Israel Threatens to Deport Suspects’ Kin

Israeli forces arrested 21 male relatives of suspected Palestinian killers Friday and threatened to deport them, an unusual measure that was quickly condemned by human rights organizations.

The Israeli army said it had rounded up the fathers, brothers and sons of several militants it suspects in deadly attacks on Israelis, including assaults this week that claimed the lives of 12 victims. Army bulldozers demolished houses belonging to two militants--and damaged those of their neighbors--near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Israeli state radio said the government is considering whether to expel the relatives to the Gaza Strip from their West Bank homes.

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. But human rights and legal experts say Israel never deported relatives not implicated in attacks.

“Look, it is obvious that we are being pushed to do things that we would willingly prefer not to do,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Radio on Friday morning. “But what happened this week [a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and an attack on a bus near the West Bank settlement of Emmanuel] ... it almost leaves us no choice.”

Even Peres, generally regarded as a dove who still believes in pursuing peace with the Palestinians, said he supports deportation if legal foundation can be established.

Israeli Atty. Gen. Elyakim Rubinstein met Friday with security officials to discuss the legality of such a measure. He reiterated his position that massive deportation cannot be supported legally; some evidence, he said, must be found to indicate that the relative had assisted or supported the accused. Other officials said Israel is seeking ways to deny suicide bombers the environment that hides and encourages them.

The demolition of houses is a tactic that has been used by Israeli security forces through the years. Deportations, however, have been more unusual in recent times.

The idea of banishing relatives of Palestinian suspects to the Gaza Strip reflects the growing frustration among Israeli authorities unable to stop attacks on civilians. The killings this week defied the tight control Israeli forces have over the West Bank; tanks and troops have occupied most major Palestinian cities and many towns for nearly a month, placing about 800,000 Palestinians under virtual house arrest.

Gaza, unlike the West Bank, is physically separated from Israel by a heavily fortified fence. Few attackers have infiltrated from the strip into Israel.

When violence erupted this week, the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under heated criticism from both the right and left--either for not cracking down hard enough on Palestinians or for failing to pursue a political and diplomatic solution to the region’s worst bloodshed in years. Deportation would be likely to win support among the Israeli public.

In Tel, a village south of Nablus, soldiers early Friday destroyed the house of Nasser Assida, 26, an operative in the military wing of the radical Islamic Hamas movement who Israel suspects organized Tuesday’s bus ambush outside Emmanuel. Nine people, most of them settlers, were killed in the attack. Assida is suspected of organizing another ambush at the same spot in December, in which 11 people were killed.

The soldiers arrested Assida’s father and four brothers, plus the relatives of other Hamas leaders, according to reports from the scene.

In the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, the army destroyed the three-story family home of a commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Ali Ajouri, 23, is suspected by Israel of organizing Wednesday’s double suicide bombing, which killed three other people in a working-class neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Soldiers arrested his father and two brothers. Neither Assida nor Ajouri was captured.

The army said the operations were designed to “make terrorists aware of the price of their actions.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said Friday that sending relatives of suspects into exile represents collective punishment illegal under both Israeli and international law.

“One of the most fundamental principles of law is that one person cannot be punished for the acts of another, even in response to murderous acts against civilians,” B’Tselem spokesman Lior Yavne said. “It is true that [Palestinian militants] are targeting innocent civilians, but the Israeli government cannot respond by taking other innocent civilians and deporting them.... It loses moral justification.”

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said, “We expect that Israel’s actions ... will be based on information that’s related to an individual’s culpability, not to personal or family relationships.” And a spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said self-defense could not justify measures that amount to collective punishments.

A security source confirmed that 21 relatives were arrested. Later Friday, an additional 16 Palestinians were detained in separate operations, the army said.

Emanuel Gross, a professor of international law at Haifa University and a former military court judge, warned Friday that deportation should be limited to those who pose a security risk.

“Our strength is to adhere to law and morality, and under no circumstance should we lose that,” he told Israel Radio. “The army and the judiciary have always been guided by the ancient code put forth in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, when it was decided that no longer would sons be punished for the sins of their fathers, that each would perish for his own sin alone.”