Until he left Tel Aviv for New York City last week, few Americans had ever heard of Mubarak Awad. But the Israeli decision to deport Awad made the Palestinian American something of a media celebrity, with the Reagan Administration firmly in his corner. Conceded an Israeli official: "We shot ourselves in the foot."
Awad, 44, has been an irritant to the Israeli government for years. Through his Jerusalem-based Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, he has been advocating a campaign of civil disobedience against Israeli occupation of territories captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Awad urges, among other things, a Palestinian boycott of Israeli products and Israeli taxes, and destruction of Israeli fences and power lines built across Arab land.
Awad was born in East Jerusalem, the part of the city annexed by Israel from Jordan after the 1967 war. He moved to the U.S. in 1970, became a U.S. citizen in 1978, and in 1985 returned to his homeland to establish his center. Awad's current troubles with Israeli officialdom began in the spring of 1987, when he sought to renew the residency permit he had been issued in 1967. The authorities rejected his application and ordered him to leave the country when his tourist visa expired in November. He refused to go, arguing, with strong support from U.S. consular officials, that under international conventions Israel had no right to expel him from the place of his birth. The government put the case on hold.
Once the intifadeh (uprising) began last December, however, Israeli officials singled him out as an instigator. In May, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, acting as Interior Minister, ordered Awad arrested and expelled. Without offering any hard evidence, security officials charged that Awad had incited "civil uprising" and helped write leaflets, distributed by the intifadeh's underground leadership, that advocated civil disobedience. Awad appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled two weeks ago that he had forfeited his right to residence status in Israel once he became a U.S. citizen. This legalism enabled the government to expel Awad without having to substantiate claims that he had broken Israeli law for his role in the uprising. To Awad's supporters, the verdict was a stunning example of a legal double standard: thousands of American Jews, they point out, are permitted to hold dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship indefinitely. Secretary of State George Shultz appealed directly to Shamir to revoke the deportation order, but to no avail.
Last week Awad vowed to return to Jerusalem, even if he must convert from Christianity to Judaism so that he is eligible for residency under the Law of Return. "Someone should not have to change their religion to go back to their birthplace," he said. "If all fails, this is what I'm willing to do."