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Israel “Expulsion” Moves Slammed By Israeli Human Rights Group
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Israel's
collective punishment of Palestinians defies Geneva Accords
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BETHLEHEM,
West Bank, June 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An Israeli
human rights group and the father of a 19-year-old Palestinian female
resistance activist slammed on Sunday any move by Israel to expel
families of Palestinians carrying out attacks in Israel.
A human rights organization slammed the practice of what Israel terms
“suicide bombings” but asserted that Israeli intentions of
expelling the relatives of resistance activists from the area also
amounts to attacks against civilians and amounts to internationally
condemned policies of collective punishment.
"Palestinian terror is horrific, it is the indiscriminate murder
of innocent civilians. However, family members of Palestinian
[bombers] are also innocent civilians," the Association for Civil
Rights in Israel (ACRI) said.
"Any attempt to injure innocent family members would blur the
boundaries of a democratic state," it said in a statement
addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"By acting against these families we would become like the
terrorist organizations whose values we fight," said the
statement, which was also sent to Israeli Attorney General Elyakim
Rubinstein.
ACRI warned the expulsions of these families would be a form of
"collective punishment", which the group said is banned
under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"Article 49 of the same Convention prohibits the expulsion of
protected persons from conquered territory, regardless of the
motivation for the expulsion," ACRI president Naama Carmi wrote
in the statement.
The father of Ayat al-Akhrass, who carried out an attack on March 30
in a west Jerusalem supermarket, also warned that such measures would
be useless and fail to stem the tide of such attacks.
"Any decision, no matter how well it is planned, will not stop
‘suicide bombings’ because ‘suicide bombers’ will never
consult anyone when they are ready to carry out an operation,"
Mohammad Lotfi Al-Akhrass, 55, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet decided to look at the legalities of
expelling relatives of Palestinian bombers in a new step to crack down
on the attacks, government secretary Gideon Saar announced.
The government debated the move at its regular weekly cabinet meeting.
"The
government decided to examine the legal possibilities [that would
allow] the expulsion of families of those who commit ‘suicide’
attacks," Saar told reporters after the meeting.
Saar did not say where they would be moved. But Israeli public radio
and Effi Eitam, minister without portfolio from the right-wing
National Religious Party, both suggested the more tightly sealed Gaza
Strip.
"We are today at war and in addition to all the defense measures
such as the construction of a security barrier, we must take offensive
action such as the expulsion of families of terrorists to the Gaza
Strip," Eitam said.
Speaking from his home at the Dheisheh refugee camp near the West Bank
town of Bethlehem, Akhrass said that expulsions would be tantamount to
"collective punishment" for entire families.
"There are 20 members in my family alone," he said.
Akhrass said he has already been punished by the Israeli authorities
after his daughter’s resistance attack in March.
"A month ago they stormed our house and they arrested my son
Samir and my son Ismail who are still being held in an Israeli jail
without any charges leveled against them," he said.
"They were only arrested because they were Ayat's brothers,"
he said.
Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat urged world leaders to intervene swiftly to
contain Israel's get-tough policy in the West Bank, where he said
Israel wants to restore military rule.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said Arafat made the appeal in talks
with the consuls of several foreign countries at his battered Ramallah
headquarters in the northern West Bank.
Arafat later met Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher, who also
condemned the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian towns and cautioned
Israel against "setting back the hands of the clock" in the
conflict.
"There can be no talk about a re-occupation of Palestinian towns.
We cannot restore the [Israeli] civilian administration of the West
Bank, which is in fact a military administration," Moasher said
after the talks.
Arafat gave the diplomats from more than 20 countries "urgent
messages" to deliver to their leaders, "asking them to
intervene swiftly to save the situation and stop the Israeli
aggression," WAFA said.
The embattled Palestinian leader also handed them an alleged Israeli
army document written in Hebrew, and its Arabic-language translation,
saying "Palestinian civilians must deal with the Israeli
occupation [forces] and not the Palestinian Authority," WAFA
reported.
"This is an indication that Israel is trying to revive the
civilian military administration in the occupied Palestinian
territories," WAFA said.
The agency said the document was distributed by the Israeli army in
Beitunia, a southern suburb of Ramallah.
According to an AFP correspondent who saw the Arabic translation of
the document, the text bore the header "Gudud [battalion in
Hebrew] Gernit".
The message went on to say that this unit, "controls, occupies
and imposes a curfew on Beitunia, and closes all roads leading to it,
in order to transfer the responsibility from the Palestinian Authority
to the hands of Israel for a long time".
As the Israelis maintained their grip on six of the eight principal
West Bank towns, military officials began calling up the first 2,000
reservists mobilized to beef up the army as it geared for a long-haul
operation.
But despite its actions on the ground, the defense ministry
categorically denied reports it was planning to re-establish military
government on the West Bank as was the case before the Palestinian
Authority was created in 1994 under the Oslo accords.
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