A medical-aid worker from Brooklyn who
was trapped in Yasir
Arafat's compound overnight in April returned home
yesterday, after several days in an Israeli prison.
The worker, Adam Shapiro, 30, faces deportation
and various
charges in Israel as a result of a protest march he
participated in. He left Israel on Sunday of his own
accord, he said.
When Mr. Shapiro was trapped in the Arafat
compound, he
shared breakfast with Mr. Arafat, and the story inflamed
the divisive debate associated with the Middle East in
Brooklyn, where his parents live.
He was detained on Wednesday as he tried
to escort
Palestinians from their village, Hawara, to the town of
Nablus, a few miles to the north, to protest road closings,
he said.
"We were physically assaulted by armed
gunmen from Israel's
paramilitary border police in the heart of the West Bank,"
Mr. Shapiro said at Kennedy International Airport.
Dr. Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime
Minister Ariel
Sharon of Israel, denied that Mr. Shapiro had been treated
improperly. "The fact that this is still under
investigation implies that there was more than just an
innocent walk going on."
An Israeli military source, who spoke on
the condition of
anonymity, said soldiers had to use force to move the
protesters after they chained themselves to a checkpoint.
Mr. Shapiro said that he abhorred terrorism
and that the
group had been walking peacefully.
When his father, Stuart Shapiro, arrived
at the airport
yesterday, he threw his arms around his son and repeated,
his voice cracking, "It's good to have you home."
After receiving a master's degree in Arabic
studies at
Georgetown University, Mr. Shapiro spent a year at a
language school in Yemen. He later went to Israel, where he
was a coordinator for the International Solidarity
Movement, which organizes nonviolent protests against the
Israeli military presence in the West Bank. In April, he
talked his way past Israeli soldiers to deliver medical
supplies at Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
While Mr. Shapiro said he wanted to fight
the charges he
faced in Israel, he said he was starting a doctoral program
at American University in Washington in a few weeks.
