The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is suing the U.S. government over Israel’s entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. “Admitting Israel into the Visa Waiver Program would be an endorsement of discrimination against Palestinian and Arab Americans,” says ADC Director Abed Ayoub.

“Admitting Israel into the program after only a month-and-a-half-long trial after decades of discrimination, occupation, and apartheid is irresponsible,” AJP Action Advocacy Director Ayah Ziyadeh tells Mondoweiss.

Israel might be on the verge of finally obtaining a U.S. visa waiver, but critics say new proposed travel guidelines will continue to discriminate against Palestinians.

Watch “Love Under Occupation,” a short film by Mondoweiss and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights about a fictional Palestinian-and-foreigner couple taking the next big step in their relationship, and then read on to learn how Israeli apartheid regulations impact Palestinian people, their partners, and their families.

House progressives press the Biden administration over Israel’s discriminatory travel restrictions and warn against granting the country a visa waiver.

A draconian set of rules and restrictions on the entry of foreigners into the occupied West Bank have gone into effect today, despite months of condemnations by rights groups and legal efforts to stop the restrictions from being enforced. 

“It of course comes down to demographic considerations,” Israeli attorney Yotam Ben Hillel explains. “These new restrictions will completely isolate Palestinian society.”

Israel may have revised its West Bank entry rules in hopes of obtaining a U.S. visa waiver, but they’re still designed to isolate Palestinian society. “Allowing Israel into the U.S. Visa Waiver program in spite of this mistreatment would amount to an endorsement by the Biden administration of this discrimination,” says Americans for Justice in Palestine Action Advocacy Director Ayah Ziyadeh.

A new rule that forces visitors who fall in love with Palestinians to inform Israeli authorities shows that the right to intimacy serves as both a realm of domination as well as a form of resistance under Israeli settler-colonialism.

The Israeli government has revised a list of draconian restrictions on the entry of foreigners into the occupied West Bank amid pressure from US and EU authorities, though rights groups say the regulations still maintain the same goal: demographic engineering and isolation of Palestinian society. 

Coming soon if a Palestinian-American wants to travel to the occupied West Bank to visit their family, they will need to apply to the Israeli government for advanced permission, reveal the personal information of the relatives they plan on visiting, along with data of any land they own or stand to inherit in the territory. These are just some of the invasive restrictions that Palestinians who hold foreign passports would be subjected to according to a new ordinance published by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli government agency responsible for enforcing Israeli policy in the occupied territory. “This is Apartheid in action,” Ahmed Abofoul, a lawyer with Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq told Mondoweiss of the new policy.