From the then ANTI-ZIONIST " Militant " newspaper , May 19 , 1980

Three West Bank Leaders Deported Palestinians Refuse to Bow to israeii Terror By David Frankel Using the pretext of a Palestinian guer rilla ambush in the city of Hebron, Israeli authorities are lashing out at the Palesti nian people on the occupied West Bank, trying to crush their will and beat down their struggle. Immediately following the May 2 action, in which six Israeli occupiers died, the entire city of Hebron was placed under a twenty-four-hour curfew, with nobody al lowed out of their homes. Army demolition teams blew up a halfblock row of Arab shops in the vicinity of the ambush, and residents of the area were evicted from their homes. House-by-house searches—along with the beatings and terrorism that are a standard part of the process—were begun. Mayor Fahad Kawasmeh of Hebron and Mayor Mohammed Milhem of Halhul, along with Sheikh Raja Bayud Tamimi, the Muslim judge of Hebron, were routed out of their beds and forced across the border into Lebanon. None of the three were given any hear ing or chance to appeal. Occupation au thorities didn't claim that the three had played any role in the guerrilla attack; they merely charged them with encourag ing resistance to the occupation. Kawasmeh, Milhem, and Teimimi were welcomed as heroes by thousands of Pales tinian and Lebanese demonstrators in Beirut. Crowds in the street chanted "Our heroes!" and "Death to Israel! Death to America!" Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat declared May 5: "He bron was a legitimate act of resistance against foreign occupiers who have seized the land, driven away its inhabitants and trampled on the religious and cultural values of our people." Vowing to return to the West Bank, Kawasmeh said in an interview May 6, "Why not? I'm a Palestinian. I live in Hebron. What mistake have I made? If I did something wrong, why not take me to a court? "All right, I say no to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. All the world says no. Some Israelis say no. Does that mean they must be deported?" Other West Bank leaders have also been threatened with deportation if they speak out against the injustices the Palestinian people are subjected to. Expressing his racist view of the Palestinians, occupation chief Maj. Gen. Danny Matt said to repor ters, "Before sending a schoolchild home, of course, a teacher first has to warn him and hope he will change his ways." The Israeli regime and its defenders in the capitalist media brand the Palestinian liberation fighters as "terrorists," just as they branded the liberation fighters in Vietnam and southern Africa. But the real terrorists—several thousand armed Zionist demonstrators—marched through Hebron May 5. "Young Jews wearing skullcaps and jeans hurled stones through the windows of Arab houses while Israeli soldiers for the most part watched impassively, some times talking over their radios," New York Times correspondent David K. Shipler reported. "A few of the mourners, eager to impress the Arabs with the Jewish pres ence, fired into the edr." But the repression has only spurred new protests throughout the West Bank. Through their courageous struggle, the Palestinians have kept their plight in the center of world attention. And they have prevented the Camp David treaty, which would deny them their rights, from gain ing support in the Arab world. "Above all, we are in the midst of a battle for the land of Israel," declared Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman May 3. Weizman's statement goes to the heart of what is behind the mounting struggle in the Israeli-occupied West Bank—"a battle for the land." The 2,200-square-mile West Bank (in cluding East Jerusalem) is the home of some 950,000 Palestinian Arabs. Since the area was taken over by Israel in the June 1967 war, however, Zionist colonists have begun to settle there. Perhaps 15,000 are now in the West Bank, in addition to the tens of thousands in East Jerusalem. Backed up by the Israeli regime, these settlers hope to do in the West Bank exactly what was done within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. They want to take Arab land away from the original inhabitants. Already, 30 percent of the West Bank has been expropriated by Israeli authori ties. On May 2, the Israeli government announced that it would expropriate another 30,000 acres of West Bank land— more than 2 percent of the area's 1.4 million acres. Along with the land expropriations go the policies required to terrorize the Pales tinian workers and peasants and hold down their opposition—demolition of houses, collective fines, deportations, ad ministrative detention, torture, murder. Among the most enthusiastic partici pants in this policy of terrorism are the hardened Zionist racists who volunteer to settle on the newly expropriated Arab land. In April 1979, settlers from Kiryat, Arba, outside of Hebron, gunned down two Palestinian high school students who were demonstrating ageunst the Israeli occupa tion. On May 2, 1979, another Kiryat Arba settler shot a student at Bir Zeit Univer sity. Newsweek magazine said in its May 14, 1979, issue that "the peaceful rally at Bir Zeit [against Zionist colonization] so incensed nearby Israeli settlers that one of them shot and wounded a 20-year-old Arab student in the chest. . . ." Typical of the Zionist "pioneers" at Kiryat Arba was Eli Hazeev, who, accord ing to the May 6, 1980, New York Times, "used to tell friends that the 'only good Arab is a dead one.'" A follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the ultrarightist Jewish Defense League in the United States and the Kach movement in Israel, Hazeev left Virginia to settle in the West Bank. Last year he was convicted of breaking into Arab houses in the city of Hebron, shouting that they were "Jewish houses," smashing furniture, beating residents, and ordering them to leave their homeland. Recently Hazeev was arrested again after a window-smashing rampage by Zionist thugs in the Palestinian village of Halhul. Hazeev was one of those killed in the May 2 ambush. Of the six dead, two were from the United States and one was from Canada. Yet General Matt cannot understand why the Palestinians resist foreign settlers who try to steal their land and drive them out of their homes. Attributing the Hebron ambush to Arab irrationality, the racist in charge of governing more than a million Palestinians said, "Here in the Middle East, unfortunately, it's very easy to incite people and move them into such an at tack. . . ." Other Israelis, however, are beginning to have their doubts about just who is being irrational. One Israeli woman told New York Times correspondent Shipler May 4 that "my friends feel some ambivalence about this. It is as if they are saying, but don't quite use the words, that these people were asking for it." □ Intercontinent