OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 4 September — The Israeli Supreme Court yesterday gave the go-ahead to expel to the Gaza Strip two relatives of a West Bank activist, an unprecedented move in the current conflict, as violence on the ground claimed two more Palestinian lives. The Palestinian Authority leadership described the court decision to allow the army to go ahead with the threatened banishment of two out of three activists’ relatives as “collective punishment” and a “black day for human rights.”
The ruling means the army will deport to the Gaza Strip Kifah and Intissar Adjuri, brother and sister of Ali Adjuri, a slain West Bank chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Their brother Ali, killed by Israeli forces in August, was accused of organizing a double bombing that killed five people, plus the bombers, in Tel Aviv on July 17.
The court said Intissar “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. The army said the two would be expelled today. Although the Supreme Court stopped short of fully endorsing the army’s initial plan to expel activists’ kin without evidence of their involvement in militant activity, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat described the decision as “collective punishment” and a “black day for human rights.”
Meanwhile, the violence continued on the ground in the Palestinian territories, despite a monthlong lull in attacks inside Israel. Two Palestinians were killed by shelling from Israeli tanks south of Nablus, Palestinian officials said. Israel army radio reported that soldiers fired a tank shell at two Palestinians. (The Independent)
