Nicolás Khamis, a Chilean of Palestinian origin who was deported by Israel on July 28 after the authorities of the National Migration Service of that country denied him entry for security reasons, denounced arbitrary treatment and degrading conditions after being interrogated in Tel Aviv.
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On July 27, Khamis – 32 years old – traveled from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv and then headed to the city of Beit Jala in the West Bank to visit the land of his relatives and spend his vacation there. It was not the first time he traveled to the Middle East and on this occasion he had the mandatory visa and an invitation letter from an Israeli lawyer.
Once he arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, he scanned his passport through a machine that printed his visa, which indicated that he could stay in the country for three months. Subsequently, he went through a control booth. “When it was my turn, the officer in charge asked me why I was coming, I said tourism, and upon seeing my passport scanned, she immediately sent me to a waiting room, which I had been to on other occasions, and told me I had to wait because they were going to ask me some questions,” he recounts in a conversation with La Tercera from Amsterdam.
“They sent me to this room. I thought it was very unlikely that they would deny me entry – despite it being a common practice with Chileans or generally with people of Palestinian origin – because I had this invitation from the lawyer, I had the previously approved visa, I had my return ticket to Chile. And they start with the typical questions about the reasons for my visit, if I had been there before, the name of my grandfather, my religion. Then they sent me to wait again in the same room,” he adds.
Khamis points out that in that waiting room there were more people, such as a Brazilian citizen whose son-in-law was a Palestinian living in Jerusalem. Later, they asked him more questions. “Again they asked me the name of my grandfather, the name of my father, my grandfather’s religion, where my grandfather was born. They asked me what other Arab countries I know. Among those I mentioned Syria, a country I traveled to in 2010, and they started asking me where I had been, who I had met. Then they asked me about my opinion on October 7 (2023, the day of the Hamas attack on Israel). I answered and told them that, regardless of what happened that day, I think the response afterward was disproportionate and that I believed no one benefits from war, that hopefully it will be resolved, that there will be peace for everyone. Then they asked me if I knew who committed the October 7 incident. I told them Hamas, and they asked if I knew who Hamas was. After that, for the first time, they asked for my phone,” he indicates.
Khamis says that after checking the phone numbers with the Israel code, the officer asked him about the social networks he uses and that’s how she started reviewing his Instagram profile. “She went into the archives of my stories. The most recent archive was a photo I had taken on a balcony in Madrid of a Palestinian flag, and she questioned me about why I had that photo. I answered that my origin is from there. So I sympathize with Palestine. I thought the photo was beautiful. And then there was a video of a Palestinian asking if Israel recognized the Armenian genocide, when it would recognize the Palestinian genocide. And from there it got worse. Then, I had uploaded a photo of a can of beer like from the Palestino club. Then she saw a photo of a poster for a bingo of the Arab Charity Union. After all that, she sent me back to the waiting room,” he explains.
Then, they made him go to another office, where another officer told him: “You cannot enter Israel.” And when Khamis asked the reasons, they told him it was for security and gave him a statement that he did not sign.
In response, the Israeli Embassy in Chile stated on X that “under current legislation, the National Migration Service has denied entry to Israeli territory to the Chilean citizen José Nicolás Khamis Thomas.” “Israel, like any country in the world, has the sovereign right to decide on the entry of foreign citizens into national territory, in order to prevent acts of an interfering, provocative nature or that affect national security,” it added.
For its part, the Palestinian embassy in Chile indicated in a statement that “it expresses its deep concern over the entry ban imposed by the Israeli authorities on the Chilean citizen José Nicolás Khamis Thomas, who was heading to the State of Palestine.”
“This case is part of a systematic practice that affects Chilean citizens of Arab origin in general, and Palestinians in particular, who when trying to visit Palestine are subjected to entry bans, interrogations, degrading treatment, and humiliating situations at border crossings controlled by Israel,” it added.
After being denied entry, Khamis had to wait until his flight back to Amsterdam departed. In total, from the time he arrived at Ben-Gurion until he left the country, 35 hours passed, during which he denounced poor conditions, such as cold food, not being able to sleep, among others.
During the time he was at the airport, he received a visit from the Chilean ambassador to Israel, Gabriel Zaliasnik, and his consular team. “Everyone is free to let in whoever they want, but the issue is that there is an occupation if I want to go to the place where my grandfather was born, which is in the territory internationally recognized as Palestinian. It is not the Palestinians who let me in, it is Israel,” he concludes.
