Middle East Deporting

To find a symbol of resistance to Israel's occupation of Arab lands, one need look no further than the family of Mohammed Hamad. Since he fled Israel during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, Hamad, 60, has lived in the Kalandia refugee camp in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem. There he has fathered six of his eight sons. Each has displayed more anti-Israeli fervor than the last, and all but the eldest have served time in prison for offenses against Israeli military rule, which began after the 1967 Six-Day War. Three of Hamad's sons are now in prison, one is a fugitive, and another is in exile in Jordan. The Hamads' eight-room home has also been bricked up, a procedure often used by the Israelis to punish troublemakers.

Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers entered a shabby camp dwelling, where some of the family now live, and took away Hamad's son Bashir, 26. Last week the Israeli government announced that Bashir, who was to have been married on Jan. 22, would be deported.

Bashir Hamad was one of nine Palestinians chosen for expulsion in the wake of the month-long rebellion that has swept through the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Though seven have already spent time in prison, six for involvement in terrorism, the Israeli army accused only three of directly fomenting the recent riots; the rest are asserted to be "hard-core agitators." Hamad, though not cited for involvement in the current unrest, is accused of "organizing disturbances and participating in them" in his role as a leader of the Shabiba, a young men's group with close ties to the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israelis say that 876 Palestinians have been deported since 1967, while the Arabs put the number at 2,500. Only 19 have been expelled since 1980.

Riots broke out in both Gaza and the West Bank just hours after the decision was announced. Each day last week Israeli leaders declared the fury spent, but each day it continued. Five more Palestinians died, bringing the total killed since early December to 27. The first to die was a West Bank woman shot in the chest -- mistakenly, according to the Israeli military -- while she was hanging out her wash. Some of the worst violence erupted in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where hundreds poured into the streets after they learned that an Islamic fundamentalist leader, Hassan Ghanayem Abu Shakra, 27, would be among those expelled. Soldiers at first held off the crowds with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. But soon they resorted to live ammunition to ward off the protesters' hail of stones and debris.

"Deportations are the maximum deterrent we have today," said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. "We use it with people who cannot be reformed." Though the vast majority of Israelis agreed with Shamir, the decision was denounced by Israel's friends and enemies alike. Declaring that the expulsions violated the Geneva Convention of 1949, the U.S. joined the other 14 members of the United Nations Security Council in demanding that Israel rescind the orders. It marked the first time that the Reagan Administration has voted for a resolution in the Security Council that criticizes Israel by name since 1982, when the group voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli military assault on Beirut during its invasion of Lebanon.

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