A Selective Sanctuary:Pinkwashing and Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in Israel

Every June, the LGBTQ community celebrates pride month. And every year, Tel-Aviv is
marketed as a must-visit gaycation destination. From the rainbow-decorated streets filled
with scantily-clad, chiseled men to the seemingly endless beach parties and gay bars, TelAviv has been widely regarded as the worlds best gay city. Israel is also one of few
countries in the world that grants legal recognition to same-sex couples regarding
property tax benefits, inheritance taxes, and housing aid (though this doesnt extend to
marriage). When Don't Ask Dont Tell was repealed in the US, the Israeli Defense
Force had already openly supported gay soldiers for years.
But across the border in the streets of Palestines Ramallah, the rainbow flags and gay
bars characteristic of Tel-Avivs pride celebrations are completely absent. Like the
majority of Middle Eastern states, Palestine outlaws homosexualitya cold reality that
leaves the countrys LGBTQ community with little room for freedom of expression.
In 2008, Tel-Aviv University researchers Michael Kagan and Anat Ben-Dor of Tel-Aviv
University published a report titled, Nowhere to Run: Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in
Israel. An interview with D, a 20-year old from the West Bank, aptly describes the
social and religious barriers that Palestinian sexual minorities face:
In Palestinian culture, being homosexual isa disgrace to [the homosexuals] entire family and
an abomination against Islam. It is also viewed as an act against the Palestinian struggle for
independencethe sanctions are extremely harsh, beginning with physical and verbal abuse and
often ending in death at the hands of ones own family or others.

As shown by other testimonies from Kagan and Ben-Dors research, gay Palestinians do
not only suffer at the hands of their family; oftentimes, other civilians, armed militias,
and or official authorities use a variety of means to torture and abuse sexual minorities.
This ranges from beatings, stabbings, burnings, prolonged immersion in sewage water,
and forced starvation among others.
In order to escape this persecution, many gay Palestinians1 seek refuge in Israel. But even
in such an LGBTQ-friendly country, these individuals continue to face discrimination.
If discovered by Israeli authorities, they are often detained and sent back to the West
Bank or Gaza where they face the same abuse they fled fromperhaps even facing
death. Others who manage to stay in Israel must live a life of secrecy and hardship, often
relying on drug networks or prostitution rings to survive.
Yet the behavior of Israeli authorities towards gay Palestinians contradicts the states
binding legal agreements. Israel is a state party to both the 1951 Convention relating to
the Status of Refugees (CRCR) and the 1967 CRCR Protocol, which as outlined by
Article 1 of the CRCR, would place LGBTQ individuals who flee homophobic violence

1
Though it is quite likely that many LGBTQ persons in Palestine suffer from similar
treatment, the sources drawn upon focus largely on homosexual males. For the sake of
accuracy, specific terminology is used throughout this piece.

and lack government protection under the formal definition of refugee. Additionally
Article 42 of the CRCR prevents states from entering reservations onto this definition.
This means that any state party to the CRCR cannot deny rights by changing the
definition of what constitutes a refugee under Article 1 of the CRCR.
Israels legal obligation to protect Palestinian LGBTQ refugees is further demanded by
other articles within the CRCR. Article 33 of the CRCR requires signatories to provide
asylum to refugeesas defined by Article 1 of the same treatyon the principle of nonrefoulement, that is, the prohibition of forcing foreigners to return to territories where
they would be in danger. Moreover, Article 3 requires contracting States [to] apply the
provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion, or
country of origin. Yet Israel does not fully honor either of these legal commitments.
Beyond its deportation policies, Israel excludes all Palestinians from formally applying
for refugee status via the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the
National Status Granting Board (NSGB).
Israels current policy regarding Palestinian asylum-seekers not only places gay
Palestinians at risk, but also violates the international humanitarian law it is bound to.
Clearly, there is a disjunct between stated intentions and actual policy; while gay
Palestinians should be provided asylum in Israel, discrimination still continues on the
basis of race and country of origin. As Kagan and Ben-Dor mention, Israeli authorities
seem to conflate Palestinians seeking asylum with those seeking right-of-return.
The right to seek asylum invokes a separate body of law from the debate over refugee return; the
Palestinians we [Kagan and Ben-Dor] discuss in this report [Nowhere to Run] are seeking
international protection in Israel as a foreign country, not return or repatriation to ancestral
homes.

The 2003 Citizenship and Entry to Israel Law, which prohibits granting a visa or a permit
to stay in Israel to a Palestinian resident of the Occupied Territories, does have narrow
exceptions that may apply to refugees. However, few have successfully obtained this
status. In most cases, gay Palestinians best option is to seek asylum in a third country,
most often in Europe.
There is also the matter of Israeli pinkwashing. Israels emphasis on its positive
LGBTQ rights track record allows it to glorify itself as a socially enlightened society
while condemning Palestinian and other Arab attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals.
Some argue this behavior serves to cover up some of the larger injustices perpetrated by
Israel against Palestine. By focusing solely on LGBTQ issues, the complexity of IsraeliPalestinian relations threatens to be oversimplified, also closing dialogue on
intersectionality and the multitude of social factors that also affect LGBTQ rights. In
addition, this pinkwashing paradigm perpetuates an even larger West-Arab World
dichotomy by highlighting the gap between Palestine and Israel in terms of LGBTQ
rights. This not only hampers grassroots Palestinian/Arab advocacy organizations trying
to secure LGBTQ rights in Palestine, but also efforts to secure aspects of peaceful macrorelations between the US, Canada, and Europe with the Middle East.

Though other factors such as religion, history and politics play a large role in Palestines
current LGBTQ rights situation, adding a Western cultural connotation to LGBTQ rights
combines two concepts that should exist in completely separate spheres. If the West is
to attempt to improve the situation for LGBTQ individuals in the Middle East, care must
be taken to avoid patronizing actions reminiscent of the regions imperial past. LGBTQ
rights should not be mistaken as a colonial project.
Ideally, the situation for gay individuals in Palestine should improve. In the meantime,
Israel needs to rethink its refugee policy. Rather than enforce sweeping blocks to
Palestinian asylum-seekers, a case-by-case review of applicants strikes a better balance
between asylum and security. But Israels intransigencenamely its lumping of all
Palestinians into one categoryshows what Israel is willing to sacrifice in the name of
security. In reality, there is a huge disconnect between Tel-Avivs gay friendliness and
Israels stance on LGBTQ rights. And though the human rights corpus should be upheld
universally, the debate over granting gay Palestinians asylum in Israel is still seeped in a
geo-political context.
Josh Feng (17) attends Yale University.