Israel deported the brother and sister of a Palestinian militant from the West Bank to Gaza today under a policy it said was meant to deter suicide bombers but which Palestinians branded a "war crime".
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Intisar(left) and Kifah Ajouri listen to proceedings at a hearing in Jerusalem's high court yesterday
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The two deportees were given 1,000 Israeli shekels ($210) each and food and bottled water, an army spokesman said, before being "relocated" to the Gaza Strip.
The expulsions, Israel's first use of the internationally condemned tactic during a 23-month-old Palestinian uprising, coincided with signs of movement on the political front.
Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview he had agreed to hold his first high-level talks with the Palestinians in months in a bid to reopen dialogue aimed at ending nearly two years of conflict.
Kifah, 38, and his sister Intisar Ajouri, 34, accused by Israel of helping their brother Ali plan a double suicide bombing that killed five people in Tel Aviv in July, were deported to the fenced-in Gaza Strip a day after losing their appeal in Israel's Supreme Court.
The landmark ruling stated that Israel could carry out deportations in "extreme cases" but denied the blanket approval for such expulsions which the army had sought.
This morning, the two bid farewell to relatives at an Israeli detention centre in the West Bank, before being driven to Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, an impoverished, densely populated area wedged between southern Israel and Egypt.
From there, a military vehicle took them across and dropped them off "in the middle of nowhere", said Ms Dalia Kerstein, director of the Israeli legal aid group that represented them. Israeli media reports said the army sent a decoy convoy to the main border crossing but slipped them in along another route.
The expulsions will keep them in Palestinian-ruled territory ceded by Israel under interim peace deals since the mid-1990s, but tear them away from their families for two years.