On 16 December 1992, the Israeli government carried out a mass deportation across the Lebanese border of four hundred Palestinian prisoners suspected of membership in the upsurgent Islamist militant organisation Hamas. Triggered by the abduction and murder of an Israeli police officer, the deportation was the largest single mass deportation of Palestinians since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967.
The mass deportation, however, rapidly sparked severe controversy, with the Lebanese government refusing to allow the deportees into Lebanon, human rights groups raising concerns over the government's attempts to circumvent the right to trial, protests breaking out among Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel over fears that more mass deportations would come, and with ongoing peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation almost collapsing. All of the deportees were ultimately allowed to return from exile by the end of 1993.
While the mass deportation was intended to eliminate Hamas as a viable security threat, it is widely considered to have ultimately backfired, becoming instead a major milestone in the rise of Hamas. The mass deportation significantly raised the profile of Hamas among Palestinians and allowed Hamas to make its first contacts with Hezbollah, who provided the deportees with significant training and material support.
Background
Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The organisation originated from the Muslim Brotherhood, which grew substantially in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s and early 1980s under the leadership of Ahmed Yassin and his Mujama al-Islamiya charity. The Brotherhood was initially supported in its growth by the Israeli government, who believed that it could become a less nationalist and more amenable alternative to the secular, leftist Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Palestinian politics.
While Yassin initially believed that the Brotherhood had to focus on Islamicising Palestinian society first before it could fight against Israel, by the mid-1980s, he increasingly turned towards violence. In 1987, during the First Intifada, Yassin re-organised the Brotherhood into Hamas, declaring that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a holy war between Muslims and Jews, issuing a founding charter in 1988 that contained genocidally antisemitic language, and carrying out its first attacks on Israeli soldiers in 1989. By 1990, as the First Intifada fell apart under a harsh Israeli crackdown and Palestinian infighting, Hamas had grown significantly, being increasingly seen as a viable, less corrupt, and less compromising alternative to the PLO among Palestinians and increasingly being seen as a serious threat by the Israeli government.
Following the 1992 Israeli legislative election, after which the Israeli Labor Party under Yitzhak Rabin was able to form a coalition government and pursue peace negotiations with the PLO, Hamas stepped up its attacks on Israeli targets and on Palestinians that opposed the group.
Events Trigger On 13 December 1992, a group of Hamas militants murdered Israeli police officer Nissim Toledano. The killing sparked widespread outrage in Israel. In his speech to the Knesset announcing the discovery of the body, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pledged that "Neither Ahmed Yassin, nor Ahmed Jabril, nor Yasir Arafat will move us from here — we are here to stay. We will suffer setbacks, bite our lips and carry on. Neither stones nor bullets will make us move. Terror has no chance against us," and called for the Israeli military to be "merciless" against Hamas. Minister of Internal Security Moshe Shahal pledged to "avenge the death." The far-right Moledet party called for Hamas supporters to be expelled from the Occupied Territories, while left-wing Meretz party chair Yossi Sarid called for "an iron fist against Hamas." In Toledano's hometown of Lod, there was a minor riot by Jewish Israelis targeting an Arab neighbourhood in the city, also chanting "Death to Arabs" and throwing stones at the house of Mayor of Lod Maxim Levy.
After the body was discovered, the Israeli government initiated a significant crackdown targeting Hamas, including the mass arrest of 1600 Palestinians, and imposition on a ban of travel between the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Jordan.
Deportation On the morning of 16 December 1992, the Israeli cabinet held a meeting to discuss a mass deportation of Hamas members to Lebanon. The cabinet voted unanimously in favour of the deportations, save for Minister of Justice David Libai, who abstained.
Shortly thereafter, 418 Palestinian prisoners, mostly alleged Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members, were handcuffed, blindfolded, and put on busses, and driven towards the Israeli border with Lebanon. Strict military censorship was initially applied to the deportation, and the families of the deportees were not notified, with the goal of speeding up the deportation by carrying it out before any court appeals could be lodged. The busses were forced to stop at the town of Metula, near the Israeli-Lebanon border after news of the ongoing deportation leaked and a group of human rights activists filed a case to pause the deportation with the Supreme Court of Israel. The Supreme Court quickly held a special session, ultimately deciding with a 5 to 2 majority by the end of the day to allow the deportation to proceed. The Supreme Court also ordered the Israeli government to release a formal explanation within one month of its reasons for deporting the prisoners without granting them the right to appeal. 35 of the prisoners were removed from the bus before it continued towards Lebanon. One of those 35, Gazan journalist Taher Shriteh, was shortly afterwards released from Israeli custody entirely, with Shin Bet claiming that he had been accidentally included on the list.
The remaining 383 prisoners were subsequently offloaded at the northern edge of the Israeli-occupied South Lebanon security belt in the nighttime, being given fifty dollars each, some food provisions, and jackets.
The Government of Lebanon, however, refused to allow the alleged Hamas members to leave the Israeli security zone and enter unoccupied Lebanon. The Lebanese military was placed on high alert and deployed to block the roads between the Israeli occupied and unoccupied zones. Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri stated that he would not allow Israel to use Lebanon as a dumping ground, and claimed that "If any harm befalls any of the deportees, Israel will be responsible for it."
Time in exile Being neither allowed to return to the Palestinian Territories or move into non-occupied Lebanese territory, the four hundred deportees rapidly found themselves stuck in the southern Lebanese desert in winter. The deportees initially made two attempts to walk back towards the Palestinian Territories, but gave up after the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army fired at them. The Israeli military also placed landmines across the most common paths south and deployed reinforcements into the occupied security zone, including a unit of commandos.
The deportees eventually set up an encampment together in the mountains near the village of Marj al-Zuhour, naming it "Camp Jerusalem for the Return." In the encampment, the deportees organised themselves under an Islamist and "work-if-you-want-to-eat" structure, attempting to take care of basic functions like building latrines, starting fires for heat, cooking food, doing laundry, fetching water, and doing their prayers. Ten of the deportees had medical training, and some of the others had training in engineering, with over one hundred having a higher education degree. The deportees also set up a classroom, which they dubbed a university, giving lectures and holding debates with each other. As well, the deportees regularly held press conferences for international reporters visiting the camps, with Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi serving as spokesperson. Almost all of the deportees, on the other hand, had no previous experience with snow, weather conditions in the mountains were harsh, on the whole, the deportees had minimal provisions, and they faced frequent arguments between the Hamas members and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad members.
The deportees initially received some humanitarian aid from NGOs in the neighbourhood, notably the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as from United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon troops. However, the Israeli government subsequently announced that it would ban NGOs from travelling through Israeli-held zones to deliver humanitarian aid to the deportees. The announcement came following a meeting of the cabinet in which Rabin clashed with Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres, who opposed blocking the NGOs. The cabinet ultimately voted 8 to 6 in favour of blocking the NGOs, with three ministers abstaining. The Lebanese government also moved to block the NGOs from providing aid to the deportees, and attempted to order the deportees to march south.
Unlike the NGOs, however, one group was able to defy the Lebanese and Israeli governments and provide aid to the deportees: the armed, Islamist, and violently anti-Israel paramilitary Hezbollah. Hezbollah would provide the deportees not only with basic aid, but would also use the opportunity to forge strong links between itself and the deported Hamas members as terrorists, despite the religious differences between them. Hezbollah, a stronger and more experience terrorist organisation, provided Hamas deportees with military training and education in military tactics, including education on explosives and how to do suicide bombings. Through Hezbollah, the Hamas deportees would also forge links with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As the time in exile stretched on, the Hamas members and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members among the deportees would also gradually reconcile and agree to cooperate in future endeavours.
Protests The deportations sparked immediate protests in Palestine, with activists in some cities calling for general strikes. Several Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would be shot and killed by Israeli forces when some protests evolved into riots.
The deportations also sparked protests within Israel, particularly among Arab citizens of Israel, and with some protests being organised by the Peace Now movement. Arab Israelis held a one-day general strike on 22 December in protest against the deportation. Hadash MK Tawfiq Ziad was suspended for five sessions of the Knesset after a particularly heated outburst against the deportations in the Knesset, while MK Hashem Mahameed faced calls for his parliamentary immunity to be revoked after he called for Palestinians to re-launch the First Intifada. On 28 December, a group of Arab Israeli leaders attempted to deliver humanitarian aid to the deportees, but were blocked by Israeli police.
Political and diplomatic crises The deportations sparked serious concerns about the viability of the ongoing peace negotiations between the Israeli government. The PLO leadership, under pressure from their relative distance from the First Intifada's Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, the rise of the more grassroots Hamas, growing dissatisfaction over the slow pace of the peace negotiations, as well as a significant internal financial crisis, initially announced that it would withdraw from negotiations until the Israeli government reversed the deportation.