Israel Deports 4 Arabs for ‘Violent Activity’ : Mideast: The U.N. secretary general deplores the action. The Palestinians are taken to Lebanon.

JERUSALEM —  Israel resumed its controversial policy of expelling suspected terrorists Tuesday, deporting four Palestinian activists from the occupied Gaza Strip to Lebanon.

It was the first time in 16 months that Israel has deported Palestinians, an action that the United States and other countries have criticized as violating the Geneva conventions governing treatment of people in occupied areas.

The Israeli army announced that the expulsions were ordered because of the four men’s “involvement in organizing and directing violent Hamas activity.”

Hamas is a Muslim fundamentalist movement that sprang up in the Gaza Strip several years ago, and its influence has spread through the West Bank during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The organization, which has been outlawed by Israel, calls for the elimination of Israel and the formation of an Islamic government in its place.

The founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, is being tried in a Gaza military court on charges of ordering the murders of two kidnaped Israeli soldiers.

Israeli officials described the four deported men as “among organizers of violent actions of Hamas and (were) its directors.” They are Nadal Khaled Zaabut, 34; Imad Khaled Alami, 34; Mustapha Ahmed Kanua, 45, and Mustapha Lidawi, 26. The four, who lived in the Gaza Strip, contended that their expulsion was illegal.

Israeli authorities charged them with playing an unspecified role in the fatal stabbings of three people in Tel Aviv last month and in the assassinations of suspected Arab collaborators.

The army ordered their deportations Dec. 15, the day after the Tel Aviv stabbings, for which Hamas claimed responsibility. But Israel did not accuse the four of the actual murders.

Israel Radio said the four men were flown, handcuffed and blindfolded, in an army helicopter to Israel’s so-called security zone in southern Lebanon and from there were taken on foot to a checkpoint leading into Lebanon.

Before leaving Israel, the four men declared in a statement that they objected to the absorption of “hundreds of thousands of foreign immigrants while the Palestinian people is uprooted from its land toward an unknown future.”

At the United Nations, a spokesman said that Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar was “deeply concerned” by the fact that Israel had carried out its decision to expel the four Palestinians from the occupied territories.

“The secretary general strongly deplores this action, which is in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the spokesman said. “He calls on the Israeli authorities to permit those who have been deported to return to their homes.”

In defending the expulsions, Health Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday: “We don’t shoot them. We don’t execute them. We separate them from the population, provoked by their terrorism.”

Altogether, 64 Palestinians have been deported to Lebanon since the uprising began in the occupied territories in December, 1987.

Times staff writer John Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this article.