Deportees See a Role at the ‘Center of Most Sacred War’ : Mideast: Palestinians welcome court decision upholding expulsion because it sharpens confrontation.

On a damp and frozen hillside in Lebanon’s southern no-man’s-land Thursday, Abdulaziz Rantisi led 395 fellow Palestinian deportees in a deafening, chanted reply to the Israeli Supreme Court ruling just hours earlier upholding their expulsions.

“Do you want to go to Europe?” Rantisi cried out to the men assembled around him.

“No!” they shouted.

“Do you want to go to America?”

“No!”

“Do you have any other choice than return (to Israel)?” he persisted.

“No! No! No!”

“And so,” Rantisi concluded, “God has chosen you to be at the center of the most sacred war of the century.”

That was how, in the biting cold of a morning drizzle, the deportees now in the eye of the latest Middle East storm reacted to the Israeli high court’s ruling Thursday morning affirming the Israeli government’s right to expel them from the occupied territories.

Many Western governments and Israel’s allies had hoped that the court would provide the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with a face-saving way to allow the deportees to return. Without an order from the court, however, Rabin must either reverse his expulsion decision or face the prospect of United Nations-imposed trade sanctions and a collapse of the 2-year-old Israeli-Arab peace process.

The deportees, originally 415 of them, were rounded up Dec. 17 from their homes, shops and, in some cases, prison cells and pushed out of Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon without formal charges or trial. But the Lebanese government refused to allow them to proceed further, and so just across that boundary they have lived in tents for the last six weeks.

In its 32-page ruling, the Israeli court did rule that the deportees, some of whom have already been returned because Israel conceded they were expelled in error, should be permitted to return to appeal their cases in person. Previously, they had to use lawyers to argue on their behalf.

But to a man, the deportees said Thursday that they flatly rejected the military appeals process that the ruling called for. Most of them said they welcomed a court decision that now is likely to sharpen the confrontation between Israel and the United Nations.

In Jerusalem, however, the Rabin government also welcomed the court’s decision, declaring it “a complete victory” and vindication.

Rabin, a 70-year-old retired general who personally ordered the expulsions as an emergency security measure to purge Israel’s occupied territories of those identified by Israel’s security services as key leaders of the prominent militant Muslim organization, Hamas, expressed qualified joy.

Hamas seeks the annihilation of Israel and the establishment of a pan-Arab Islamic state. Its members had claimed responsibility for a number of slayings of Israeli soldiers and police in the weeks before the deportation.

Rabin called the deportees “murderers of the peace.” The Israeli leader, who was voted into office last year as a moderate alternative to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, stressed that the internal security of a small nation surrounded by enemies is paramount to the peace process.

Asserting that his government remains committed to the U.S.-sponsored peace talks, in which Israel and its neighbors have been negotiating the return of occupied lands in exchange for lasting peace, Rabin said, “It is inconceivable that the other side will halt the continuation of the peace negotiations.”

And he expressed full confidence that the Clinton Administration will fight any move to impose U.N. sanctions on Israel, as the United States has done consistently in the past.

In Washington, U.S. officials said the Clinton Administration will continue diplomatic pressure on Israel to defuse the crisis by taking back the deportees. These officials said the U.S. government will try to stall the U.N. Security Council from acting to enforce its Resolution 799 demanding that Israel allow the deportees to return. Rabin deserves a chance to climb down gracefully from the deportation order, they argued.

But they made no promises of an American veto if a resolution imposing sanctions ever comes to a vote. Washington is unlikely to use its veto, the officials said, because the Administration does not want to be the first to cast a veto in the Security Council in more than two years. Of Rabin’s expressions of confidence that the United States will block sanctions, an Administration official said, “He didn’t get that from us.”

Another U.S. official said U.N. action is not likely until next week at the earliest.

As sharp international condemnations of the Israeli court ruling poured forth Thursday, there were even a few, isolated voices of anger and frustration from within Israel itself.

“What was handed down here today was a catastrophe--that the court could allow 415 people to actually remain outside the country,” said Leah Tsemel, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer who represented some of the deportees before the high court. She suggested that the ruling could open the door to mass expulsions of Palestinians in the future.

Several other prominent Israelis said they support the government’s stand but criticized Rabin and his Cabinet for “negligence and clumsiness” in handling the issue.

In the deportees’ freezing makeshift tent village, Rantisi, who has served as the group’s spokesman, made clear that the deportees plan to leave their fate to a more international authority than Israel’s military appeals committees.

“Justice and the Security Council will work for you,” he shouted to his colleagues.

Later, in interviews, several of the deportees, many of whom are Islamic scholars, university professors and students, stressed that they believe their case to be a compelling one before the United Nations. The Security Council must deal consistently with all nations and governments of the world, they argued, and having imposed severe sanctions against Iraq and Yugoslavia for their defiance of U.N. resolutions, it must now take similar action against Israel. Despite the cold, rain and scarcity of food in their crude outpost, most also said they are prepared to wait even months for that logic to produce its result.

To reinforce their determination, the group has set up a hillside “university,” where scholars such as Abdul Fattah Lel-Awaisi teach daily classes in Palestinian studies. His students, Lel-Awaisi said, are “learning the roots of the Palestinian problem, and now they know why they’re here.”

Fineman reported from Nicosia, Cyprus, and Raschka from Lebanon. Times staff writer Norman Kempster, in Washington, and Dianna M. Cahn, a researcher in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau, contributed to this report.