No Surrender

By LISA BEYER JERUSALEM

Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi stood in a chilly rain before the assembled crowd of nearly 400 Palestinians who, like him, were banished by Israel to southern Lebanon seven weeks ago. Now, said Rantisi, the group's spokesman, the Israelis were inviting each of them to appeal in person for the right to return. Would they comply? he asked the exiles huddled on a hillside near their meager tent camp. Was there an alternative to their demand for unconditional repatriation? The answer came back crisp and loud: "No. No. No."

That word reverberated through the deportation controversy last week. No, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled, it would not reverse the government's decision to deport the Muslim fundamentalists who are accused of inciting violence in Israel and the occupied territories. No, the Palestine Liberation Organization said, it would no longer delay pressing its demand for sanctions against Israel at the United Nations. No, said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he would not give in and take back the exiles despite that threat.

The stage was set for just the kind of showdown Washington had hoped to avoid: a fight in the U.N. Security Council that would strand the U.S. between the interests of its good friend Israel and the diplomatically important Arabs. If sanctions come to a vote, the Clinton Administration will have to choose between exposing Israel for the first time ever to U.N. discipline and offending the Arabs by wielding a veto that the U.S. has not used for 2 1/2 years -- and pray that the results do not disrupt the Middle East peace talks. Playing the ace would be awkward at a time when Washington needs the U.N. imprimatur for its own course of discipline against Iraq.

The Clinton team would love to put off the sanctions debate so Israel can devise a face-saving way out. But outspoken U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali got the Palestinians smelling blood. The Security Council, he advised, should use "whatever measures are required" to enforce the month- old resolution calling for the return of the deportees. The P.L.O., which has observer status at the U.N., is pushing hard among Arab and nonaligned members to bar Israel from international conferences on human rights. It also proposes barring nations from trading with Israeli companies that do business in the occupied territories.

Although these penalties are relatively mild, Israeli officials are enraged at the very prospect of facing U.N. sanctions. "To put us in the same category as Iraq, Serbia and Libya -- it's unacceptable," says Rabin's spokesman, Gad Ben-Ari. "We've not swallowed another country or massacred thousands of people or harbored terrorists who blew up a packed airplane." To . block approval, Jerusalem has embarked on an intensive lobbying effort. Rabin took the unusual step of calling all ambassadors accredited to Israel to a late-night meeting at his office in Tel Aviv. There, they were served cold sodas and an hour and a half of the Prime Minister's disputations.

The U.S. ambassador, William Harrop, had an earlier, private hearing. Rabin has expressed confidence that the U.S. will protect Israel -- but he wants to make sure. Israeli officials were on the phone intensively with Washington all week, and there was at least one personal conversation between Rabin and President Clinton. The Israelis tried to persuade the U.S. that a solution to the deportation crisis might yet be found in the appeals process set up by the court decision.

Even if the deportees refuse to file entreaties, the Israelis said, they would automatically reconsider each of the 396 cases. In this way, maybe 10, 50, or, said an Israeli official, "even a majority" of the exiles could go home in short order. If that would not appease the Palestinians, the Israelis argued, at least it might create enough of an impression of progress to forestall serious action at the U.N.

Although Washington would prefer Israel to send all the exiles home, the U.S. can accept a phased return as long as Israel gives it some cover by creating a process to review the cases. "No one should expect a dramatic breakthrough in which 396 people go home tomorrow," says a U.S. official. Creating his own version of "Read my lips," Rabin told visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana, "Write this down. The ((deportation)) decision is irreversible."

A large part of that stubbornness arises from Rabin's confidence that ultimately the U.S. will -- as it always has -- veto any U.N. punishment of Israel. The Palestinians also expect that. Says Sa'eb Erakat, a Palestinian delegate to the Middle East peace talks: "Anybody who thinks that Clinton will start his presidency off by imposing sanctions on Israel is crazy."

Even though Israel would use up political capital in forcing Clinton's back to the wall, the strong chance of a U.S. veto sobers the exiled Palestinians scraping by on the southern slopes of Lebanon. Their spokesman, Rantisi, posed another question the other day during his hillside sermon. In urging the world "to prove who is the highest authority," he wanted to know, "is it Rabin and his Supreme Court or the U.N. Security Council?" It is neither, of course, but rather the world's single surviving superpower, which, however loath it may be to use it, still has the power to utter the most important "No."

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo/New York, Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington