{"id":18002,"date":"2018-10-11T06:23:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T06:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18002"},"modified":"2018-10-11T06:23:56","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T06:23:56","slug":"more-talks-needed-to-reopen-syria-trade-route-says-amman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18002","title":{"rendered":"More talks needed to reopen Syria trade route, says Amman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nJERUSALEM: A US student refused entry for alleged support of a pro-Palestinian boycott of goods from Israel has chosen to stay and fight the ban in court, an Israel official said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\nImmigration authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told AFP late Tuesday that Lara Alqasem was being held at an immigration facility but was not under arrest.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cShe can fly back to the United States whenever she likes,\u201d Haddad said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cShe decided to appeal and is being held in the facility for those refused entry,\u201d the spokeswoman said in Hebrew. \u201cShe is not under arrest, she is refused entry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHaddad said that the appeal would be heard in the Tel Aviv district court but gave no date for the hearing.<\/p>\n

\nShe added that judge Kobi Vardi issued a ruling on Tuesday saying that Alqasem was not obliged to remain in the airport holding facility and was free to return home and have the Tel Aviv hearing held in her absence.<\/p>\n

\nIn March 2017, Israel\u2019s Parliament passed a law banning the entry of supporters of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a movement inspired by measures against South Africa before the fall of apartheid.<\/p>\n

\nAlqasem, reportedly of Palestinian descent, was stopped at Israel\u2019s main international Ben Gurion airport last Tuesday and denied entry under that act.<\/p>\n

\nThe Jerusalem Post has reported that during her undergraduate studies at the University of Florida \u201cshe was president of a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which often leads boycott campaigns against Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIt quoted her mother, Karen Alqasem, as saying that she had enrolled for a one-year master\u2019s course in human rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for which she had an Israeli visa.<\/p>\n

\nThe university has applied to the Tel Aviv court for leave to join her appeal against deportation.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis student wants to come here and study at the Hebrew University for one year,\u201d its president, professor Asher Cohen, told Israeli army radio Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\nHe argued that her treatment was actually strengthening the BDS campaign to boycott goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere is a difference of opinion with the state on the interpretation of the law. In our opinion in this instance the law does not apply to this student,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt is for the court to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nEarlier, Israeli Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan said that he would consider allowing Alqasem to take up her university place if she publicly denounces BDS.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIf Lara Alqasem states in her own voice, not by all kinds of evasions by lawyers, that she doesn’t think now that support for BDS is something legitimate and she regrets what she has done on this subject, we shall certainly reevaluate our petition,\u201d he told army radio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM: A US student refused entry for alleged support of a pro-Palestinian boycott of goods from Israel has chosen to stay and fight the ban in court, an Israel official said Tuesday. Immigration authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told AFP late Tuesday that Lara Alqasem was being held at an immigration facility but was not under…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}