Steady progress in the peace talks coupled with a sense that the world had forgotten their fate were among the reasons that the Palestinians deported to Lebanon cited for their acceptance of the latest Israeli plan for their return home.
Faced with illness and few other alternatives, the 395 remaining Palestinian deportees whom Israel expelled to Lebanon last Dec. 17 decided Sunday to accept the Israeli offer, in a move announced by officials with the International Red Cross.
Under the plan, 192 of the deportees will return next month to the administered territories, and the balance will be allowed back by the end of the year.
Most of the deportees, who have been living in a tent camp just beyond Israeli army lines in southern Lebanon, are members of the extremist Hamas movement, while others belong to the equally militant Islamic Jihad.
Originally, 415 activists were expelled for an indefinite period to the barren stretches north of the Israeli-controlled border security zone. Nineteen of them were later returned to Israel because they were ill or because Israeli authorities admitted they had been expelled in error. And one subsequently fled; his current whereabouts are unknown.
The expulsion took place following a wave of terrorist attacks in Israel at the end of last year. The Lebanese authorities did not let the deportees enter Lebanon proper, and they eventually settled at a camp at Marj a-Zuhur, just north of the security zone.
The deportees had been holding out for an “all or none” agreement, insisting that they would remain where they were if Israel did not allow all of them to return to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But under the latest agreement, 197 of the deportees will be allowed to return in September, and the remaining 198 by the end of December.
Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, leader of the 395 deportees, told reporters who had gathered at the their hillside camp that the men had unanimously approved the latest Israeli offer, noting that the decision had been forced on them by the continued illness of more than 100 of the men.
SOME WILL GO BACK TO JAIL
Other reasons that Rantisi cited for their acceptance of the Israeli offer included a slackening of media attention to their plight, the failure of U.N. Security Council Resolution 799 to bring about their release and the continuation of the once-threatened peace talks, which the Muslim fundamentalists oppose.
The Israeli army has already begun preparations for dealing with the return of the deportees and intends to allow festive receptions for those deportees who will return home.
However, many will not. Those who were deported from prison will be returned to prison cells; others will be detained pending legal proceedings against them.
The opposition parties in Israel issued urgent calls Sunday asking Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin not to allow the return of the deportees.
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said that because of the large number of recent murderous attacks by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions, there is no rationale for their return.
The deportation of such a large number of Palestinians aroused a storm of protest throughout the world and had threatened to derail the peace talks earlier this year.
But within Israel, the expulsion succeeded in bringing praise to Rabin from opposition groups that had been complaining about his lack of vigor in dealing with the continuing violence in the administered territories.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv.)
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