Love doesn't 'know borders, nationalities or politics'

Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

In his wildest dreams, Fareed never imagined that these lines from Juliet's lips in the final scenes of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet would perfectly describe his situation.

Fareed, 35, and thousands of Egyptian men, had never imagined that an act as normal as marrying the girl of their dreams could turn them into new heroes of doomed love stories as they faced a court verdict that stripped them of their nationalities for marrying Israeli women.

Recently, Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court upheld last year's verdict by a lower court that obligates the interior minister to consider cases of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children. Yet each case should be considered separately to "take the necessary steps to strip them of their nationality", according to the ruling, which cannot be appealed.

"Marriage is about love and love has its own rules, it doesn't know borders, nationalities or politics. It is a human right that no law can deny," Fareed said bitterly.

Fareed agreed to tell Weekend Review his story of marrying Nadia, a Palestinian woman with an Israeli passport, on the condition that he would be referred to only by his first name because of security concerns. He lives in a small house in Cairo's Giza district with his wife and three children Osama, 17, Noha, 14, and Noor, 8.

"It all started 20 years ago. I graduated in the hard times when Egypt was beginning to rebuild its economy from scratch after a war. Finding a job in my hometown Tanta wasn't easy in such an economic condition with limited job opportunities. Most of my counterparts saw a promising future 610 km away, what was then the recently reclaimed Sinai peninsula — or "Land of Fayrouz", as Egyptians like to call it — in the city of Taba, the last territory to be returned by Israel."

In 1988, a long dispute ended with the international arbitration panel ruling in Egypt's favour. Fareed found a good position in the emerging tourism sector in Sinai, where many world-class resorts, hotels and villages had been constructed. The Egyptian government set up infrastructure with large investments and encouraged young people to work there.

"To me it was an easy call," Fareed said, "I met Nadia as she was working for an international tour company. Wearing a veil and speaking a Palestinian Arabic dialect, she looked like any other good Palestinian Muslim girl. After meeting her many times, I was impressed by her hard-working nature and decided to marry her and start a family."

Fareed wasn't the only one taken aback when Nadia told him she was one of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel who held an Israeli passport. His parents, too, were reluctant to approve his decision to marry her. Although they considered Nadia and all Arab-Israelis as real heroes, the bride-to-be still held the "enemy's" passport.

"The main problem is that many in the Arab world either know nothing about the Arabs of 1948 or harbour misconceptions about them," Fareed said.

"These Arabs identify themselves as Palestinians, and Nadia came from a family of merchants in Abu Ghosh. Like most of the Arabs, they refused to leave their lands after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and preferred to stay back, resisting Israel's move to transfer their homes to state-owned lands. They were granted Israeli citizenship," he said.

In 2003 and after decades of displacement that forced more than 80 per cent of the Palestinian families to leave, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics found Arab residents made up about 20 per cent of Israel's population. Eighty-two per cent of the entire Arab population in Israel are Muslims of Bedouin descent, with about 9 per cent Druze and 9 per cent Christians.

Fareed faced tremendous problems and great psychological stress before and after marrying Nadia. "We had decided to live in Egypt near my place of work and Nadia would live with me, as the peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979 allows Israeli civilians to cross the Egyptian border as normal foreign visitors. Egyptians could also enter and even work in Israel.

Till now there are no official records for marriages between Egyptian men and Israeli women. As Egyptian authorities refuse to provide the exact number of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, speculation is rife. Figures released recently by a local human rights group estimate there are not less than 17,000 Egyptian men married to Israelis, mostly from the Arabs of 1948.

However, Nabih Al Wahsh, who was the main campaigner and the lawyer who brought the case to court, refuted these reports, pegging the number at more than 30,000, of which 10 per cent were married to Muslims and the rest to Jews. But the People's Assembly (the lower house of the Egyptian Parliament) reduced the number to 10,000.

Al Wahsh said he considered the verdict to be the highlight of his 30-year-career. The verdict was based on an article regarding citizenship that requires that the government to revoke the citizenship of those who are married to Israelis, or have either served in the army, or embraced Zionism.

"The offspring of these marriages are new generations that are "disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world". They might inherit Egyptian property from their fathers, resulting in a heavy Israeli presence in our economy with a hold on Egyptian assets," Al Wahsh said.

The couple tried to find out the reason for this sudden eviction, but the police refused to give them any details. So Fareed contacted his uncle, a retired military official. He was informed by his contacts in the police that Nadia's presence was considered a threat to national security.

"Till now my wife has been unable to get even a visa to enter Egypt. I don't understand why 37,000 Israeli tourists were allowed entrance easily and could spend their holidays on the shores of the Red Sea, accounting for about 2 per cent of total tourism in Egypt, but a thousand Arab Israeli women married to Egyptian men were deported for security reasons.

Couples in most of these marriages don't have much of a choice. They either have to stay in Egypt, at the cost of destabilising the family with mothers absent, or move to countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, or even Israel. Most of the mixed couples have chosen Israel as their new country of residence.

"Jewish society has racist elements who do not tolerate either Arabs and Muslims. They even encourage emigration of Arab citizens to other countries. Examples of discrimination are evident as Arabs and Jews study in separate schools, are treated in different hospitals, with Arab citizens receiving fewer resources," Fareed said.

A more recent poll by the Israeli Centre Against Racism in 2008 showed that 75 per cent of Israelis would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents. Sixty per cent wouldn't accept any Arab visitors at their homes and about 40 per cent believed that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote.

Heated debates have taken place between Egyptian people, including intellectuals, on the court's verdict.

Writer Sahar Al Gaara, a secular columnist on several Egyptian dailies, was quick to show her happiness with the verdict, which she saw as a "slap to normalisers".

"Each Egyptian husband who married an Israeli — from 1948 Arabs or Jewish Israelis — is a potential spy. Since he stamped his passport with an Israeli visa, he definitely didn't go to liberate Palestine. I make no exceptions for any of them," she said.

Some others see the ruling as an unnecessary measure and even a violation of the constitution.

"This is a political, not legal, ruling," said Jamal Eid, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights in Cairo. "I'm against peace with Israel and normalisation with Zionists, but I'm also against annulling citizenship as a punishment for marriage choice and it has no legal justification."

"It is a moral execution for me," Fareed said: "I didn't commit any crime to be punished in such as brutal way, even spies didn't get stripped of their nationalities."

The issue must be brought to the attention of international human rights agencies and to United Nations committees.

Although the majority of Egyptians think marrying Israelis is a new phenomenon that appeared with the final phase of the peace treaty of Camp David signed in 1979 between Egypt and Israel, Egyptian Jews have been considered an essential part of the society and were not considered enemies. The Egyptian Jewish population reached 88,000 in 1952, when the last census was conducted just before the Egyptian revolution. Before the Israeli-Arab conflict in Palestine, marriages between Muslim Egyptians and Jewish Egyptians were common, especially in urban areas where there was a concentration of Jews.

After the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli conflict, they left under pressure from outraged Egyptian society, as Jews in Egypt were accused of espionage.

In 1995, after five years of marriage, the Egyptian government refused to grant Nadia a residence renewal and gave her an ultimatum to leave the country within weeks.

Raghda El Halawany is a journalist based in Cairo.