Israel to expel 15 Palestinians

The Israeli military yesterday ordered the expulsion without charge or trial of 15 Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank to the fenced-in Gaza Strip, a move condemned by international human rights activists.

The decision was announced as Israeli tanks raided a Gaza Palestinian refugee camp for the second time in less than a week. Hospital officials said 20 people were wounded.

"This is a flagrant obstruction of any effort to restore calm," newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, referring to the Israeli expulsion order.

The rapid-fire developments ratcheted up tensions even as prominent Israeli and Palestinian politicians pushed an unofficial peace proposal intended as a blueprint for restarting stalled negotiations.

The Israeli government has dismissed the initiative as "irresponsible freelance diplomacy". Palestinian President Yasser Arafat gave a more cautious assessment yesterday, saying he would "not boycott any attempt to reach... peace".

The army said the 15 prisoners covered by the expulsion order were militants who had been held without trial or charge as suspected accomplices in attacks on Israelis since the start of a Palestinian uprising for independence in September 2000.

"This order is condemned and unacceptable," said Ilan Feldman, spokesman for the Israeli branch of Amnesty International, the London-based human rights watchdog.

The army said the prisoners had been transferred to a military lockup near Gaza ahead of being released into Palestinian-ruled territory and would be given 48 hours to appeal.

Colonel Daniel Reisner, head of the army's international law department, said legal proceedings would likely delay implementation of the order for several weeks.

The army said the men, mostly members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were being released because they could not be put on trial without revealing sensitive intelligence.

It said their expulsion was intended to keep them from rejoining the "circle of terror" in the West Bank.

The vast majority of the more than 100 suicide bombings since the start of the uprising have been carried out by militants based in the West Bank, where access to the Jewish state is much easier than from the Gaza Strip.

Last year, Israel expelled two relatives of a West Bank suicide bomber to Gaza, sparking an international outcry.

Israel forced 39 West Bank militants to go to Gaza or abroad in May 2002 in an internationally brokered exchange for lifting a siege of Bethlehem's Nativity church where they had taken shelter.