\n<\/p>\n
Kareem\u2019s father was<\/span> furious when he heard the rumors circulating in Ramallah about the sexuality of his 22-year-old son. \u201cMy dad aimed his gun towards me,\u201d Kareem recalled, \u201cand said that if he ever finds out that I\u2019m gay, he would \u2018rest a bullet between my eyes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Kareem, whose name has been changed to protect his safety, had lived in the close-knit West Bank city for years, but he\u2019d long known he would one day need to leave. It was March 2024, and the Tel Aviv Court for Administrative Affairs had recently ruled<\/a> that LGBTQ+ Palestinians can petition for asylum in Israel \u2014 upending years of precedent that considered them ineligible. The following month, Kareem crossed into Israel, a country that has occupied the West Bank for more than twice as long as he\u2019d been alive.<\/p>\n Supporters of Israel have long pointed to the \u201conly democracy in the Middle East\u201d as a purported safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community. While detractors say the argument amounts to \u201cpinkwashing<\/a>,\u201d the use of LGBTQ+ inclusion to distract from moral and legal violations in other spheres, the Israeli government has doubled down on the concept, invoking it often to distract from violations of international law. In a speech before the United States Congress on July 24, 2024, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mocked<\/a> protesters holding \u201cGays for Gaza\u201d signs, saying they \u201cmight as well hold up signs saying \u2018Chickens for KFC.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n As Netanyahu spoke, Kareem was living legally in Israel, believing his status secure while an administrative storm was brewing behind the scenes. Palestinians like Kareem might be safer by virtue of the distance from their families, but the bureaucratic process of seeking asylum imposes its own dangers. In interviews with The Intercept, Kareem and multiple advocates and lawyers for Palestinian asylum-seekers described how Israeli authorities put asylum-seekers through permit revocations, instability, and, in many cases, coerce them into sharing information with Israel\u2019s internal intelligence agency.<\/p>\n Kareem felt this pressure, he told The Intercept.<\/p>\n At a processing facility at Sha\u2019ar Ephraim, a crossing point in the separation wall west of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, Kareem recalled, Israeli authorities repeatedly pressed him for information on friends and family still living in the West Bank, anything that might be of use. The implication was a quid pro quo: intelligence in exchange for an easier permit approval process.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you are in such a fragile situation, you cannot be in the territories [the West Bank], and you don\u2019t have status in Israel, the security bodies like the police \u2026 use this weakness and they try to get information or get someone\u2019s cooperation from those people,\u201d Kareem\u2019s attorney, Tamir Blank, told The Intercept. \u201cThey promise them that they will not deport them or put them in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n Kareem didn\u2019t have the kind of information necessary to secure such a process. He found himself, like so many\u00a0Palestinian asylum-seekers in Israel, in a series of cascading double binds. After they flee, they find themselves trapped: Leaving the West Bank for Israel carries with it the stigma, true or not, of having collaborated with Israeli authorities, making it even more difficult to return, and leaving nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Home to about<\/span> 30,000 Palestinians, Ramallah is small and insular, but it contains a space for queer Palestinians to hold conversations that aren\u2019t always possible elsewhere in the West Bank. A loose network of activists hosts weekly community meetings that range from knitting circles to conversations dissecting the Eurocentricity of LGBTQ+ identity terminology in Arabic. During Ramadan this year, as rockets flew overhead during the Israel\u2013U.S. war on Iran, they hosted a queer iftar in the city.<\/p>\n Kareem was active with the group for a year before rumors made their way to his parents. They had long suspected \u201cthere was something off with me,\u201d Kareem recalled.<\/p>\n It also did not help that the family, as is typical of Ramallah\u2019s upper class, is conservative and politically involved.<\/p>\n His father works for the Palestinian Authority, just as his father before him, who was involved with the Palestine Liberation Organization before the 1993 Oslo Accords<\/a>. The family home in Al-Bireh is an old stone building, \u201ccolder inside in the winter than it is outside,\u201d according to Kareem, and adorned with a classic Palestinian metal gate.<\/p>\n Aside from occasional Israeli military raids, Al-Bireh feels like the only true bubble inside of Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank. There are upscale cafes, flower shops, and a concerted effort by all who live there to pretend they enjoy more freedom than they do. Despite the\u00a0idyllic atmosphere, there are only a handful of checkpoints by which to exit the city, all manned by Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n Kareem worked in his cousin\u2019s welding shop in the Jalazone refugee camp, where, as he would later recount to Israeli authorities, he faced years of abuse \u2014 both sexual and physical \u2014 from his cousins, who taunted him for his feminine presentation. After Kareem\u2019s father confronted him, he recalled, \u201cMy father was sending my cousins after me to stalk my friends and me.\u201d<\/p>\n