My 24 Hours in Israeli Detention
For Zimarina Sarwar, a life-long dream of praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem turned into a far darker experience
It’s fair to say that Israel probably isn’t top of the holiday bucket list for most British Muslims.
Jerusalem, however, is different. It is considered one of the earliest homes of monotheism on earth. Muslims view it as a land that Prophet Abraham migrated to and settled in, Prophet David reigned over his sprawling kingdom there, Prophet Solomon constructed the first temple there, Prophet Jesus’s entire life’s mission was carried out there and Prophet Muhammad honoured it as the original direction of prayer.
There is a certain spiritual significance that the iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock Mosque holds for even the most lapsed Muslim, with its distinctive octagonal structure and intricate blue and turquoise tiling. However, there is also a sense of impending danger around Al Aqsa today, as though its days are numbered. ‘Archaeological excavations’ by controversial Israeli groups have undermined the structure of Al Aqsa and regular clashes and storming of the mosque have escalated with alarming frequency.
Visiting Jerusalem to pray felt increasingly a ‘now or never’ thing. What is the ‘new normal’ and would Al Aqsa even be open for any foreign visitors in future? It was time to actualise this lifelong dream of mine. The UK tour groups taking Western Muslims there were officially registered with the Israeli tourist board and had decades of experience taking pilgrims. It couldn’t be more kosher.
A short and uneventful flight had me hoping there would also be a short and uneventful exit from immigration control. I am a UK passport holder, after all. I speak English as a native language. I have a post-graduate degree. These are all the invisible protections we quietly assume are the social currency to cushion against things going bump in the night.
Except, as I was about to discover, people get away with much when the lights are out.
The corridors that lead to immigration at Ben Gurion airport are lined with A3 posters of the missing hostages. The walls host historical looking ‘educational’ posters endorsing the Biblical God-given gift of Israel to the Jewish people. In the immigration area, staff interrogate with an odd assortment of questions:
What is your favourite book and why. Your favourite poem and why. The colour of the clothes you wear and why. What your name means and why. What you do in your spare time and why. Who are your friends and why?
Six hours of waiting later, and in a single sentence I’m told, “You are denied entry into Israel with an irrevocable lifetime ban. The reason is a threat to national security. Thank you.”
Smudged print outs, still warm, are thrust into my hand and I’m pointed to another waiting area. Nothing is explained. Why am I a threat? Where am I going? When will I return home? Who books the flights? Where is my luggage? Was Boris Pasternak a guilty pleasure too far?
Still, I wait. Another two hours.
All of this takes place above ground at Ben Gurion airport. It is the last event before things turn very sinister, very fast.
I am led, in silence, down a long set of stairs. The bustle and lights above ground suddenly morph into dusty corridors, dilapidated office rooms and darkness. The guard abruptly stops and throws open the door to a very large room.
The first thing that hits me is the stench. It’s the smell of human breath and body heat saturated in a room with no ventilation or windows. Around me are men. Lots of them. Are they dead? Are they moving? Some are flopped from their broken chairs, hanging half onto the floor. Others are in a foetal position. Some are sat upright, with bodies slumped sideways at a painful-looking angle. I am separated from my phone, watch and belongings so I sit and wait.
The guards manning the ‘desk’ take turns sleeping. I only realise they are Ethiopian Jews when the visiting lighter-skinned Israeli officer mutters ‘Falasha’ in their direction as he leaves. I recognise this term, considered derogatory and now taboo, but still clearly in active use. This is the first time I have seen black Israelis in a public-facing role. Why choose to put them all in this dungeon underground? The guards shout at the men in the room: aggression and anger a default response to the queries of the detained men. Their limited English asking, “How long?” seemed to raise the guard’s ire even more.
The night is long.
I enter a timeless state. Has it been five minutes or two hours? The snoring, coughing, and exhaling of everyone else in the room punctuates the silence. I stand to stretch my legs, and wonder if I can get Deep Vein Thrombosis like this. The guard gestures for me to sit at the back of the room between two large sleeping men. I tell him I’ll return to the empty chair I was already in. He raises his voice and waves his arms towards the 30cm gap between two men’s heads. I point to the chair instead. I am not – as a woman held in detention with the lights out – coming in close physical contact with unknown men.
This time, he loses it. He shouts in Hebrew and reaches for his weapon. He draws a gun, then uses the gun to indicate exactly where he wants me to sit. The gun is then pointed at me, chest-height.
This is a moment that keeps playing in my head since. The weakness of violence as a first resort. Had he decided to use his weapon in that moment, there are a whole host of protections he could hide behind. “She was not cooperating.” “She was resisting an order.” “She got aggressive with an officer.” When I silently stared back, he reluctantly replaced his gun into his belt and muttered as I took my seat. The long wait for dawn continues.
Finally the morning arrives with news that my outbound flight is booked, and I will be leaving Tel Aviv at 3:00pm that afternoon. Even with my passport and luggage confiscated, I touch down in London in a 48-hour sleepless blur. Mind buzzing with everything I had encountered and everything I had not. But for now, it is about getting home, getting safe, and getting to be human again.
That said, something feels uncomfortable about centring my own experience like this when talking about Israel. Me, who lives comfortably with all the conveniences and privileges one could dream of. Last week, I was thrown a little turbulence, and for a moment the veneer cracked.
Gaza, instead, is shattered beyond all comprehension. Death toll projected at 680,000 people. Mass starvation and widespread thirst enacted. Medical infrastructure decimated. ‘Aid distribution centres’ reduced to sadistic hunger-games style killing places.
Yet still, this is the ‘conflict’ that plays out somewhere on our social media feeds and news apps. Here are kids with their limbs blown off. Here are hijab-wearing women wailing with dead babies and sun-waxed skin against a dusty desert background. Here are young, bearded men standing in shock atop mountains of rubble that used to be home. Here are hunched over elderly couples carrying their life possessions in fabric sacks as they are move on again – by foot – for the dozenth time in two years. Here are images that come to us between adverts for pumpkin spiced latte syrup and Italian leather ankle boots.
It is hateful that, whether we try to claw our way out of it or not, the dehumanisation of the Other has affected us all. It is hateful that we are all stuck in the prism of giving a hierarchy to suffering. I hate that we assume the Other can withstand pain, hunger, displacement, injury, and death in a way we would never tolerate for ourselves.
It must end. We must demand Israel’s impunity ends. This is the moral responsibility of every sentient man and woman.
When nothing is off limits for one, then all parameters of acceptable conduct shift for everyone.
Our collective destiny is tied. Resisting this tearing up of a rules-based world order is on us all. We must gather to say Palestinian sovereignty is an imperative, genocide is more than shrug-worthy, ethnic cleansing does not get a free pass, and peace cannot exist without justice.
We must come together to say that we believe the Palestinian people are whole and complete human beings, deserving of every inalienable right that we would never relinquish for ourselves.
My 24 hours in Israeli detention didn’t deliver these realisations afresh, they instead cemented a truth: Palestine is nothing less than the most basic test of humanity that will bleed until we stem the flow, or all collectively haemorrhage in our shame.
Yet we are told we must not compare Israel's actions to those of Nazi Germany.