Israeli Court Upholds Deportation : Awad, Advocate of Civil Disobedience, Vows, ‘I’ll Be Back’

Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday upheld a government order to deport Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian-American political activist and advocate of civil disobedience, who opposes Israeli rule in the occupied territories.

The court turned down Awad’s appeal and said the Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen “harms the security and public order” in Israel, does not have a legal residence permit and is in Israel under an expired visa under his American passport.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said Awad will “in all likelihood” be expelled June 12.

The United States, which has consistently protested the deportation order since it was issued after his arrest on May 6, had no immediate comment. Earlier, American officials in Jerusalem said the outcome of the case could affect “tens of thousands” of other Jerusalem-born Arabs whose current legal status is “very questionable.”

Listens Intently to Court

Awad, 44, sat in the defense box with a translator and two Israeli soldiers, listening intently while the three-judge panel rejected his appeal to stay in Arab East Jerusalem, where he was born four years before the Israeli occupation.

Soldiers handcuffed him after the decision and led him from the packed courtroom back to prison, where he has been held in isolation pending his appeal since his arrest. His American-born wife, Nancy Nye, read a statement from Awad:

“As a Palestinian, I never hated you. I don’t hate you now. And I will never hate you. But as a Jerusalemite, I am telling you I’ll be back.

Action ‘Is a Disgrace’

“Uprooting me from my family, land, friends and culture is a disgrace,” Awad said. “You have the power, the law and the gun pointing in my face. I am armed with hope, truth and nonviolence.

“I am not disappointed. I will continue to fight for a Palestinian state wherever I am,” he said.

Awad contends that the government had no right under the so-called Law of Entry into Israel of 1952 to deny him residency. Awad contends that he has the right to live in Jerusalem because he was born there, in British-ruled Palestine, four years before Israeli independence. But Israel maintains that he lost the right to residency because he left in 1969 to study in the United States. He remained there after graduation, married and became a U.S. citizen.

Awad returned to Jerusalem in 1983 to start a counseling program for parents, students and teachers on the West Bank. He founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in 1985.

The government charged that Awad had been in Israel illegally since last Nov. 22, when his tourist visa expired. It also accused him of inciting violence in the occupied territories during the six-month-old Palestinian uprising in which about 190 Palestinians and two Israelis have been killed.

In Tel Aviv, meanwhile, an Israeli military court Sunday jailed a soldier for killing a Palestinian, the first such sentence since the outbreak of the uprising.

The court sentenced Pvt. Yaacov Tamir, 24, to a year in jail after he confessed to a charge of manslaughter in January in the killing a Palestinian in Gaza City.

Israel Army Radio reported that the court was lenient because of testimony by psychiatrists that Tamir was not equipped to handle the pressure of army duty and that the army had made a mistake in calling him up.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources reported demonstrations in at least eight towns and U.N.-run refugee camps. The sources said at least seven Palestinians were reported beaten by Israeli soldiers, but an Israeli army spokesman said he had no reports of disturbances.

Shultz Mission Protested

Palestinians, meanwhile, staged a strike for the third day to protest the latest peace mission by U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

In New York, the commander of Israeli troops on the West Bank predicted an increase in violence in the occupied territories and said the army will have to respond.

“We will experience more terrorist acts by individuals and small groups and we are going to employ forces as needed to keep the situation down,” Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna said.

“One of our goals is to deter the local Arabs from confronting Israeli security forces. We want them not to just fear an Israeli soldier, but also to respect (him),” he told a press conference.

The 43-year-old veteran of the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars, in the United States on a weeklong speaking tour, said:

“The uprising has passed its peak and is on the decline. Yet there has not been any change in the basic factors which led to the uprising. (It) has achieved no result for the local population (and) is unlikely to achieve anything, at least in the near future.”