Israel to Deport 10 Palestinian Activists

In a surprise move, Israeli authorities late Friday ordered the deportation of 10 Palestinian activists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip who were said to have a history of “hostile activities” against the state.

The move came at a time when unrest in the territories, which has claimed more than 200 Palestinian and three Israeli lives since December, appears to be on the wane.

Expulsion is considered a particularly severe form of punishment, and the announcement seemed to risk creating a new wave of Palestinian protest. The U.S. government has repeatedly condemned the practice as a violation of due process and of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians in an area under military occupation.

An Israeli military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the move was meant to demonstrate to the Palestinians “that we will not tolerate what’s going on--firebombs, throwing stones, demonstrations, even if it’s a small one.”

‘Very Hard Punishment’

The source added that “this is very hard punishment” and that “we are hoping that this will deter people.”

The army order brings to 35 the number of Palestinians who have either been deported or against whom deportation proceedings have been started since the Palestinian uprising began last winter. The total includes Palestinian-American Mubarak Awad, an advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience in protest of Israeli rule, who was expelled to the United States in May.

Other recent Palestinian deportees have been flown by military helicopter to an area of southern Lebanon controlled by Israel and ordered to go north toward Syrian-held territory.

Most prominent among those ordered deported Friday are Fathi Ibrahim Iya Aziz Shakaki, 35, who is considered an ideological leader of the militant Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) movement in Rafah, at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, and Mahmad Abdallah Labadi, 33, of Al Birah on the West Bank, reputedly an activist with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Labadi is reportedly suspected by Israeli security officials of being a member of the so-called Unified National Leadership for the Uprising in the Occupied Territories, the secret Palestinian steering committee for what the Arabs call the intifada .

Most of those to be expelled were already in prison, either serving sentences for crimes against the state or, more often, under administrative detention, a sanction by which those considered a security threat can be held for renewable terms of up to six months without formal charge or trial.

The fact that they were in prison “has not prevented them from continuing their hostile activities,” the army said.

Palestinian sources described two of the 10 as journalists and two others as union activists.

The 10 will be able to appeal to a military panel and then to Israel’s Supreme Court. Only once has the high court been known to recommend reconsideration of a deportation order, and on that occasion the government ignored it.

The deportation order came a day after a senior army officer, briefing Israeli military correspondents, said security forces have recently reduced the level of Palestinian activity.

The officer, quoted in several Israeli newspapers Friday, said there had been a decline in the number of gasoline-bomb attacks in the West Bank after introduction of a new policy under which troops have blown up dozens of houses where accused firebombers lived.

On Friday, a Palestinian youth reportedly was killed and at least two others were wounded when troops opened fire to quell demonstrations. An army spokesman said it is investigating the death of a teen-ager from the West Bank village of Tubas, northeast of Nablus.

In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian youth was shot and slightly wounded after he stabbed four guards at an Israeli prison.