Israel expelled four West Bank residents to Lebanon today in its first tough responses to anti-Israel sentiments and Palestinian nationalist polemics that have emerged since the Rabat summit meeting. One of the deportees was Alt Mahmud al-Hatib, editor of the East Jerusalem newspaper, A-Sha’ab, who wrote an Inflammatory editorial last week calling for the dismantling of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian state.
The others were known by the authorities to belong to the National Palestinian Front, an underground terrorist organization active on the West Bank with close ties to the Communist Party. They are Dr. Mustafah Malahman, a dentist who is deputy mayor of Halhul, an Arab town near Hebron; Abdallah Haj, an underground leader on the West Bank; and Daoud Aliqat, a farmer from Jericho.
Their expulsion was seen as a further expression of Israel’s determination to maintain its full authority In the administered territories as long as it holds them. Al-Hatib had been allowed to publish anti-Israel material for some time without interference from the authorities. But after the Rabat summit which called for the creation of a Palestinian state his writing became more extreme and provocative. Shortly before he was expelled, AI-Hatib boasted In an interview In Maariv that the Israeli authorities allowed him freedom to write as he pleased because they recognized Israel’s “inferior position” against the Arabs.
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