Israeli Forces Ready To Thwart Fly-in Protest
Hundreds of police and special forces will converge on Ben-Gurion Airport to block the entry of pro-Palestinian activists on Sunday, but human rights activists say the airport has no authority to deny entry to anyone intending to visit the Palestinian territories.
Hundreds of police officers, most of them in plainclothes and unarmed, will await the so-called fly-in at Ben-Gurion on Sunday, while special forces will deploy outside the terminal.
The foreign, transportation, interior and public security ministries are working together to thwart the protest with as little commotion as possible, in a bid to prevent the activists from achieving a public relations victory, officials said.
The Interior Ministry has given airlines the names of activists who are denied entry to Israel and told them that if any activists arrive, the airlines will have to fly them back at the companies’ expense.
Last summer Israel thwarted a similar fly-in, when around 200 activists were not allowed to board flights at their country of origin. Others were detained at Ben-Gurion Airport.
Undercover police agents will staff passport control counters, seen as the first possible friction point between the activists and the authorities, police sources said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
