Arabs angered at deportation plan

Yasser Arafat’s agreement to allow the deportation of 13 suspected militants holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity has angered many Arabs who see it as an ideological betrayal of the Palestinians’ long struggle for independence.

Although Israel has deported hundreds of Palestinians - including men who are now top Arafat aides - since capturing the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, this was the first time Palestinian authorities have agreed to such a thing.

Arab leaders, the militant group Hamas and even members of Arafat’s Fatah faction say it makes no sense to let Palestinians be expelled while fighting so hard for refugees’ right to return to former homes in what is now Israel.

‘‘There is a total Arab rejection to the issue of deportation,’’ said Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the 22-nation Arab League.

Several top officials in the Palestinian Authority also condemned the agreement, though they refused to be identified.

‘‘The fact that the Palestinian Authority has legitimised deportations is a dangerous precedent,’’ said Hussein al-Sheik, a Fatah leader in the West Bank.

Asked about the possibility of Israel allowing the men to be deported to an Arab country, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Yaffa Ben-Ari said Israel had agreed to deport them. ‘‘We do not address the question of which country.’’

Jordan announced on Wednesday it had turned down a request to take in the 13, saying it ‘‘rejects the principle of the deportation and the displacement of the Palestinian citizens to Jordan, even temporarily’’.

Other Arab governments had similar concerns, but avoided speaking publicly.

In Syria, a coalition of 10 radical Palestinian groups protested today against Arafat’s acceptance of the deportation deal and an earlier one that sent six wanted Palestinians to a Jericho prison under British and US guards.

These deals were ‘‘suspicious bargains and a dangerous shift in the national Palestinian struggle’’, a statement from the coalition said.

Hamas also rejected the deal.

‘‘We have the full right to stay on our land,’’ Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin said. ‘‘But if people who are inside the church agreed to be deported, this is their own decision. It’s not ours, because we reject this policy.’’

The criticism of Arafat was part of a wave of new pressures on the Palestinian leader since he left his compound after a 34-day siege. Senior members of his Palestinian Authority have demanded reforms and Tuesday’s suicide bombing, which killed 15 Israelis, has put international pressure on him to crack down on militants.

But Arafat has built up enough goodwill from Palestinians during the siege to allow him to weather the criticism about the deportations, Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib said. ‘‘It’s a compromise that people are not very happy with, but they also understand it,’’ he said.

And it is better than caving in to Israel’s original demand, which would have sent the men to Israeli jails, he said.

Though Israel has not deported Palestinians for a decade, the tactic was once quite common.

After Israel signed the Oslo peace accords with the PLO in 1993, it allowed many of the deportees to return home, provided they renounced terrorism. Former deportees include current Palestinian security chiefs Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, and recently arrested Fatah official Marwan Barghouti.