When a Civil Administration officer at the Beit El military base extended the tourist visa of Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman from Ramallah, and wrote on it "last permit," he did not do so on his own initiative. When the officer issued what amounts to a deportation order against Bahour from the city in which his family has lived for many generations, and in which he has lived for 14 years with his wife and two daughters, he was only the messenger.

When a border official at the Allenby Bridge two weeks ago denied entry to a Palestinian-Jordanian woman arriving with her husband, a young doctor from Ramallah, he was following orders. So were the border officials who did not allow the Spanish wife of R.I. from Ramallah to return with their two-year-old daughter, and those who prevented S.A., a Ramallah-born Palestinian with Swedish citizenship, from returning to his wife, children and livelihood in Bir Zeit. The official who twice denied entry to P.Z., a Palestinian-American who has invested $300 million in the territories and is a senior director of a Palestinian investment company, was also obeying new rules dictated by the Israeli Interior Ministry.

When Interior Ministry spokespersons claim repeatedly that these are not new rules of entry, but rather a "freshening up" about existing procedures, they are not playing dumb on their own initiative. Neither is the senior Civil Administration official who explained to Zahi Khouri - one of the most prominent Palestinian-American businessmen, who has so far been spared the "last permit" stamp - that this was a matter of "an administrative misunderstanding." This well-laundered phrase was not invented by that official, who meant that if until now, Khouri and others in his situation have received tourist visas every three months, that was only a "misunderstanding."