Israel Offers Doctors for Deportees : Mideast: But Lebanon rejects compromise by refusing to allow food to pass through its territory.

Attempting to break the embarrassing impasse over the 415 Palestinians expelled to southern Lebanon two weeks ago, Israel offered Tuesday to permit Red Cross doctors to visit the deportees through territory it controls. But Lebanon rejected the compromise, refusing to allow relief agencies to take food and water to the Palestinians.

Lebanese President Elias Hrawi told James Jonah, a special U.N. envoy and the undersecretary general for political affairs, that he will not allow any assistance to the deportees through Lebanese territory, officials in Beirut said. Jonah himself was barred from visiting the Palestinians.

“We will not discuss any subject concerning the deportees through Lebanese territory,” Hrawi was quoted as telling Jonah, as Lebanon thwarted Israel’s attempt to end what officials in Jerusalem have come to see as a serious and growing diplomatic crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had offered to allow a medical team from the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross a one-time passage through territory that Israel controls in southern Lebanon to the deportees’ encampment. But he said that could happen only if the Beirut government permitted a convoy of food, water and other supplies through its lines.

Arriving in Beirut from Jerusalem, Jonah was prepared to convey the proposal, the first sign of Israeli flexibility in the crisis. But he apparently was unable to persuade Lebanese officials to even consider a compromise.

“Jonah is wasting his time with us,” Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told reporters in Beirut before he met the veteran U.N. envoy. “This is a wasted trip. Our position is firm. . . . Of course Israel would propose this, as Israel wants to say this is no-man’s-land. But these people are on Israeli-occupied territory, and Israel should provide them with food and medical supplies.”

Lebanon has refused to accept responsibility for the Palestinians because it does not want to legitimize their expulsion from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel contends that the deportees, suspected of belonging to militant Islamic groups, are now on Lebanese territory and thus the Beirut government’s responsibility.

The men, deported 13 days ago, are living in a tent camp in a freezing no-man’s-land between Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone” in southern Lebanon and a Lebanese army checkpoint.

“No one is enjoying the suffering of these people,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres commented Tuesday evening in Haifa. “Israel deported them, but it did not mean to hurt them.”

Peres, who was abroad when the Cabinet decided on the deportation, suggested there might be a new proposal when Jonah returns here this morning-- if politics can be set aside.

Both Israel and Lebanon have refused over the past two weeks to let international aid through to the deportees, saying they are the problem of the other country. Last Friday, the Israeli Cabinet voted, 8-6, to deny the Red Cross passage through Israeli lines.

“What we are proposing to the International Committee of the Red Cross is a humanitarian way to solve the humanitarian problem,” Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Obed Ben-Ami said Tuesday.

“There are two directions,” he said. “One is from Beirut south, the other is from Israel north. So, it should be two convoys.”

Ben-Ami declined to confirm local news reports that Israel expects Lebanon to provide all assistance after the initial missions. “When we proposed our proposal, it was a one-time passage,” Ben-Ami said. “It’s not a matter for negotiation. Let’s overcome the first step. In the future, we’ll discuss the future.”

Reto Meister, the head of the International Red Cross delegation in Israel and the occupied territories, expressed regret over Hariri’s rejection of the compromise.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army acknowledged that 10 deportees, and possibly 16, had been expelled in error--but that most would face trial before a military court in Israel when they return.

“This shows we were deported unjustifiably, and now Rabin is trying to win time and slowly retreat from his decision,” said Dr. Abdulaziz Rantisi, a leader among the deportees and a founder of the militant Islamic group Hamas. “Rabin is also trying to portray himself as a just and peaceful man, but the situation here reveals Rabin and his ugly face.”

In other developments, Israeli officials are squabbling more and more about who is to blame for the mess. Anonymous Israeli generals told military correspondents that the government had given them insufficient time to execute the complex operation, various officials said that Rabin had never consulted them about the deportation and the justice minister, David Libai, said that if he knew two weeks ago what he knows now, he would have voted against it.