ARABS-ISRAEL - July 19 - Relatives Of Suicide Bombers Face Deportation.

The Army blows up the family homes of two fugitive Palestinian militants blamed for deadly attacks this week and rounds up 21 of their male relatives in Iraq Borin, the West Bank. The relatives are likely to be deported to the Gaza Strip but possibly abroad. Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstien is to meet soon with high-ranking Army officials to make a legal determination of whether the men could be deported. Rubenstien has made an initial recommendation that there are legal grounds for "selective deportation to Gaza" for people "directly involved in supporting" the militants. There has also been discussion sending them abroad, possibly dumping them in Lebanon, as was done during the first intifada. The threat of deporting relatives drew immediate protests from PA officials and Israeli human rights organisations. PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "I see this as a war crime. I see this as a crime against humanity. It's a very alarming development". B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, issued a statement saying that "punishment if innocent persons will constitute an unerasable moral blight on the State of Israel", and that the policy would violate the Geneva Convention prohibitions against both collective punishment and deportation. The B'Tselem statement said: "One of the most fundamental principles of the rule of law is that one person cannot be punished for the actions of another. A state engaging in such collective punishment, even in response to murderous attacks against its own innocent civilians, loses moral justification for its action". Hamas, a sponsor of suicide bombers, issued a statement saying it would respond to such a tactic with "a message of explosions and destruction into every place where seekers of martyrdom can reach". Israeli officials said the tactic of deportations was intended to break up the close-knit family support systems for suicide bombers, which in many cases include payments of $25,000 from Iraq or other Arab backers. Foreign Ministry legal adviser Daniel Traub called the payments "bribery to commit mass murder", adding: "We've seen mothers appearing in videos of suicide bombers before they go out to commit their atrocities. We've seen families of suicide bombers afterwards expressing the wish that their other children will follow suit. We have to try to break that cycle; we have to try and provide a deterrent". Even dovish FM Peres told Israeli radio he would support the measure of deportation, saying: "As far as I know, it has undergone legal scrutiny and, if legally possible, yes. Look, it is obvious that we are being pushed to do things that we would willingly prefer not to do. But what happened this week, the two grave incidents, it almost leaves us no choice". (The Army used house destructions and deportations extensively during the first intifada, from 1987 to 1993, but has had little resort to them since. At one point they dumped about 400 militants by helicopter on the stony hills of southern Lebanon. Many eventually returned, tutoured in bomb-making by skilled Hizbollah guerrillas).