Israel Faces Court Test of Deportation Plans

The two Palestinian men sat in the dock Monday, legs in chains, and listened to the translation of an Israeli military judge debating their fate.

Kifah Ajouri and Abed Nassar Asida are a test case: If all goes according to Israel’s plan, the two men will be expelled from their hometowns in the West Bank to the Gaza Strip as part of a new policy to punish the relatives of those the Jewish state holds responsible for a growing wave of terrorist bombings and armed attacks.

Ajouri and Asida are each accused of helping a brother who Israel says organized terrorist attacks. But the judge, a Karl Malden look-alike presiding over a special appeals panel at this Israeli military base, ruled that most of the evidence against the two men had to be kept under wraps for reasons of “security.”

Deporting attackers’ relatives is controversial--perhaps illegal--but Israelis are desperate. The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finds itself increasingly on the defensive as the numerous military operations it has undertaken have failed to stop the violence. Sharon’s popularity has begun to flag, according to the latest polls, and criticism of his policies is mounting from both the left and right wings of a frightened public.

Israeli tanks and troops have already seized control of most of the West Bank and arrested thousands of Palestinians. On Monday, they tightened their grip by banning all Palestinian road traffic in the northern West Bank and reimposing curfews that had been eased.

“We are in the situation of total closure in the area of Samaria,” Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said, using the biblical name for the northern West Bank. “Nobody enters and nobody leaves.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces entered the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, cutting it off from the rest of the territory, and late Monday launched airstrikes on a Gazan metalworks factory that the army said was producing weapons. These measures followed a bloody day in which 15 people died in five Palestinian attacks in less than 24 hours--proving to many here that the government’s tactics are not working.

Hours after the travel crackdown was imposed, a car exploded near the town of Umm al Fahm, killing a passenger who media reports said was a hitchhiking bomber. Police said they believed that the explosives detonated prematurely and that the wounded driver was unaware of the bomber’s intent.

Israeli newspapers noted Monday in blistering commentaries that the death toll among Israelis in the last 22 months of violence just surpassed 600. While that is about a third of the Palestinian toll, the pace of Israeli deaths has been increasing, with a large majority occurring in the last year.

“What country would allow its citizens to be slaughtered every place they walk or sit, year after year, month after month, day after day?” Amnon Dankner, editor of the Maariv daily, demanded in a front-page editorial. He pointedly blamed Sharon, who he said has given his public “empty promises” of restored security.

Faced with such uproar, Sharon held urgent consultations Monday evening with Ben-Eliezer and the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon. Officials announced afterward that the government will press ahead with tougher restrictions on Palestinians, the demolition of suicide bombers’ homes and the exiling of their families from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

Still, analysts said Sharon will not deviate too dramatically from his current policies.

He does not have the troops to sustain a full military occupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza, and Israel’s economy is already depleted by the war effort, the collapse of tourism and losses in the high-tech sector.

He also wants to avoid an enormous escalation, analysts said, preferring to wait for a change in the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and possible U.S. military action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Israel’s attorney general has ruled that to deport an attacker’s relative, the government must show that the person who is being banished had some tie to the attack or to supporting the attacker. But such ties can be vague, and defense attorneys and human rights activists argue that imposing sanctions on relatives is a form of collective punishment illegal under international law.

On Monday, a military appeals panel heard the cases of Ajouri and Asida, whom the army arrested last month and is trying to banish. Granting a petition from defense attorneys, an Israeli court ordered part of the hearing opened to reporters, offering a rare glimpse of Israeli military justice in action.

Ajouri’s brother Ali is accused by Israel of dispatching two suicide bombers to a working-class neighborhood in Tel Aviv last month; three people were killed in addition to the bombers. Asida’s brother, Israel says, is an operative with the militant group Hamas who coordinated two deadly shooting attacks outside the Jewish settlement of Emmanuel.

Military prosecutors said the two detainees were accomplices to their brothers. Most evidence to support the state’s case, however, was kept secret because, they said, releasing it would jeopardize national security.

The defense attorneys, who work for an Israeli-Palestinian human rights organization, the Center for the Defense of Individual Rights, said the charges involve Ajouri and Asida having given food or a place to sleep to their brothers.

“There is no justice here,” Ajouri said during a break in the proceedings at an army base just north of Ramallah. “They arrested me because of my brother. This is unjust and illegal what is happening here.”

Ajouri, a house painter with two children, said he had not seen his brother in a year.

Neither Ajouri’s nor Asida’s brother has been detained, and Israel considers the men fugitives.

The judge, retired Col. Danny Friedman, ruled that Ajouri and Asida’s attorneys could cross-examine only one of two secret service agents who testified against the men, and only behind closed doors. Reporters were asked to leave.

“We are used to being in the dark,” Dalia Kerstein, director of the rights center, said later. “If there are charges against these people, then they should have a trial, a charge sheet and punish them if they are found guilty. But transfer from one part of occupied territory to another part of occupied territory is illegal. We cannot agree to collective punishment.”

Israeli Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said the threat of expulsion will act as a deterrent to potential suicide bombers.

“People ought to know that if they perpetrate a terrorist attack, their families and supporters will be truly hurt,” he said. “We’ll expel to Gaza people who were partners either by supporting the terrorist or by knowing and failing to prevent the attack.”

Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said an action as simple as attending the funeral of a relative who was a suicide bomber should be enough to expel someone.

Between 1967, when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and 1992, the Israeli government deported to other nations 1,522 Palestinians who were accused of terrorism or affiliation with certain political groups.

Israel never deported a female relative but is taking steps now to do so. Ali Ajouri’s sister Intisar has been ordered expelled to Gaza, and the wife of a Hamas commander may face a similar fate.

Security experts debated whether deportations would discourage Palestinian attacks.

Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad spy agency and security advisor to Sharon’s predecessor, Ehud Barak, said Monday that deportations and house demolitions can be effective to a limited degree.

“This can make a contribution, but it surely cannot lead to a significant improvement,” Yatom told Israeli radio. “In the end we are talking about a cocktail, if we can call it that, of means and efforts which, if combined, can make the action of the security forces more efficient, but it will be impossible to eliminate the terror only with force.”

Yatom and others said Israel’s “war against terrorism” must be accompanied by political steps. Sharon has refused to enter into political talks with the Palestinians, saying Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is an unfit partner and preferring to wait for a more cooperative leadership.

Still, Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s defense minister, met with the Palestinian interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, late Monday to discuss plans for a cease-fire that would allow Israeli troops to leave Palestinian areas, Palestinian officials and Israel’s Army Radio said.