Dubai: Internationally renowned philosopher and US political thinker Noam Chomsky was denied entry into the West Bank on Sunday by Israeli immigration officials when he tried to cross into the Palestinian territory from Jordan to deliver a lecture at the Bir Zeit University.
In a telephone conversation with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Chomsky, 81, said that he concluded from the questions of the Israeli official that the fact that he came to lecture at a Palestinian and not an Israeli university led to the decision to deny him entry, the Israeli newspaper reported on its website.
"I find it hard to think of a similar case, in which entry to a person is denied because he is not lecturing in Tel Aviv. Perhaps only in Stalinist regimes," Chomsky told Haaretz.
Sabine Haddad, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, confirmed to Haaretz that the officials at the border were from the ministry.
"Because he entered the Palestinian [National] Authority territory only, his entry is the responsibility of the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories at the Defence Ministry.”
A spokeswoman for Israel’s interior ministry separately told Reuters that there had been a misunderstanding and “officials were trying to get clearance from the Israeli military, which controls access to the West Bank to allow Chomsky to enter”.
But in a television interview from Amman after he was rebuffed, Chomsky told Al Jazeera English: “The facts were completely clear to everyone; there was no basis for a misunderstanding.”
He explained that he was interrogated for several hours before being told that he would not be allowed to cross into the occupied Palestinian territory.
Chomsky had been invited to speak about American foreign and domestic policy by the philosophy department of the university.
The renowned linguist was outspoken in his opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza which ended in January 2009, and has been a harsh critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
