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Abdel
Nasser Assidi, left; Kifah Adjouri, right; and his sister Intissar
at the Israeli Supreme Court in occupied Jerusalem
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, September 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In a
"black day for human rights," the Israeli Supreme Court gave
the go-ahead Tuesday, September 3, for the expulsion to the Gaza Strip
of two relatives of West Bank resistance activists, judicial sources
told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
decision was unprecedented in the current Palestinian Intifada, or
uprising against Israeli occupation, which broke out in September 2000,
although Israel had used expulsions before.
"This
set a dangerous precedent, and the whole world should understand the bad
situation for human rights in Israel," said chief Palestinian
negotiator Saeb Erakat.
Citing
lack of evidence, the nine-member bench of the court did not, however,
approve the expulsion of a third relative that an Israeli military
tribunal sought to evict.
The
tribunal said it found the three guilty of knowing about planned
retaliatory attacks against Israel.
In
July, the Israeli occupation army announced its intention to expel the
families of Palestinian resistance activists, prompting human rights
groups to accuse it of violating the Geneva Convention and inflicting
collective punishment on the Palestinians.
The
decision allows the army to go ahead with the expulsion of Kifah and
Intissar Adjuri, the brother and sister of Ali Adjuri, a local West Bank
chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a resistance offshoot of
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Ali
Adjuri, assassinated by Israeli soldiers August 6 near the West Bank
town of Jenin, was accused of organizing a martyr bombing in Tel Aviv on
July 17.
The
judges decided that Intissar Adjuri had "directly helped her
brother by sewing the belt containing the explosives which he used in
the attack," although Intissar had earlier pleaded in a military
court that she did not know how to sew, said AFP.
In
addition, the court said Kifah had provided his sibling with a hide-out
and acted as a look-out while the explosives were being
transported.
But
the judges ruled there was insufficient evidence to confirm the
complicity of Abdel Nasser Assidi in the attack by his brother, a member
of the Islamic resistance group Hamas wanted by Israeli security forces
for a July 16 bus ambush near an illegal Jewish settlement in the West
Bank.
Erakat
described Tuesday Israel's decision to expel the Palestinian relatives
as "collective punishment" and a "black day for human
rights."
"This
decision is a black day for human rights when the Israeli Supreme Court
decides on collective punishment," Erakat told AFP.
He
said the Palestinian Authority was studying whether it could take the
case before the International Criminal Court (ICC) or if it should
approach the U.N. Security Council.
