A rchive Date
[ 20-07-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWS/mideast_jul20-ap.html
Israel deportation plan draws fire
Saturday, Jul. 20, 2002
JERUSALEM (AP)A Palestinian human rights group has asked Israel's Supreme Court to block any deportation of relatives of West Bank suicide bombers to the Gaza Strip, saying the move violates international law.
Attorney Hader Shkirat, director of the Law Society, said he filed a motion Friday as a preventive measure after Israeli forces destroyed the homes of two suspects in this week's attacks and arrested 21 of their relatives. Following the arrests, Israeli officials said the Israel's attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, had determined that relatives of West Bank suicide bombers could be deported to Gazabut only if they had a direct link to acts of terrorism.
A Justice Ministry spokesman, Jonathan Beker, said deportations could occur "for example, if they encouraged the bomber to join the terrorist organization or even to volunteer for the suicide attack, or were involved in his recruitment."
Israel made the arrests after back-to-back attacks this week left 10 Israelis and two foreign workers deadthe first attacks in nearly a month.
Early Saturday, a car exploded in Jaffa, an Arab-Jewish neighbourhood south of downtown Tel Aviv, killing the driver, police said. The circumstances of the blast were unclear. The car was near the Hamadia mosque in the Arab part of town when it exploded, a police spokesman said.
The arrests were made amid reports of a possible Palestinian cease-fire as a prelude for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. The Jordanian and Saudi foreign ministers both spoke of the cease-fire discussions in comments to reporters after meeting with President Bush in Washington.
Palestinians and Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the first stage of the plan would be a halt to Palestinian suicide bombing attacks inside Israel.
This would be followed by an Israeli army withdrawal from Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip and from territory in and around one West Bank city for starters.
The issue of deportation is sensitive for Palestinians, whose close-knit family relations dictate much of their everyday lives. Deportation to Gaza from West Bank villages where their extended families live would remove much of their social and economic support systems.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat called the deportation proposal a war crime and violation of the fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of civilians in war zones.
"When nations in the year 2002 decide on collective punishment, and decide to deport (families) from one place to another, this is a war crime, and we will pursue it as such," he said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States expected Israel to act only based on information about a person's culpability, not personal or family relationships. "We think that taking punitive actions against innocent people will not solve Israel's security problems and we'll be raising that issue with the Israeli government," he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's spokesman said Annan was "disturbed" by reports of the deportation plan and of the house demolitions.
"While (Annan) has repeatedly condemned suicide bombings and upheld Israel's right to defend itself, the secretary-general wishes to make clear that self-defence cannot justify measures that amount to collective punishments," Annan's office said.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government hadn't made a decision on whether to carry out the deportations pending further legal analysis.
The idea of deportations is to deter future attacks and counter the support that families of suicide bombers receive from groups such as Hamas and from outside governments, which amount to "bribery to commit mass murder," said Daniel Taub, a legal adviser in the Foreign Ministry. He referred specifically to the government of Iraq, which sends up to $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers.
The Palestinian Authority also provides a form of social security to families of Palestinians arrested or killed by Israeli forces. Hamas provides schooling and other needs of the families of its members killed in suicide attacks.
"We've seen mothers appearing in videos of suicide bombers before they go out to commit their atrocities. We've seen families of suicide bombers afterward expressing the wish that their other children will follow suit," Taub said. "We have to try and break this cycle, we have to try and provide a deterrent."
Israel used the deportation tactic repeatedly in the 1980s, but had largely held off until it sent 26 militants to the Gaza Strip in May to end a standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
The most famous deportation occurred in December 1992, when after a wave of attacks on Israelis, the government expelled about 415 men associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon.
After international pressure, Israel allowed them to return. Many of the deportees later used the bomb-making know-how they learned from the militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon to attack Israelis.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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