Israel's Expulsion Of Terror Kin A First

Israel expelled two Palestinians from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday — an unprecedented step hailed by the military as a powerful deterrent against suicide bombings and condemned by human rights groups as a violation of international law.

The pair reached the Israeli side of the Erez crossing into Gaza before noon Wednesday, and waited to be escorted through a long walkway into Palestinian-controlled territory, Palestinian security officials said.

But the deportation -- Israel's first use of the internationally condemned tactic during a Palestinian uprising -- coincided with signs of movement on the political front.

Sharon said in a newspaper interview he had agreed to hold his first high-level talks with the Palestinians in months in a bid to reopen dialogue aimed at ending nearly two years of conflict.

Intisar and Kifah Ajouri, brother and sister of a militiaman who dispatched two suicide bombers to Tel Aviv in July, were driven by Israeli troops into the Gaza Strip via backroads, to avoid journalists waiting at the main Erez crossing into the strip.

Each had been given 1,000 shekels ($212) by Israel as an "adjustment grant" for their two-year internal exile in Gaza. Relatives said the two — Kifah is a house painter and Intisar a pharmacist — would try to adjust to their new lives.

Israel's Supreme Court paved the way for the expulsions when it decided in a landmark ruling Tuesday that the military can force relatives of Palestinian terror suspects out of the West Bank, as long as it proves they pose a security threat.

The court ruled that Intisar and Kifah Ajouri helped their brother, Ali Ajouri, dispatch two suicide bombers to Tel Aviv on July 17. Four foreign workers and two Israelis were killed in the attack. The judges said Intisar sewed the bomb belts and Kifah stood watch as his brother moved explosives between hiding places. Ali Ajouri was killed in an Israeli military strike Aug. 6.

The military argued that expulsions create a powerful deterrent, while human rights groups said the court decision validates a practice that amounts to collective punishment and violates international law.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Wednesday that the military might expel additional relatives of terror suspects.

On Wednesday morning, the Ajouris were driven in a convoy of jeeps and prison vans from two Israeli prisons to a military base in the West Bank where they bid farewell to relatives. The two were led into the backyard of the base, where soldiers removed their shackles and handcuffs.

Expulsions are one of the measures the Israeli military is trying out to stem the tide of suicide bomb attacks that has swept over Israel during two years of fighting.

Israeli military commanders say the threat of expulsion, together with the destruction of family homes of bombers, creates a deterrent. They say there have already been cases of families stopping Palestinians from carrying out attacks for fear of Israeli punishment.

Human rights lawyers say they fear the court ruling could open the door to a creeping population transfer to Gaza, which is fenced in and much easier for Israel to control. All suicide bombers in the past two years have come from West Bank, from which Palestinians can still reach Israel on backroads, despite closures.

Lawyer Leah Tzemel, who represented two of the petitioners, said the court decision might get Israel entangled with the Hague-based International Criminal Court.

Human rights lawyers said expulsion violates the Geneva Conventions, which forbid "deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country."

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International called the expulsion a violation of international norms.

"This is a war crime," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said, accusing Israel of invoking "the law of the jungle."

"It has replaced international legitimacy with collective punishment and systematic state terror," he said.

Hamas, the militant group behind suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis, vowed to retaliate against the expulsions by mounting further attacks.

Despite that, Sharon said in excerpts of an interview published on Wednesday he had agreed to meet a leading Palestinian official who had proposed a "renewal of dialogue."

A senior political source confirmed Sharon had agreed to talks with a "political leader" but had declined to identify the Palestinian or elaborate on the nature or timing of the meeting.

Since taking office in 2001, Sharon has refused to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

The move by Sharon, who had conditioned such talks on the Palestinians ending violence and implementing sweeping reforms, followed Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razzak al-Yahya's demands that Palestinian militants halt all attacks on Israelis.

"I agreed to meet with a top Palestinian personality," Sharon was quoted as saying.