Qimron Obtains Court Order Preventing BAR Editor from Leaving Israel

Halfway through my most recent trip to Israel, I received a call from our Israeli attorney: Professor Qimron had obtained a court order preventing me from leaving the country, he said. I was now a prisoner in Israel. The order was obtained without any notification of the application being given to our attorney. He was told only after the order had been entered and the border police had been notified to prevent my escape.

I had come to Israel to visit archaeological sites, to talk with archaeologists, to attend the 11th World Congress of Jewish Studies and to confer with curators at the Israel Museum and the Israel Antiquities Authority regarding the exhibit we are bringing to Washington in connection with the Annual Meeting. But with that telephone call from our attorney, my first concern had to be the legal proceeding.

After providing our attorneys with the facts of my visit and signing an appropriate affidavit, I returned to the matters that had brought me to Israel.

The earliest date our attorneys could arrange for a hearing before the magistrate was on the day I was to leave. The hearing was set for 9 a.m. My departure was scheduled for that night, an hour after midnight. The hearing lasted an hour, with both attorneys presenting legal arguments. Qimron’s lawyer argued that I must be kept in the country because if I failed to pay that judgment that Qimron had obtained,^a they could then put me in jail. Israel still has limited imprisonment for debt.