Israeli Detention of 2 Americans Questioned

Two Arab Americans were detained by Israeli authorities over the weekend for unspecified reasons after visiting refugee camps in the West Bank, government officials and associates of the pair said Monday.

Although a spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said she could not confirm the detentions, U.S. government officials and others said Dr. Riad Abdelkarim, an Anaheim physician, was taken into custody Saturday at Ben Gurion Airport as he attempted to board a plane heading home.

Dalell Mohmed, director of the Dallas-based charity KinderUSA--founded by Abdelkarim--was detained on Sunday morning at her hotel in Jerusalem, according to interviews.

Both Abdelkarim, a Santa Monica-born Palestinian American, and Mohmed, a second-generation Lebanese American, went to Israel as part of separate humanitarian aid efforts, family members and others said.

Abdelkarim and Mohmed have connections to the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based Islamic charity whose assets were frozen by the U.S. government in December because of the group’s alleged support for the Palestinian militant organization Hamas. Abdelkarim served on the Holy Land board for the last half of 2001 and Mohmed worked for the group for almost two years, serving for a time as its communications director.

Federal law enforcement officials said Monday they had no information indicating that the detentions of Abdelkarim and Mohmed were connected to the ongoing U.S. investigation of the Holy Land Foundation.

“This is not being done in conjunction with anything we are doing” about the group, said Lori Bailey of the FBI’s Dallas office. “Whatever is going on over there [in Israel] is totally their business.”

Another federal law enforcement source cautioned against any conclusion that Abdelkarim or Mohmed had any part in the charity’s allegedly questionable activities simply because they belonged to the group.

In Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., American Islamic groups Monday urged U.S. officials to intervene on behalf of the two Americans.

“There is a pattern of Israel blocking humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. They did so during the siege, and now they are hampering the efforts of Americans to provide aid,” said Khalid Turaani, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group American Muslims for Jerusalem.

“Unless there is a serious intervention by the U.S. government, those people are not going to be in very good shape,” Turaani said, noting that Abdelkarim has long suffered from asthma.

In addition to maintaining a medical practice, Abdelkarim is an author and lecturer who has long been openly critical of both terrorism and America’s “one-sided” support of Israel. He is in the Middle East, according to family members and associates, as part of a fact-finding effort by the Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps, a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses in the U.S.

The trip was one of many that Abdelkarim, a married father of four, has made to the region in recent years--a fact that made his current detention all the more baffling for friends and family.

“At this point, the overriding emotion is one of fear, apprehension and plain confusion,” said Nidal Abrahim, a family friend.

There is no evidence, Abrahim said, that Abdelkarim is “anything other than a doctor in a humanitarian mission. At this point we have no clue why he’s being held.”

Since his detention, family members have been pressing for answers from politicians, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, human rights groups and attorneys. A family friend said an attorney in Jerusalem has been hired, but so far he has been denied permission to see Abdelkarim.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said that although details of the situation are sketchy, he has been monitoring it and has been assured that Abdelkarim has been allowed to speak with U.S. officials in Israel.

“Guilty or innocent of anything, he is a U.S. citizen and it is normal for our embassy to be given access,” Cox said. “And that is what I am told has happened here.”

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Times staff writer William Lobdell contributed to this report.