Israel Defies Critics, Deports Palestinian Editor

Defying criticism at home and abroad, the Israeli government Sunday deported a prominent Palestinian newspaper editor who had previously been denied the chance to see evidence against him of alleged anti-state activity.

Akram Haniye, 33, editor of the East Jerusalem Arabic-language Al Shaab newspaper, was escorted from prison to Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv by two security guards, who put him aboard a scheduled Swissair flight to Geneva. He was accompanied on board by a representative of the International Red Cross.

A few hours later, two Palestinian youths were wounded when Israeli troops opened fire in Ramallah on the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River to disperse youths protesting Haniye’s expulsion.

Protest From Europe

In London, the British government, acting in its capacity as president of the 12-nation European Communities, called the deportation a breach of international law.

The expulsion came nearly two months after Haniye was detained for alleged illegal political activity on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization and two days after he dropped his ap1885692268military authorities on the West Bank.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that neither Haniye nor his lawyers could see most of the evidence presented against him by the army lest state security be jeopardized. That left him without a chance to rebut the evidence or defend himself, Haniye asserted in a statement issued through his attorney, Felicia Langer.

‘My Lawyers Are Helpless’

“Despite their great efforts and abilities, my lawyers are actually helpless in their defense of my case,” Haniye said.

The army, which has jurisdiction in the case because the journalist lived in the West Bank town of Ramallah, accused Haniye of being a senior activist of the PLO’s dominant Fatah faction and a conduit for PLO funds and instructions in the occupied territories. The military charged that his office had become a meeting place for Fatah leaders, although it conceded that he was not accused of involvement in any terrorist activity.

As they often do in such cases, the authorities argued that they could not give Haniye access to the evidence against him without compromising intelligence sources. In addition to its own full-time General Security Service (Shin Bet) agents, Israel uses the services of a vast network of Palestinian informers on the West Bank.

Haniye, considered the most prominent of 14 Palestinians expelled since Israeli authorities revived the practice of deportations in August, 1985, after a five-year lapse, denied any wrongdoing.

“I am the victim of political revenge for my struggle as a political person, as a journalist and as a writer, to achieve the legitimate rights of my people,” he charged in the statement released through his attorney.

Writers and journalists in the occupied territories, in Israel and abroad had condemned the action against Haniye and appealed to the government to rescind its deportation order. The U.S. State Department said early last month that it “regretted” the move as counterproductive.

On Saturday night, Matti Peled, a leftist member of Parliament from the Progressive List for Peace party, charged that the case made a mockery of elementary concepts of justice.

In messages to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Peled said that secret accusations were the tools of totalitarian regimes “and are intolerable in a democratic state of law.”

New Israel-Jordan Policy?

Palestinian activists believe that Haniye was expelled as part of a new policy of cooperation between Israel and Jordan to undercut West Bank leaders who back the PLO in its conflict with King Hussein for influence in the occupied territories.

While his was considered among the more moderate of the Palestinian newspapers published in East Jerusalem, Haniye was critical of Hussein.

It was because of that criticism that the journalist was deported to Europe instead of to Jordan, which is the more common destination for Palestinians expelled from Israeli-ruled territory.

“I think there was reservation about his condition if he was expelled to Jordan, because he is against the regime there,” Al Shaab general manager Ali Yaish said Sunday in an interview with Israeli radio.

Don’t Want the Blame

Yaish recalled that another prominent West Bank deportee, former Hebron Mayor Fahd Kawasmeh, was assassinated in Jordan two years ago, and added, “I think the Israeli authorities don’t want to have the blame on their doorstep.”

Haniye is expected to go to Algeria from Switzerland.

Yaish called the editor’s expulsion “a sad moment in the history of the paper and in the history of the Palestinian people.”

Attorney Langer said that her client “represented the most sound and moderate views of the Palestinians.” She said he had testified at an earlier appeal hearing that “he is for a peaceful solution of the (Palestinian) problem; for an international conference to bring about this peaceful solution; for a Palestinian state alongside Israel and not instead of Israel.”