Palestinians vow to avenge court ruling on expulsions

Indignation and vows of revenge rippled across the occupied territories yesterday after Israel's Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing the expulsion from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip of two relatives of a suspected militant.

A panel of nine judges unanimously upheld a decision by an Israeli military court to allow the exile without charge or trial of Intisar and Kifah Ajouri over allegations that they helped their brother to organise suicide bombings.

The Israeli armed forces said the expulsions would go ahead today. There was outrage among human rights organisations, which saw the ruling as an endorsement of Israel's use of collective punishment, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Amnesty International said in a statement that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Palestinians living in the territories, which have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967, are classified as protected persons. "The unlawful forcible transfer of protected persons constitutes a war crime under both the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court," it said. "Under the Rome Statute such violations may also constitute crimes against humanity."

Hamas, which has launched dozens of suicide bombings against Israel, said it was a "grave escalation" of the situation, and vowed to respond.

The former peace negotiator Saeb Erekat called it a "black day for human rights", and said that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was considering filing a complaint to the UN Security Council.

The two Palestinians, who come from a refugee camp in Nablus, are the sister and brother of Ali Ajouri, a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who was assassinated last month by the Israelis. The Israeli military maintains that he masterminded several attacks, including dispatching a pair of suicide bombers to Tel Aviv in July, killing two Israelis and three foreign workers. A few days afterwards the Israeli army demolished the Ajouris' family home – a practice thathas also been widely condemned by human rights activists as a form of collective punishment.

Israel's military officials allege that among the help provided to Ali Ajouri by his sister Intisar was the sewing of suicide bombers' explosive belts. His brother, Kifah, is alleged to have provided him with a hiding place and to have acted as a look-out. But neither of the two had the opportunity to challenge the evidence against them in court; the Israeli government claimed a trial would have exposed its sources.

Although Gazans and West Bankers cannot move freely between their two broken-up and blockaded areas, the court accepted the Israeli government's argument that the West Bank and Gaza Strip constitute one territory and that moving people between them did not breach the Geneva Conventions. The court overturned the expulsion order against Abdel Nasser Asidi, brother of a Hamas activist accused of involvement in two West Bank bus ambushes that killed 19 Israelis. It argued that relatives of a militant could not be expelled unless they posed a serious security threat.

Leah Tzemel, a lawyer who represented two of the Palestinians, said she feared the decision could be used by Israel as a tool for the transfer of populations from the West Bank to Gaza. The coastal strip is fenced in, and much easier to control than the West Bank.

"We are quite disappointed with this verdict," Ms Tzemel said. "It puts Israel into difficulties with international law and leads soldiers into the possibility of being sentenced as war criminals."