holder of that designation holds allegiance to a particular state. The question is: How can a person be loyal to two states at the same time and especially at a time when those states may be at opposite poles of a conflict?

Whether or not our ethics permit dual nationality, it is here to stay. And, indeed, for many people whose country of birth is impoverished or politically unstable it is a lifeline. It is also appropriate for children whose parents hold different citizenships and for couples in mixed marriages.

For instance, if a foreigner marries an Egyptian spouse, in case of the death of that spouse, he or she would be barred from inheriting their deceased partner's land unless they had first adopted Egyptian nationality. Security-minded Egypt accepts dual nationality but forbids officials in the police or military from marrying foreigners as long as they hold their posts. To my mind, this is a sensible compromise.

Getting back to Dubai, I wonder how Dahi Khalfan intends to treat high-level American-Israelis when they turn up with reservations in the Burj Al-Arab. According to his new rules, people like former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff would be shown the door; unless, of course, Dubai will use its discretion on a case-by-case basis. The new rule will also impact sports men and women, known to hold Israeli passports but, again, perhaps they will be exempted if they are a member of a team or ranked to play in a tournament.

I don't envy Dubai's police chief his task of ensuring that never again will a gang of Israeli murderers use his country's soil as a killing field. But I greatly admire the determination he has shown to track down the perpetrators as well as his department's skill in piecing together this heinous crime in such detail. I can only hope that this is one case that will soon be closed marked 'solved'. But without the sincere cooperation of Dubai's European and American allies, chances of the assassins ever ending up behind bars are, sadly, slim to nothing.

http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article27668.ece