By Amira Hass "It must be a mistake, the caprice of a clerk at border control," Aadel Samara responded when his wife Enayeh informed him by phone on May 26 that her entry to Israel, through the Sheikh Hussein Terminal (near Beit She'an), was not permitted. There was no reason to suspect anything but an error. After all, throughout their 30 years together this was the drill: Every three months, a day or two before the Israeli tourist visa in her American passport was set to expire, she would go away for a few days - to Jordan, sometimes Cyprus or Egypt, then return with a new visa for another three months.
Except when Aadel was working on his doctorate in economics, in Britain, she and the children joined him for part of the time.
The Samaras are both natives of Beit Ur al Foqa, a village west of Ramallah. Enayeh was born in 1950; Aadel in 1944. But in 1967, two months before the war, she visited her father, who was working in the United States.
After occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel conducted a census and ruled that anyone who was not present in the territories at the time of the census ceased being a resident. Thus, like thousands of other Palestinians, Enayeh lost her residency status. In 1975, she visited her birthplace on an American passport, as a tourist. She met Aadel, they fell in love and married. When their daughter, Samer, was 39-days-old and still nursing, she accompanied her mother on the quarterly trip to Jordan for visa renewal. They submitted a dozen applications for "family reunification" - in vain.
The Israeli authorities, which have controlled the Palestinian Population Registry since 1967 to this day, refused. So over the years they had no choice but to get used to the frequent travel arrangement.
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