TEL AVIV, June 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli officials turned back a group of 20 U.S. Muslims who tried to enter the country, holding them under guard for nearly eight hours before putting them on a flight back to the United States, police and a member of the group said, an Israeli newspaper reported Monday, June 17.

Margaret Zaknoen, program organizer for the group, ‘American Muslims for Jerusalem’, said she and her companions arrived in Israel Sunday afternoon for a series of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, reported Ha’aretz.

"We started to go through passport control and then they took us out," Zaknoen, of Washington D.C. said by cellphone from Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport, as she and the others boarded a Continental Airlines flight to Newark, New Jersey.

Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman earlier said the 20 were refused entry by Interior Ministry staff and were held at the airport for deportation, but he had no further details, said the paper.

Zaknoen said an immigration official told her the group was denied entry because of "serious security concerns" and the belief that the object of their trip was to support the Palestinian Authority.

"I told them we were not going to go to any demonstrations or anything; we were just going to be meeting Palestinian and Israeli groups, talking to people, learning about the situation," she said. She added that she felt her group was denied entry, where other groups with identical itineraries had been admitted in the past, because her delegation was Muslim.

Zaknoen said that on her return home, she would complain to the State Department, members of Congress and to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

This is not the first incident of its kind. Israel has repeatedly deported foreign peace activists who entered areas of the West Bank, declared a closed military zone, and off limits to press or nonresidents.

Two weeks ago, eight foreigners -- among them a Jordanian journalist and two U.S. citizens -- were expelled after Israeli troops arrested them in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata where the journalists were on a visit of solidarity with the Palestinians.

According to Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, Herzl Gedj of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior told Israel Radio that the delegation was composed of what she described as “radical” Muslims, many of whom had allegedly moved to the U.S. from Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan.