Palestinians try civil disobedience to protest Israeli deportations. But it's unclear if bid can gain enough support to counter Israeli plans

Most of the evidence is contained in ``claims'' which are usually based on charges for which defendants have already served jail sentences, says Leat Semel, an attorney for several of the West Bank defendants. Some of the claims are public but most are secret and are withheld from the attorneys, Mr. Semel says.

Semel says attorneys can ask questions at the proceedings but that committee members are not required to respond.

A final appeal can be made to Israel's Supreme Court but neither of the appellate bodies is likely to substitute its judgment for that of the military authorities, says Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian human rights lawyer.

``It's a painful decision, whether to participate in what they know is a charade or to boycott the proceedings altogether,'' he says of the nine Palestinians.

Deportations have been used by Israel since the start of the occupation in 1967. According to a study prepared by the American Friends Service Committee, the rate of deportations increased in the late 1960s, reaching a peak of 406 in 1970. In all, there have been about 2,000 deportations since 1967, including Palestinians (not counted in Israeli totals) said by Israel to be in the territories illegally.

Will deportations work this time?

According to a recent report from Law in the Service of Man, a Palestinian human rights group, after the Israeli occupation in 1967, deportees were generally sent to Jordan. Between 1969 and 1974, after Jordan closed its borders to deportations, banished Palestinians were sent into Lebanon. Since 1974, the study says, most deportees have been taken to an isolated desert border crossing south of the Dead Sea and ordered to walk without looking back. Eventually they were picked up by Jordanian Army units.

Israeli officials insist that since West Bank residents hold Jordanian passports, Jordan would be obliged to accept deportees. They have declined to comment on what Israel will do if Jordan sticks to its initial refusal to accept the deportees.

One source, speaking on deep background, concedes that Israel is then ``on the spot.'' Lebanon, Egypt, and Cyprus have also refused to accept deportees.

The Israelis will ``do it at night in places where the Jordanians are not waiting,'' one Palestinian predicts.

Israel has justified the deportations and other emergency provisions including administrative detentions and press censorship, arguing that they are part of Jordanian laws inherited from Britain, which controlled Palestine between World Wars I and II.

But lawyers from Law in the Service of Man say Britain revoked the emergency regulations just before pulling out of Palestine, while Jordan, which governed the West Bank from 1948 until 1967, disallowed deportations in its Constitution.

Page: 1 | 2