Persona non grata

Recommendations 13 
 
 
 
• 
Raise the issue of civilian expulsions in the occupied zone of South 
Lebanon as a matter of grave concern in high-level meetings with Israeli 
counterparts, such as trade and defense-related missions.     
 
• 
Urge members of Congress and parliamentarians to raise the issue of 
expulsions in meetings with Israeli government officials and members of 
the Knesset.   
 
To the High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Convention 
• 
Search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be 
committed, the expulsion of Lebanese residents of the occupied zone, 
and bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before your own 
courts.  
 
• 
Take measures necessary for the suppression of all other acts in occupied 
south Lebanon that are contrary to the provisions of the Fourth Geneva 
Convention. 
 
To the Government of Lebanon 
• 
Maintain complete and detailed files about expulsions of families and 
individuals from the occupied zone, and make such information 
available to the international community. 
 
• 
Instruct the Council of the South to institute fully transparent procedures 
with respect to the process that it uses to provide humanitarian assistance 
to expelled families and individuals, and ensure that such assistance is 
provided in a timely manner.   
 
• 
Investigate complaints about the operations of the Council of the South 
to ensure that all families and individuals entitled to humanitarian 
assistance received such assistance, and in the proper amount. 
 
• 
Create a transparent mechanism within the Council of Ministers to 
ensure that there is effective government oversight of the operations of 
the Council of the South.   

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14 
   
 
 
III.    THE OCCUPIED ZONE: AN OVERVIEW 
 
“The great success of south Lebanon is the 
creation of a situation of dependency,” says 
a senior IDF officer in Lebanon. “That 
dependency leads to a freedom of operation 
and movement by the IDF.    Our    operations 
and presence in built-up areas in south 
Lebanon can only work as long as we can 
control the population.”   
 
                —Jerusalem Post, July 31, 1998. 
 
The Israeli-occupied zone, which borders Israel and comprises about 10 
percent of Lebanese territory, has within it over one hundred villages and towns 
that are part of Lebanon’s provincial administrative districts of Tyre, Bint Jbail, 
Marjayoun, Hasbaiya, the Western Beka’, and Nabatiyeh.
1
 The zone’s diverse 
topography includes the coastal plain along the Mediterranean in the southwest 
and the foothills of the 2,814-meter Mount Hermon (jebel al-shaykh, in Arabic) in 
the northeast.  The land yields olives, grapes, figs, pomegranates, cherries, 
walnuts, wheat, vegetables, legumes, and tobacco.   
                                                 
          1          
In Lebanon, provinces (muhafazat, in Arabic) are subdivided into 
administrative districts (aqdiya).     

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It is widely recognized internationally that Israel controls the occupied 
zone with its own  military and security forces as well as with those of its 
auxiliary militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), which the U.N. describes as the 
Israeli Defense Forces’ “local Lebanese auxiliary,” and the U.S. Department of 
State has termed Israel’s “surrogate.”
2
    The zone’s current boundaries took shape 
in 1985, when the Israeli military withdrew in stages from areas of Lebanon that 
its troops had occupied to the north, following Israel’s invasion of the country in 
June 1982. After Israel’s invasion in March 1978, the U.N. Security Council 
adopted Resolution 425, which called upon Israel “immediately to cease its 
military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its 
forces from all Lebanese territory.” The resolution also included the Security 
Council’s decision to “establish immediately under its authority a United Nations 
interim force for Southern Lebanon [known as UNIFIL] for the purpose of 
confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and 
security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its 
effective authority in the area, the Force to be composed of personnel drawn from 
Member States.”
3
  Resolution 425 was adopted on March 19, 1978. 
Over twenty years later, on April 1, 1998, the Israeli Ministerial 
Committee for National Security announced that Israel was accepting Resolution 
425 “so that the IDF will leave Lebanon,” and called on the Lebanese government 
“to begin negotiations...to restore its effective control over territories currently 
under IDF control...”
4
 
                                                 
          2         
The U.S. State Department, for example, said this in 1999: “Israel exerts 
control in and near its self-proclaimed `security zone’ in south Lebanon through direct 
military action and support for its surrogate, the South Lebanon Army (SLA).”    U.S. 
Department of State, Lebanon Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998, 
February 26, 1999. In twice-yearly reports by the U.N. Secretary-General to the U.N. 
Security Council on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the 
Secretary-General does not name the South Lebanon Army but describes its troops as 
“de facto forces” that serve as the “local      Lebanese auxiliary” to the Israel Defence 
Forces (IDF).  See, for example, Report of the Secretary-General on the United 
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (for the period from 16 July 1998 to 15 January 
1999), S/1999/61, January 19, 1999.   
          3         
UNIFIL continues to operate in south Lebanon.  As of December 1998, its 
personnel included 4,483 troops from nine nations, assisted by fifty-one military 
observers from the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), and 
employed 486 civilian staff, of whom 344 were locally recruited.   
  4     
  The full text of the announcement read as follows: “The Ministerial Committee 

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