Israel Should Have Used Other Options : But Arab indignation in the face of expulsions has a hollow ring

Arab states complain that the United Nations follows a double standard in dealing with countries that ignore Security Council resolutions. Iraq, they say, is bombed for scorning the rules of behavior that the Security Council imposed on it in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. But Israel is left unpunished when it ignores the council’s call to readmit more than 400 Palestinians expelled to Lebanon for alleged membership in two virulently anti-Israel organizations--expulsions that came on the heels of stepped-up attacks on Israeli soldiers and border police.

Set aside for the moment the question of whether those Arab states that now so indignantly point their fingers at Israel do so with clean hands. What about the gist of their complaint?

Israel indeed has earned the expected international outcry for the expulsions it carried out Dec. 17. Whether they prove to be “temporary” or not--the government says they could last for two years--they clearly violated international law prohibiting forcible transfers and, arguably, flouted Israeli due process as well.

The hasty nighttime expulsions were an attempt to create a fait accompli before the courts could interfere. Once they were under way the government could claim that reversing them would make Israel look weak in the eyes of its enemies. This political argument carried the day at a time of high national emotion, following the killings of the Israelis by Islamic radicals.

The expulsions, we think, were a mistake, unworthy of a state armed with recognized legal practices to deal with the terrorist threat posed by members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is nothing good to say about these organizations; if they could, both would erase Israel from the face of the Earth. This ugly fact doesn’t make any more palatable Israel’s denial of due process, including the right to prior legal review before expulsions can take place. Israel is now showing itself more flexible on allowing humanitarian help for the expellees. The proper course is still to return them to the West Bank and Gaza, bringing charges against those who can be shown to have broken the law.

We hope persuasion from Israel’s friends can help achieve that. Demands from Arab states certainly won’t, not simply because most of them are Israel’s sworn enemies but because virtually all lack any moral standing to complain about disrespect for law or human rights in others. These are the same states that raised no murmur when Kuwait and Saudi Arabia forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Yemenis in the wake of the Gulf War, the same states whose own domestic legal standards show scant regard for due process or individual rights. Israel committed a wrong, but Arab indignation in the face of that wrong has a hollow, hypocritical ring.