From: UPI
Subject: Deported Palestinians weather snowfall, fast for second day
Reply-To: ayman@eecs.umich.edu
Organization: United Press International
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 04:05:02 GMT
X-Note: This article was automatically cross-posted to soc.culture.lebanon

[ Article cross-posted without permission ]
	MARJ AL ZOUHOUR, Lebanon (UPI) -- The 415 Palestinians deported by
Israel fasted for a second day to conserve their meager food supplies
Friday after weathering a night of snowfall at the rugged makeshift camp
where they remained trapped between unyielding Israeli and Lebanese
forces.
	``Snow began to fall during the night. We ran out of fuel reserves.
It was freezing,'' said Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi, the spokesman for the
Palestinians who were expelled by Israel last week to avenge the killing
of a number of Israeli policemen by the Islamic fundamentalist
organization Hamas.
	The deportees ran out of drinking water and began using polluted
water from a stream near their makeshift camp, dubbed ``al Quds camp''
after the Arabic name for Jerusalem. The Palestinians boiled the water
first, as advised by medical doctors that were among the deportees, but
some officials said that would not stop the spread of somach infections.
	``There are many such cases caused by the use of polluted water,''
said Zuheir Abdallah, an official of the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). ``The deportees are facing very
harsh and difficult conditions. They have no water, fuel, food or
medicines.''
	Since the Palestinians arrived one week ago, they have been trapped
between the Lebanese Army at Marj al Zouhour and Israeli troops and the
allied South Lebanon Army militia at Zimraya gate.
	Lebanon refused to admit the deportees, believed to be Islamic
fundamentalists, and blocked all relief convoys, arguing that the area
where the Palestinians are stranded is under Israeli control and aid
should come from the Israeli side.
	Israel reinforced its positions inside the 9-mile security zone it
occupies in southern Lebanon and closed the Zimraya gate leading to the
Palestinians'makeshift camp, mining the area nearby as an added
deterrent.
	The Israeli government, in a sharply divided Cabinet decision, voted
Friday to refuse to let the Red Cross send a relief convoy carrying
food, water and medicine across the security zone to the deportees.
	Lebanese President Elias Hrawi lashed out at the United Nations for
failing to secure the return of the Palestinian deportees to their
homes.
	``Our decision is clear. The one who caused such a situation should
bear the full responsibility,'' Hrawi said while attending Christmas
festivities at the Maronite Patriarchate in Bkirki, north of Beirut. 
``We call on the U.N. to adopt resolutions that it can implement. We
don't want sentimental resolutions anymore.''
	Witnesses in Marj al Zouhour said Lebanese Army troops for a third
day prevented a convoy of trucks from the Red Cross and U.N. Relief
Works Agency from crossing to the Palestinians' makeshift camp with food
and drinking water.
	The deportees' camp was lit during the night by flares fired by
Israeli troops stationed in Zimraya, witnesses said. Israeli soldiers
with heavy machine guns combed the hills overlooking the camp at dawn,
the witnesses said.
	At midday, the deportees gathered to perform Friday prayers,
murmuring verses from the Koran and urging God to secure their quick
return to their families.
	They called on the newly elected U.S. President Bill Clinton to come
for one day to the ``al Quds camp'' to see by himself their ordeal and
the need to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 799, which
provides for their immediate repatriation.
	The deportees' spokesman said the Palestinians were disappointed by a
meeting of the Arab Foreign Ministers in Cairo Thursday.
	``The meeting resolutions came contrary to what we expected. We have
hoped that the Arab parties announce their withdrawal from the peace
talks with Israel,'' said Rantissi, reiterating the stance of
Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist groups, which reject peace talks with
Israel.
	Meanwhile, the ``Islamic Jihad-Al Maqs'' said in a communique
released in Beirut that its guerrillas fired a number of Soviet-made
Katyusha rockets against the Meskavam settlement in northern Israel
during the night.
	``The attack was carried out on Christmas Eve to assert the return of
the deportees,'' the communique said.
	``Voice of the Light'' radio station, run by the pro-Iranian
Hezbollah, said the Hamas organization rejected an offer by European
countries to move the deportees to the Netherlands and Norway if Israel
still insisted on blocking their return to the occupied territories.
	Israeli artillery Friday blasted Shiite villages in southern Lebanon
after a roadside bomb exploded in an attack on a joint patrol of Israeli
and South Lebanon Army troops inside the border security zone, security
sources said.
	The bomb exploded by road leading to the villages of Tallousa and
Markaba in the central sector of Israel's self-declared ``security zone,
'' the sources said. The bomb exploded as a joint Israeli-SLA patrol,
made up of a number of armored vehicles, passed the area, the sources
said.
	In retaliation, Israeli forces shelled the village of Majdel Selm at
the edge of the border area, the sources said. There was no immediate
word on casualties inflicted in both incidents.

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