Israel to Deport 25 Arabs in Crackdown on Uprising’s Grass-Roots Leadership

In its largest such action by far, Israel on Wednesday served deportation orders on 25 Palestinians it accuses of leading the eight-month-old Arab uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The move was part of a crackdown ordered by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin against the grass-roots “popular committees” that have become “the main engine of the intifada ,” or uprising, throughout the territories, a senior security source said.

At the same time, four other Arabs who had been issued deportation orders last month were flown by Israeli army helicopter to Lebanon on Wednesday, given $50 and ordered to head north, the army said.

That action came just days after the four had dropped their Israeli Supreme Court appeals of the expulsion orders. The court has never overturned such a case, which is based on secret evidence that neither the defendant nor his lawyer is allowed to see.

The latest four expulsions brought to 33 the total number of Palestinians deported over U.S. and other protests since the uprising began Dec. 9.

Thus, the 25 additional Palestinians who were served deportation orders Wednesday would nearly double the number expelled. The largest number previously served such orders at one time was 12, during the height of anti-Israeli violence last April.

The security source characterized Wednesday’s action as one of the most severe steps Israel has taken since the intifada began and said it was an indication that it views the activities of the popular committees “very seriously.”

“It’s very scary,” one Palestinian journalist said. “It’s everyone’s worst nightmare--being deported. I don’t think it’s going to stop the committees from working, but it’s going to push everything 10 feet underground.”

Both Palestinians and Israeli authorities see the grass-roots groups as the beginning of a rudimentary structure for self-rule in the territories--and, as such, a direct challenge to the occupation.

Although the committees have been operating for months, they have been thrown into the spotlight by events of the last three weeks. First came the announcement by Jordan’s King Hussein that he is severing his country’s administrative and legal links to the West Bank.

Now, Palestinians here and abroad are pushing for a unilateral declaration of independent statehood and formation of an interim government for the occupied territories. The popular committees are seen as the seeds from which a Palestinian administration would grow.

Thus, the committees are the army’s main targets in trying to restore order, Rabin told a seminar on the uprising at Hebrew University on Wednesday.

“We are going to cope very effectively with what is called the popular local committees,” he pledged. “We are going to use whatever we are allowed by our laws.”

Incitement Charged

Israeli security sources assert that the most important activity of the local committees is to incite anti-Israeli activity. According to these sources, they encourage attacks against the army, disrupt army tactics, distribute leaflets and money to fuel the uprising, enforce strikes called by the underground leadership and threaten any Palestinians considered to be collaborating with Israeli rule.

The Israelis estimate that there may be “several hundred” such groups active in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while Palestinians say the number is more likely in the thousands.

Some of the popular committees--such as those organizing food supplies during frequent army curfews, medical aid teams, agricultural and education committees--have operated semi-openly. Other groups, known by the Palestinians as “hit teams,” are admittedly underground enforcement squads for the leaders of the uprising.

The senior Israeli security source argued that all of those ordered deported Wednesday were involved in clearly anti-Israeli activity as part of their activities in the popular committees and other groups.

Perhaps the best known of the group is Taysir Arruri, a Birzeit University professor who is listed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. According to a brief biography released by the army, Arruri is a senior activist of the illegal Palestinian Communist Party who studied in the Soviet Union for five years.

The list also includes what the army described as senior activists for the mainstream Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Progressive Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad. Most have been jailed previously by the Israeli authorities on charges ranging from membership in an illegal organization to terrorism.

The United States, the International Red Cross and other organizations oppose the expulsion of Palestinians from the territories as a violation of both due process and of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. That agreement, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibits the expulsion “for any reason whatsoever” of civilians from an area under military occupation.

Israel counters that the Geneva Convention was meant to outlaw mass deportations for the purpose of forced labor, torture or extermination.