New Israel Cabinet Member Favors Expulsion of Arabs : Mideast: Shamir names hard-liner despite strong opposition. He says government’s policy is unchanged.

JERUSALEM —  Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir reinforced his Cabinet with an anti-Arab former general who favors the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, sparking complaints from supporters and critics alike that the prime minister is squandering the goodwill earned by Israel during the Persian Gulf War.

Shamir named Rehavam Zeevi a minister without portfolio and invited him to sit in on the special Defense Cabinet formed for the Gulf crisis. Zeevi heads the Homeland Party, which won two parliamentary seats on a platform that Palestinians should be removed--”transferred” in Israeli political parlance--to Jordan or other Arab countries. If the Arabs don’t go voluntarily, transfer advocates say, they should be banished forcibly.

Zeevi’s inclusion appeared to some observers to be a slap at the Bush Administration. The former military man is a staunch promoter of Israeli settlement of the West Bank and Gaza and has also opposed the government’s policy of restraint in the face of missile attacks from Iraq.

Washington, by contrast, views Israeli settlement of the occupied lands as an obstacle to compromise with the Palestinians and insists on restraint as a means of limiting the war with Iraq.

“There is no doubt that the Shamir government, which enjoyed wide appreciation thanks to the restraint it showed in the Gulf War . . . will lose much accrued interest in the international arena as a result of this shortsighted move,” wrote the influential Haaretz newspaper in an editorial.

Within Shamir’s own Likud Party, at least four top ministers opposed the invitation to Zeevi: Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Foreign Minister David Levy, Justice Minister Dan Meridor and Health Minister Ehud Olmert.

Aides to Shamir defended the appointment by saying that Shamir agreed with none of the new Cabinet member’s public positions. “Government policy does not change one iota. The government is fully against transfer. There is no problem here, except perhaps a public relations one,” said a Shamir confidant.

Shamir will voice his rejection of the expulsion of Arabs and reaffirm the restraint policy when he reports to the full Parliament as early as today, this aide said.

Over the weekend, Shamir himself insisted that Zeevi’s elevation would have no effect on policy. “What is decisive is the opinion of the majority, and the majority in this government is the Likud, which determines the policies of the government,” he said in a television interview.

Backers of Zeevi saw no ambiguity in Shamir’s action.

“The addition . . . will give legitimacy to the possibility that indeed, under certain conditions, if the Arabs continue to be enemies of the Jewish inhabitants and the Zionist state, the solution of moving them to Arab countries in general and the deserts of Iraq in particular is a probable and legitimate solution,” wrote Aharon Papu in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

The opposition Labor Party contended that with Zeevi’s inclusion, the Shamir government had made Arab expulsion a viable policy option.

“The government is painted with the color of transfer. It could be that the prime minister views--God forbid, I hope it is not true--transfer as a legitimate expression for Israeli government policy,” said Labor legislator Haim Ramon.

The Zeevi appointment was approved Sunday by the Cabinet. The move by Shamir was explained in technical terms--that he needed to expand his ruling majority from 64 to 66 seats in the 120-member Parliament in order to guard against defections of rebellious coalition partners.

Zeevi began his career in the pre-independence Palmach, an elite fighting unit. In the late 1960s, he commanded Israel’s central region--with responsibility for the West Bank--and carried out searches for PLO guerrillas. At the time, Zeevi kept a pair of lions at headquarters and fed them raw meat everyday.

He was an adviser to then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the mid 1970s.

During a recent spasm of intercommunal violence in Israel, Zeevi expounded on his expulsion program, insisting that the Palestinians are interlopers on the land:

“There is only one way to totally stop the terror--when we carry out transfer vis-a-vis the Arabs--because the land of Israel belongs to the Israeli people and only to the Israeli people.”

During the 1988 election campaign, in which the Homeland Party won two seats, Zeevi declared, “We have to say out loud this land belongs to the Jews, because we have seen all over the world that where two people try to live on the same land, the result is bloodshed.”

Zeevi’s stance on the Arabs differs little from that of slain radical Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was denounced as a racist and barred from running for a parliamentary seat. Zeevi favors expulsion only from the West Bank and Gaza, while Kahane campaigned also for the removal of Arabs who are citizens of Israel.