Deportees’ Spirits High; Stamina Weakens : Mideast: Palestinians divide up what’s left of their food as they face hunger in snowy campsite.

Spirits remained high but physical stamina weakened as 415 Palestinians deported by Israel 10 days ago divided up what was left of their food Saturday and faced the reality of hunger in their snowy campsite in Lebanon’s southern Bekaa Valley.

Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, warning of difficulties to come, appealed to Washington to press Israel to let the deportees return to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Spaghetti, cooking oil and bags of bread were carried from the main canteen tent to the dormitory tents, and the camp leaders put emergency measures into effect--each tent of 10 men will now be on its own.

The bread--delivered last Sunday--was either dry or moldy. The men joked as they tried to play fair and give each group one bag of each.

An overnight snowfall had melted and turned the camp into a mud hole. By midmorning new snow added slippery to the list of adjectives journalists used to describe the scene.

Lack of drinking water has reached a crucial stage, forcing the deportees to drink from a nearby stream. One of the deportees, Dr. Wael Farawani, has recorded 40 cases of dysentery.

But the real worry for the camp’s 10 doctors--all deportees--is Amjad Zamer, who was injured last week when the South Lebanon Army, Israel’s client militia, shelled the Palestinians as they tried to approach the Israeli “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

Zamer’s shattered jaw was treated at a Lebanese hospital, and then he and eight other wounded or ill deportees were ordered back to the camp despite doctors’ warnings that Zamer was seriously ill. His jaw is wired together, and he’s being fed only glucose through a drip feed.

“He needs milk; it’s the only thing we can feed him,” one of the doctors said, “but there is no milk.”

The canteen tent--full to the tent pegs with supplies five days ago--held only odds and ends Saturday. All remaining fuel is reserved to heat the tents of the nine wounded men. Meals are cooked over an open fire. Saturday, one group cooked up a pot of lentils with two onions for flavor as the snow fell around them.

A kind of scrub bush that covers the mountainsides provides fuel. It also serves as a place to lay out laundry to dry.

Small talk among the men quickly turns to facing the problem of hunger and cold and to what the chances are for a political solution to their deportation.

The deportees’ determination has not weakened: They continue to support the stand of the Lebanese government not to accept them as refugees and to demand their return to Israeli-occupied territories.

“Who knows how many more (of us) Israel will deport if they get away with this,” a deportee from the Gaza Strip said. “If we die here, they won’t dare throw out more people.”