Middle East Deporting

By Michael S. Serrill

To find a symbol of resistance to Israel's occupation of Arab lands, one need look no further than the family of Mohammed Hamad. Since he fled Israel during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, Hamad, 60, has lived in the Kalandia refugee camp in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem. There he has fathered six of his eight sons. Each has displayed more anti-Israeli fervor than the last, and all but the eldest have served time in prison for offenses against Israeli military rule, which began after the 1967 Six-Day War. Three of Hamad's sons are now in prison, one is a fugitive, and another is in exile in Jordan. The Hamads' eight-room home has also been bricked up, a procedure often used by the Israelis to punish troublemakers.

Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers entered a shabby camp dwelling, where some of the family now live, and took away Hamad's son Bashir, 26. Last week the Israeli government announced that Bashir, who was to have been married on Jan. 22, would be deported.

Bashir Hamad was one of nine Palestinians chosen for expulsion in the wake of the month-long rebellion that has swept through the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Though seven have already spent time in prison, six for involvement in terrorism, the Israeli army accused only three of directly fomenting the recent riots; the rest are asserted to be "hard-core agitators." Hamad, though not cited for involvement in the current unrest, is accused of "organizing disturbances and participating in them" in his role as a leader of the Shabiba, a young men's group with close ties to the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israelis say that 876 Palestinians have been deported since 1967, while the Arabs put the number at 2,500. Only 19 have been expelled since 1980.

Riots broke out in both Gaza and the West Bank just hours after the decision was announced. Each day last week Israeli leaders declared the fury spent, but each day it continued. Five more Palestinians died, bringing the total killed since early December to 27. The first to die was a West Bank woman shot in the chest -- mistakenly, according to the Israeli military -- while she was hanging out her wash. Some of the worst violence erupted in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where hundreds poured into the streets after they learned that an Islamic fundamentalist leader, Hassan Ghanayem Abu Shakra, 27, would be among those expelled. Soldiers at first held off the crowds with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. But soon they resorted to live ammunition to ward off the protesters' hail of stones and debris.

"Deportations are the maximum deterrent we have today," said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. "We use it with people who cannot be reformed." Though the vast majority of Israelis agreed with Shamir, the decision was denounced by Israel's friends and enemies alike. Declaring that the expulsions violated the Geneva Convention of 1949, the U.S. joined the other 14 members of the United Nations Security Council in demanding that Israel rescind the orders. It marked the first time that the Reagan Administration has voted for a resolution in the Security Council that criticizes Israel by name since 1982, when the group voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli military assault on Beirut during its invasion of Lebanon.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Ambassador to the U.N., labeled the Security Council a "kangaroo court" and declared, "We were frankly very disappointed ! that the U.S. joined in this exercise." Though several U.S. Jewish leaders have decried the Israeli use of live ammunition, they were nearly unanimous last week in rejecting the U.N. vote. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said the U.S. action "will be seen by the Palestinians as a license for further violence."

Nonetheless, a majority of the American public seemed to agree with the Administration's criticism of Israeli tactics during the riots. In a poll conducted last week for TIME by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman,* 50% agreed that the Israelis had used "too much force" to quell the Palestinian protests, while only 23% said Israel had used "about the right amount." Fifty-six percent said Israel had in general treated the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza unfairly, while only 16% thought they had been handled fairly. And 50% of those polled said the U.S. was right to criticize Israel, while 35% thought it was wrong.

The demonstrators got moral support from unexpected sources. After having his tour of the Kalandia camp cut short by rock throwing, Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island faulted Israel's management of the crisis. Another visitor, British Foreign Office Junior Minister David Mellor, infuriated Israelis when he emerged from the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and called conditions in such camps an "affront to civilized values." He also sharply upbraided an Israeli army colonel for arresting a 14-year-old boy accused of throwing stones. "I saw no stones being thrown," Mellor told the stunned officer.

Despite the furor over expulsions, the nine Palestinians are not expected to be deported any time soon; all have filed appeals, the first step in a procedure that can take weeks. Meanwhile, some moderate Palestinian leaders talked of a campaign of civil disobedience. Few thought the scheme would succeed. But neither did anyone think that Israel's expulsions would stem the violence. Said Tayshir Hamad, brother of Bashir: "How many Palestinians have been deported since 1967? Thousands. But nothing has changed."

FOOTNOTE: *The survey was conducted by telephone with 1,804 adult Americans. The potential sampling error is plus or minus 3%.

With reporting by Jamil Hamad and Johanna McGeary/Jerusalem