Metulla, Israel, Thursday.
ISRAEL today took back up to 181 Palestinian deportees it allowed to
return after nine months in exile in Lebanon.
Witnesses said nine buses, their windows painted white, entered Israel
through the Egel crossing point from Lebanon under heavy army escort.
Israel Radio said the deportees inside were bound but not blindfolded
as they were when Israel dumped them in south Lebanon in December.
About 150 right-wing Israelis protested against the return of the
exiles, part of 415 men Israel originally expelled on December 17 last
year, saying they had links with violent Islamic groups Hamas and the
Islamic Jihad.
Police detained at least five demonstrators who tried to block the
road through the town of Kiryat Shmona to prevent the buses from going
through, Israel Radio said.
Israel said some of the returnees would go straight to jail to face
new charges or finish prison sentences while others would go home after
questioning.
Israel has agreed to take back 189 men, leaving 207 still stuck in a
no man's land between Lebanese and Israeli army lines. But Israel Radio
said eight men had chosen at the last minute to stay behind with the
remaining deportees.
The returning exiles were searched and their identities checked before
they boarded buses on their way to detention camps in Israel where they
would be questioned.
Israel had said the Arabs would be banished for a maximum of two years
but halved the expulsion periods after international condemnation, thus
allowing the deportees to come back in stages. The deportees initially
rejected the Israeli offer to return in stages but later changed their
minds.
Nineteen returned early this year after they fell sick or Israel said
they had been expelled by mistake.
The deportees crossed as the PLO and Israel were on the verge of
announcing mutual recognition. Israel insists that the PLO end the
Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of
the mutual recognition agreement.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad oppose the agreement and vow to continue the
Intifada.
Deputy defence minister Mordechi Gur said the return of the deportees
could spark unrest in the occupied territories.
''However, we are taking every measure to reduce the risk involved in
bringing them back,'' Gur told Israel Radio.
* Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories are coming out in
support of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat's accord with Israel on self-rule
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Supporters of Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement and the Fida party,
the two main PLO groups behind the accord, have been holding rallies
throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an effort to drum up support
for the deal.
The latest activity was a demonstration by some 300 supporters of the
PLO's mainstream Fatah movement who held a march today in Gaza City
despite a general strike marking the monthly anniversary of the
Intifada.
Though small, the demonstration was significant since it took place in
the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City, a stronghold for the Hamas
Islamic Resistance Movement.
''These meetings are intended to show support to the PLO, the sole
legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and also to show
backing to the agreement about to be signed,'' said Ramadan al-Najjar,
deputy head of the Political Guidance Committees in the Gaza Strip, an
off-shoot of Fatah formed recently to rally support for the agreement.
The Israel-PLO accord, which calls for an immediate Israeli withdrawal
from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank enclave of Jericho, and for
self-rule in the rest of the West Bank, has divided Palestinians in the
occupied territories.
Palestinians say support for Arafat's accord has been growing among
common Arabs eager to see Israel's 26-year-old occupation of their land
end.
The Palestinian People's Party, the former Communist party which had
boycotted the last three rounds of Israeli-Arab negotiations in
Washington, now says the accord has many positive points.
Top pro-PLO leaders Faisal al-Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh have been
drawing more supporters into rallies they have been holding throughout
the occupied territories.
Yesterday, some 5000 Palestinians attended a rally by Nusseibeh in the
West Bank's Jenin refugee camp. The event carried on late into the
night.
In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a known stronghold for
Hamas, more than 3000 Palestinians gathered to cheer the agreement.
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