Adalah Demands Cancellation of GSS's Racist Directives which Prevent Arabs from Traveling on Airplanes Operated by Tamir Flights

On 14 June 2006, Adalah sent an urgent letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Minister of Transport Shaul Mofaz regarding new directives which bar Arab citizens of Israel from traveling on internal flights operated by the Israeli airline “Tamir Flights” from Rosh Pina and Qiryat Shemona in northern Israel to Tel Aviv in the center of the country. Adalah demanded that the new directives be immediately annulled, and that directives and guidelines for the conduct of searches at airports, which the aviation authorities have thus far refused to published, should be made available.

The directives were reportedly issued by the General Security Services (GSS or the Shabak), according to an article published in Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz on 14 June 2006. In the article, it was stated that the Minister of Transport had imposed the ban in accordance with directives issued by the GSS, allegedly due to the unavailability of machinery for scanning travelers' luggage.

In the letter, Adalah Attorney Abeer Baker emphasized the necessity and urgency of canceling the aforementioned directives, since they are based on racist criteria and constitute collective and illegal discrimination in their blatant targeting of Arabs. Adalah further argued that these racist, arbitrary directives consider every Arab individual as a permanent security threat solely on the basis of their ethnic background. The directives thus constitute a clear and grave violation of the constitutional rights of Arab citizens of Israel to equality and dignity. Adalah stressed the state's insistence on defining Arab citizens as “potential assailants” purely because of their national belonging is a form of collective punishment, which contradicts the basic principles of Israeli and international law, and encourages and perpetuates hatred and hostility towards them from mainstream Israeli society.

The ban also entails additional violations of the rights of Arab citizens, Adalah stressed. These include the rights to receive higher education, to a livelihood and to employment, since Arab citizens from the remote northern districts of Israel travel to the center of the country for educational and work-related purposes.

The routine discrimination which Arab citizens of Israel endure at every airport in Israel has been revealed through the complaints regularly filed by Arab air passengers. However, the exposure of this deplorable fact has not led to an improvement in their treatment, but rather to a deterioration, of which the GSS's new directives are the clearest evidence, Adalah argued.