Israel’s deportation Wednesday of four Palestinians from the West Bank to Lebanon drew immediate criticism from both the United States and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Wednesday that the department “deeply regrets” the deportations. He did not elaborate and refused to answer a barrage of questions from reporters. He denied charges that the Reagan Administration is again trying to mute its criticism of Israel.
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed “consternation” and “grave concern” Wednesday, an unusual statement inasmuch as the traditionally neutral organization generally expresses its views on controversial issues privately to the governments concerned.
The communique said the deportations are “a grave violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids the forcible transfer of groups or individuals from the occupied territories whatever the reason for it.”
The same view had been expressed by the European Community and by the foreign ministers and envoys of many of its member states since Israel issued the deportation order Jan. 3.
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY APPEALS
In Brussels, the seat of the EC Council of Ministers and of the European Executive Commission, the 12 EC member states had appealed to Israel Tuesday to give up its plan to deport the Palestinians.
The West German, Danish and Greek envoys told Israeli authorities on behalf of the EEC that the deportations were a breach of Article 49 of the 1949 Geneva Convention.
The West German ambassador, diplomatic sources in Brussels said, also stressed to the Israeli government that the European Community fully supports the United Nations Security Council resolution of Jan 5 which called on Israel not to deport the Palestinians.
Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek said at a news conference in The Hague Tuesday that the disturbances in the Israel-administered territories “were not an incident but rather the symptom of a deep frustration among the Palestinian people with regard to the total absence of a political solution.”
In Athens, Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias of Greece expressed similar sentiments Wednesday. He said Greece disapproved of the use of armed forces against the Arab population in the Israel-occupied territories.
In London Wednesday, a Labor member of parliament, Gerald Kaufman, called for a bipartisan foreign policy on the Middle East. Kaufman, who is the Labor Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, said normally he opposed the Conservative government, but he found the situation in Israel on a recent visit “so fraught with danger and tragedy that we should try to have a bi-partisan foreign policy.”
Kaufman said that since the United States is not sufficiently promoting an Arab-Israeli settlement, Britain has an important role to play.
(JTA correspondents Howard Rosenberg in Washington, Edwin Eytan in Paris, Jean Cohen in Athens, Yossi Lempkowitz in Brussels and Maurice Samuelson in London contributed to this report.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
