Israel to Expel 15 More Activists, Bans Grass-Roots Arab Groups

Israeli authorities have prepared expulsion orders against 15 more Palestinian activists from the so-called popular committees in the wake of a Defense Ministry order officially outlawing the groups, Israel Radio reported this morning.

The documents will be served “in the coming days” and follow deportation orders against 25 West Bank and Gaza Strip committee activists Wednesday. The new orders would bring to 73 the number of Palestinians banished since the uprising in the occupied territories began last December.

The United States opposes the deportations as a violation both of due process and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the expulsion “for any reason whatsoever” of civilians from an area under military occupation.

On Thursday, representatives of the European Communities protested the latest expulsions to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and the Assn. for the Defense of Civil Rights in Israel called them a “dangerous deviation” from past practice limiting such actions to exceptionally serious cases.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he decided to outlaw the committees in order to better combat what he called the primary means for “institutionalizing” the eight-month-old uprising.

His order means that membership in such a committee or cooperation with one is now a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Previously, the army would have had to prove that a particular committee or action had incited violence.

There are hundreds of these grass-roots committees organized in villages, towns, and refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their activities range from organizing anti-Israeli demonstrations and attacks on army patrols to supplying food and medical aid to needy Palestinians.

According to a Defense Ministry statement, “the committees have a double aim: to impose by violent means the orders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the uprising’s (underground) leaders on the population and to undermine the Israeli authorities . . . and to create alternative mechanisms instead.”

Rabin said up to 300 popular committee activists are already in jail and that several hundred more are still free. Security sources have told Israeli journalists to expect hundreds of arrests of committee members in the coming days.

In a related development Thursday, Palestinians called for a two-day general strike in the West Bank to protest the latest Israeli expulsions.