Arab Exiles OK Israel Repatriation : Mideast: Nearly 400 deportees drop demand that all be returned together. 192 will leave camp in south Lebanon next month; the rest will be home by year’s end.

Nearly 400 Palestinians--exiled by Israel to a mountainside in southeast Lebanon eight months ago but largely forgotten--on Sunday accepted Israeli terms for their repatriation to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Dr. Abdulaziz Rantisi, one of the deportees’ leaders, said the group, which has lived in tents through the bitterly cold winter and the dry, hot summer, will accept a phased return and no longer insist on coming back together.

“We have decided to accept the new (Israeli) offer, and we wish to stress our firm belief in the right of all of us to return to our homeland,” Rantisi told journalists at the deportees’ camp at Marj Zahour.

Israel was widely condemned last December when it banished, without trial, or even formal charges, 415 Palestinians into the snows of the Lebanese mountains, accusing them of supporting violent Islamic groups. Some of the deportees have since been allowed back.

The offer to repatriate the rest was, in fact, not new but a reiteration of a plan worked out with Secretary of State Warren Christopher in January. That plan called for the return of all by Dec. 17--the anniversary of their deportation and a year earlier than Israel had intended.

Israeli Economic Planning Minister Shimon Shetreet called the deportees’ decision an important victory for Israel. “They made the right decision,” Shetreet said.

Although the men at the tent encampment cheered and clapped as their leaders announced the decision, there was also a feeling that they had been abandoned by other Arabs, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, and that their cause had been forgotten as peace negotiations with Israel proceeded.

“Without support in the Arab world, we cannot sustain this as a protest,” said Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, another Gaza physician who emerged as a leader of the group. “It becomes a pointless sacrifice on our part.”

While a substantial number of the returnees will go back to their homes in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, others are likely to be detained by Israeli authorities and some will face charges, according to military sources here.

“We hope God will bring forward the return of all of us,” Kamal abu Ayasha, a political activist from Nablus on the West Bank, told journalists visiting the camp. “I hope above all to go back to my homeland even if it is back to prison. I have been convicted of no crime.”

Rantisi said that, after a two-day debate that continued through Saturday night, the 192 men on Israel’s list for repatriation in September voted unanimously to return, on assurances conveyed by the United States that the rest would be home by year’s end.

Of the 192 men allowed back in September, 121 could have returned over the past six months but had refused out of solidarity with others in the group.

The deportations occurred after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, angry over the deaths of six Israeli soldiers and police officers in clashes with the fundamentalist groups and fearing the domestic political reaction, cracked down hard on the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, whose attacks were aimed at disrupting the Middle East peace negotiations.

Lebanon would neither admit the deportees nor allow relief agencies to cross its territory to assist them, thereby holding Israel responsible for the men’s well-being. The deportees survived on food, medicine and other supplies brought by Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Party of God.

Nineteen of the original 415 were allowed back for medical treatment or because Israeli authorities found they had been erroneously included in the hastily organized expulsion; one man fled the camp and reportedly has been hospitalized in Lebanon.

The mass expulsion did disrupt the peace talks for four months as Arab delegations refused to negotiate with Israel, but after they resumed in April the deportees receded as an issue.

Rabin, determined to maintain Israeli security through the peace negotiations, later closed Israel to most Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and last month he launched a massive air, artillery and naval bombardment on southern Lebanon in retaliation for guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces and communities.

Rantisi said the men were disappointed by the international community’s failure to insist on Israeli implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 799, which called for their immediate return.

“One of the causes (of the decision to reverse the previous, all-or-none stand) was the return of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks despite their previous pledges not to rejoin the negotiations before the return of all deportees,” Rantisi said.

Divisions had also emerged among the deportees in recent weeks, particularly over the plight of the 100 or so who need medical care.

Israel’s weeklong offensive against southern Lebanon last month persuaded many of the men to leave. Bombs and shells fell around the camp, the deportees said, and there were fears they might become engulfed as helicopter gunships attacked nearby Hezbollah outposts. The outpost that was their main source of food was virtually destroyed in heavy Israeli attacks July 29.

In the end, the Hezbollah guerrillas who had supplied the camp over the past eight months were pushed out of the area, and Syria, which reached an agreement with Israel on the status of forces in the region, was apparently anxious to end the deportees’ protest against their expulsion.

“I have been living for the dream of returning for the past eight months,” Khalil abu Leila, 40, a pharmacist from Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, told journalists. “Now I know the dream will come true. I am filled with joy and happiness, especially as I will kiss my daughter, Ala. I missed her badly.”

The deportees have planted grapes for the villagers who have helped them and will leave more than 700 books they have collected for nearby schools. They also will donate the contents of the camp’s museum, including 56 embalmed snakes, a few scorpions, a fox and mole.