All 396 Deportees Say No to Israel’s Offer to Accept 100

Stirring their lunch of lentils and fried onions over an open fire in the snow, a small group of Palestinian deportees each explained why they agreed with their leaders’ decision early Tuesday to reject outright an Israeli compromise that would have sent 100 of them home as early as today.

“Back home, we have no freedom,” said deportee Hamzeh Jabber, shaking off the cold some distance from the media pack that flocked to the camp here in the wilderness of no-man’s-land in southern Lebanon to hear 396 men give their answer to the Israeli offer. “Life is full of fear. To eat, to work or to sleep, it is like we’re all in prison.”

Ahmed Mubarak nodded.

“All we want is the justice of the U.N.,” he said, “not the court of Israel.”

“It’s simple,” concluded Fadl Mohammed Saleh, a mosque teacher from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “We refuse this drama.”

In this way, the 396 Palestinians expressed their solidarity, announcing to the world from their makeshift tent camp that either all of them will go home or none.

Their unanimous hard-line stand will prolong not only their discomfort but also the latest standoff in the decades-old Middle East conflict. The action continues the threat to Israel’s peace talks with its various Arab neighbor states and the Palestine Liberation Organization. And in some eyes, it keeps the deportee issue an embarrassment to Jerusalem.

Israel rounded up and deported 415 Palestinians from the occupied territories on Dec. 17, accusing them of being key members of Hamas, a radical Palestinian organization whose aims include the overthrow of the Jewish state. Hamas had claimed responsibility for a series of violent attacks against Israeli police officers, soldiers and civilians in the weeks before the government acted.

Once Israel had pushed the deportees past the boundaries of its self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon, Lebanon refused to allow them deeper into the country. Subsequently, Israel accepted some of the original deportees back, acknowledging it had expelled them in error.

While the PLO no longer espouses the goal of destroying Israel, its officials say they will not return to the U.S.-sponsored peace talks unless Israel complies with U.N. Security Council Resolution 799 demanding the return of all the deportees. It too rejected Israel’s offer to take back 100 and cut the term of exile for the other 296.

So, on a day when the world media had them in the international spotlight, most of the deportees said their morale, their will to endure and their commitment to resist remain high.

At center stage, the group’s spokesman, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, started the day by leading most of the men in what has become a hillside ritual: a show of hands, prayers and chants expressing defiance of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his 11th-hour, U.S.-brokered offer to defuse the situation and avert the threat of U.N. trade sanctions.

“He who rejects the American-Israeli deal, let him raise his hand,” the gray-bearded Rantisi shouted as the television cameras followed the vote.

Every man lifted his right hand.

“He who agrees to this deal, now let him raise his hand,” Rantisi asked, scanning the hillside. Not a single hand moved.

Then, kneeling in the mud and snow, the men recited together: “God, take our revenge on those who suppressed us. God, take our revenge on those who expelled us. God punish Rabin.”

The group did make one exception to its rejection of the offer: It decided that a handful of deportees would return for health reasons, provided that such a return was clearly not part of Rabin’s compromise.

In interviews, most of the deportees indicated that they understood their stand is a calculated risk. Their hope, they said, is to isolate Israel internationally and push the Security Council into firm action. The risk, they acknowledged, is that the Palestinians might themselves be isolated in the process.

Rantisi put it in political terms: “If we accept this partial repatriation, we would be accepting the legality of deportation.”

Hamzeh Jabber, a deportee from Nablus on the occupied West Bank, used an analogy:

“On this road to a solution, there are two cars,” he said. “One is the U.N. car. It is very big. The other is the Israeli car. It is very small. So, we will go with the big one.”

And that, it appeared, was a view shared at the highest levels of the PLO, which vowed in statements Tuesday from Tunis and the United Nations that it will not return to the bargaining table until all the deportees are home.

But the deportees, who include Islamic fundamentalist leaders, teachers, preachers and sympathizers, indicated that they know their strategy might backfire. Israel urged the Palestinian leadership to think twice before rejecting Rabin’s offer, lest the talks proceed without them.

Even Lebanon, through Foreign Minister Faris Bouez, welcomed the partial repatriation offer and applauded the Clinton Administration for pressuring Israel.

“We expect the American government to keep up its efforts toward a full and complete implementation (of Resolution 799), so that all the deportees are repatriated,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Monday that the Israeli compromise had eliminated the need for further Security Council action.

To that, deportee Ahmed Mubarak echoed with emphasis the argument heard throughout the Arab world these days: The United Nations will be guilty of blatant double standards if it fails to impose trade sanctions against Israel after levying harsh trade sanctions against Iraq and Yugoslavia for their failure to obey Security Council resolutions.

There was also surprise expressed that the Clinton Administration, which many of the deportees had believed to be on their side, would accept half-measures.

“I was very astonished by that, because the U.S. shared in the voting on Resolution 799,” Rantisi said.

Mohammed Abou-Shelbak added: “The U.S. calls for freedom and justice. Well, now it’s exam time--a test of sincerity.”

Raschka reported from Lebanon and Fineman from Nicosia, Cyprus.