It’s been more than 500 days since Amnesty International staffer Laith Abu Zeyad has left the boundaries of the occupied West Bank, due to an Israeli ban based on secret evidence. “It’s absurd that me and my lawyers are being forced to defend myself and argue against secret evidence that we have not even seen ourselves,” Abu Zeyad told Mondoweiss after the court hearing on April 6th. “The judge said the onus was on us to challenge the evidence, but we don’t even know what it is.”

Since September 2019, the Israeli government has banned Laith Abu Zeyad from traveling outside the West Bank based on secret evidence they will not share with him. Due to this ban he was not able to travel with his mother for medical treatment in Jerusalem, or be with her when she passed away. Writing in Mondoweiss, Abu Zeyad reflects on having this ban and secret evidence indefinitely hanging over him – a prisoner in his own land, he dreams of freedom.

It’s been nine months since Laith Abu Zeyad, an Amnesty International staff member based in the occupied West Bank, was banned from traveling outside of the country and from entering Israel. After months of rejected petitions, unanswered questions, and painstaking delays, Abu Zeyad is finally getting his day in court — even if he is not allowed to be there.

As Trump announces further travel bans, we must recognize the hierarchy of vulnerability: who gets into which fortress, who is left banging on the doors, who is trapped in an increasingly impoverished ghetto. Having papers is both an opportunity and a marker in a surveilled world.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law, tells Mondoweiss it is difficult to know how Israel’s controversial new law aimed at barring boycott activists from entering the country will actually be enforced, but he says the law is in direct violation of international law. “Countries have wide discretion to allow are deny entry to foreigners,” Sfard says. “However, International Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the basis of a person’s opinion and provides freedom of conscious and thought. The law is definitely a violation of both.”