From: arens@ISI.EDU (Yigal Arens)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Israel's deportation of over 400 Palestinians
Date: 22 Dec 92 04:31:32 GMT
	<1gtl40INNsse@life.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: USC/Information Sciences Institute
In-reply-to: trb@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu's message of 18 Dec 92 22:59:12 GMT

In article <1gtl40INNsse@life.ai.mit.edu> trb@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Andrew Tannenbaum) writes:
>
> I am not going to debate the merits of the deportations.  I do want to
> comment on the biased media coverage though.  I have seen several
> reports that say that the Israelis deported 400 Palestinians, in
> response to the murders of several Jewish officers by Islamic
> terrorists.
>
> This is only a partial story.  A less biased report would mention that
> Hamas claimed responsibility for the murders.  That the people deported
> were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.  That the deportations are
> temporary, not to last for more than two years, and that the deportees
> have to right to appeal within 60 days (my personal bias: a right which
> I regret is no longer available to the murdered victims of Hamas).

Even in your own somewhat biased description of events there appears to
be a contradiction.  You say Hamas took responsibility for the killing
of Israeli soldiers, yet members of Hamas AND Islamic Jihad were being
deported.   Why Islamic Jihad?  You must call for all members of Islamic
Jihad to be returned...

In any case all you say is baseless propaganda.  There was no evidence
given by Israel that any of the deportees are members of any such
organizations, let alone that they had even the slightest connection to
any of the recent killings.  The people were not even *charged* with
this, not to mention convicted.

The whole thing appears to be just another in a long series of Israeli
Machiavellian schemes to influence Palestinian politics, and through
them the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The Israelis
are the ones who allowed -- encouraged!! -- Hamas to grow in the late
70s, the "clever" idea being that it would weaken the PLO.  Now they say
they are doing a favor to the PLO by weakening Hamas, and that all they
really want is for the peace negotiations to succeed.

Frankly, this is nothing but standard divide-and-conquer tactics, and
not even well thought out ones at that -- as the 400 Palestinians
currently wandering around in Lebanon and giving interviews to the press
will attest.

Unfortunately, my reading of this whole affair is that Rabin is NOT
interested in a political settlement with the Palestinians under
anything resembling reasonable terms.  Instead of trying to negotiate,
he's busy engaging in what he must think are incredibly clever tactics
meant to weaken Palestinian leadership.  No agreement can be reached
without there being a strong Palestinian leadership supported by the
population, and Rabin's actions are quite clearly interpretable as aimed
at eliminating such a possibility.  This is not the impression I had of
him when he originally took office.  I was apparently grossly misled.

A major humiliating smack in his face brought about by being forced to
take these 400 deportees back might bring him to his senses.  Or so we
can hope.
--
Yigal Arens
USC/ISI                                                TV made me do it!
arens@isi.edu
Xref: sparky soc.culture.jewish:24292 soc.culture.arabic:6085