Court Halts Deportation of Awad Until It Rules on His Appeal

Israel’s Supreme Court ordered an indefinite stay of deportation orders against Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad on Monday.

The high court ruled that he may not be expelled until the legal procedures in his case are completed. The ruling was announced as the justices prepared to begin hearing Awad’s appeal.

But the court also ruled that the 44-year-old Awad will remain in custody until a final decision is rendered. And the prosecution argued that his continued presence in Israel posed a security danger.

The Jerusalem-born, naturalized American was to have been deported at midnight Monday on orders signed Friday by Premier Yitzhak Shamir in his capacity as acting interior minister. But the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order Sunday, barring deportation for three days.

Its latest order, extending the ban beyond three days, was a setback to the government’s efforts to oust Awad. But it relieved American pressure on Israel to cancel his deportation. All parties now will await the ruling of the high court.

That in fact was the position the U.S. State Department expounded last Friday. If the “government of Israel feels that he (Awad) has been engaged in illegal activity, then he should be allowed to defend himself” in a legal process, department spokesman Charles Redman said in Washington.

The Prime Minister’s Office charged Friday that Awad was one of the main instigators of the 5-month-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and said he poses a danger to the security of the state and public order.

It charged that terrorist organizations fund the Center for the Study of Non-Violence, which Awad founded in 1985, when he returned to East Jerusalem after spending 15 years in the United States.

MODERATE IMAGE CHALLENGED

Awad had been a public advocate of Palestinian civil disobedience instead of violent confrontation with Israeli security forces. He has urged Palestinians in the territories not to pay their taxes or utility bills.

But the state prosecutor on Monday submitted a statement to the Supreme Court by an unidentified security agent who claimed that the moderate image Awad “was trying to adopt” was false. His true intentions could be proven by classified information, the statement said.

The deportation order, however, did not cite security offenses. It was issued on grounds that Awad’s tourist visa had expired last November and that he was now in the country illegally.

His lawyers are expected to argue before the Supreme Court that inasmuch as Awad was born in East Jerusalem and was living there when Israeli law was applied in 1967, he cannot be declared an illegal alien.