Israel expels terror bomb mastermind's siblings
Israel today expelled two Palestinians from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip - 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.
Intisar and Kifah Ajouri, brother and sister of a militiaman who sent two suicide bombers to Tel Aviv in July, were driven by Israeli troops into the Gaza Strip on backroads to avoid media attention.
The Ajouris’ lawyers said the two later called them from a petrol station south of Gaza City where they had been dropped off.
They each had been given 1,000 shekels (€215) by Israel as an ”adjustment grant” for their two year 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 yesterday 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. Three 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 last month.
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 back yard of the base, where soldiers removed their shackles and handcuffs.
Kifah Ajouri embraced his three children, who were crying, said a sister, Amal.
”It was an emotional meeting because it is so difficult to say good-bye,” she said, adding that his wife and children would try to move to Gaza as well.
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.
