Deportees Endure Fear, Frustration in No-Man’s-Land

A chilly morning light settled over the barren, snow-brushed mountains whose peaks divide the feuding nations of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, and from the midst of a makeshift tent city of forlorn men on their slopes, a lonesome voice began summoning the men to prayer.

“Allahu akbar,” the young bearded man sang, and his reedy voice spilled down the side of the hills as the men began emerging from the tents, washed in water gathered from a nearby stream and lined up on a bluff looking out toward the fabled Jebel al Sheik peak of the Golan Heights.

For the 415 Palestinians stuck in this rocky no-man’s-land since their deportation from Israel more than two weeks ago, Sunday morning dawned after a long night of fatigue, frustration and fear.

First, doctors unsuccessfully pleaded for permission to take a badly ailing man to a hospital for medical treatment and spent much of the night waiting for him either to recover or die. Then, a barrage of mortar rounds from Israel and its surrogate militia rained down on the surrounding hills, cutting one deep gouge within 500 yards of the camp in what the deportees believed was an attempt to cut off emergency food supplies from surrounding Arab villages.

“Most of the people were just praying to God to save us from this,” Aziz Dweik, a geography professor at Nablus’ An Najah University, said of the half-hour barrage that exploded along a nearby ridge Saturday night.

“We heard that the Israelis would like to prevent the villagers from sending any kind of supplies to the camp, and this was a kind of warning,” added Dr. Omar Ferwana, a physician from the Gaza Strip. “Are they aiming to leave us here without food? Is that it? . . .”

Lebanon continued Sunday to block the deportees’ entrance into Lebanon and refused also to allow International Committee of the Red Cross workers access to the 415 men, whose stranding in the freezing mountains between Israel and Lebanon has become a disturbing new image of the decades-long conflict that has poisoned the Middle East.

Israel on Dec. 17 expelled the 415 men, some of the most important intellectual leaders of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the slaying of six Israeli soldiers and policemen, which Israel blamed on the fundamentalist group, Hamas.

Lebanon, declaring it would no longer act as a dumping ground for undesirables and eager to hold Israel responsible for the deportations, has refused to admit the men, leaving them blocked on a mountainous slope between two international checkpoints.

“The time in which the (Israeli) occupier expelled into Lebanon the people it considered undesirable is past,” Lebanese President Elias Hrawi declared. “Lebanon is no longer a place of residence for people considered undesirable in their own country. Lebanon will no longer be a scapegoat.”

Both sides have also blocked access to international relief organizations seeking to provide food and medical supplies, leaving the men to depend on supplies secretly carried in on donkey backs from surrounding Lebanese villages. Most of these villages are controlled by the Lebanese fundamentalist group, Hezbollah, whose militia has used southern Lebanon as a base for attacks against Israeli forces in Israel’s self-declared security zone in the south of Lebanon.

In recent days, deportees have carried in supplies of flour, dates, canned goods and some meat donated by nearby villagers, and they believe Saturday night’s mortar attack, commencing at about 9:30 p.m., represented an attempt by the Israelis and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army to halt the supply line.

Israel said it had lobbed a number of shells into south Lebanon after “suspicious figures” began moving toward the security zone Saturday night.

Deportees also worked anxiously during the night to seek medical treatment for a young man suspected of having a critical abdominal obstruction requiring surgery. Despite repeated requests to officials at the nearest Lebanese checkpoint to take the man to the hospital, the requests were denied and he remained at the camp and eventually became better, said one of the physicians, Ferwana.

“What we had was a medical crisis. This was not a political issue, it was a medical one, but they completely refused to do anything,” he said. “Really, we felt shame last night. I told them, ‘If it’s an Israeli here and I saw him in such a case, I should intervene and save his life.’ It’s a humanitarian issue.”

Most of the deportees have spent their days talking quietly, reading the Koran or writing letters to family members in the hope that journalists, the only outsiders permitted access to the tent camp, will send them home.

“Most of the time, I am just sitting down and thinking of my kids and their last words,” said Dweik, the An Najah University professor.