Persona non grata

The Occupied Zone: An Overview 
19 
 
 
 
    
The zone’s depopulation is one  reflection of  the hardships of life 
under occupation and, since 1982, the dangers accompanying the ongoing 
military conflict between Lebanese guerrillas (widely described in Lebanon as the 
resistance, or muqawama in Arabic) and Israeli forces and SLA militiamen.  
Lebanese civilians have been the primary victims in this conflict,  and Israeli 
civilians in northern Israel have suffered death and injury as well. Both sides — 
Israel and the SLA, and Lebanese guerrilla forces, principally the military wing of 
Hizballah — have violated international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by 
carrying out indiscriminate attacks and illegal reprisals against civilians.    Israel, 
with its vastly superior military firepower, has caused by far the most civilian 
casualties, and the most damage to homes and civilian infrastructure.
8
   
 
The Israeli Role in the Zone   
                                                 
 
8
    According to official Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statistics, between 1985 and 
1998, a total of seven Israeli civilians have been killed in the Israel-Lebanon border 
area from indiscriminate attacks by Lebanese guerrillas. Two more Israeli civilians 
were killed in June 1999 when Hizballah launched volleys of Katyusha rockets at 
border settlements in northern Israel.  Nine Lebanese were also killed in the sharp 
escalation of hostilities that month, which included a ten-hour bombing campaign by 
Israel on June 24-25 that targeted Lebanese infrastructure in Beirut and other locations 
throughout the country. During Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon in July 1993, 
code-named “Operation Accountability,” 120 Lebanese civilians were killed; another 
154 Lebanese civilians lost their lives during Israel’s “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in 
April 1996. See Human Rights Watch, “Operation Grapes of Wrath: The Civilian 
Victims,” A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 9 no. 8(E), September 1997, and 
Human Rights Watch, Civilian Pawns: Laws of War Violations and the Use of 
Weapons on the Israel-Lebanon Border (New York, Human Rights Watch: May 
1996).  Also see Human Rights Watch, “Illegal Reprisals by Israel and Hizballah 
Condemned,” press release, June 26, 1999.   
 

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20 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
The IDF Liaison Unit to Lebanon, commanded by an Israeli military 
officer with the rank of brigadier general, reportedly directs Israeli and SLA 
military activities in the occupied zone.
9
  “We have thousands of soldiers and 
officers doing the day-to-day work in Lebanon, risking their lives,” then-Israeli 
defense minister Moshe Arens told the Jerusalem Post in March 1999.
10
   
According to the U.S. State Department,  there were “approximately 2,000 
Israeli army regulars” in the occupied zone in 1998, as well as 1,500 SLA 
militiamen.
11
    Israeli journalists, in contrast, put the number of    SLA soldiers at 
2,500 to 3,000 men.
12
    Israel’s annual budget for the zone is reportedly U.S. $32 
million, most of it used to pay    the $550 to $600 average monthly salaries of SLA 
soldiers, who are organized into two brigades with three territorial battalions 
each.
13
   
                                                 
     
    9         
Arieh O’Sullivan, “IDF-south Lebanon liaison commander: Calls for unilateral 
pullout endanger troops,”  Jerusalem Post, June 9, 1998.  Israeli journalists who 
have visited SLA military outposts in the occupied zone have    observed SLA artillery 
and mortar fire “under IDF liaison officer supervision.” See Arieh O’Sullivan and 
David Rudge, “Fighting Against Time,” Jerusalem Post, July 31, 1998. 
     
  10         
Arieh O’Sullivan and Amoz Asa-El, “Moshe Arens: There is no magic 
solution,” Jerusalem Post, March 5, 1999. 
   
      11          
U.S. State Department, Country Report on Human Rights Practices in 
Lebanon for 1998.   
   
      12          
See, for example,  Jerusalem Post, June 9, 1998, and Yedi’ot Aharonot, 
January 19, 1999. 
   
   13     
O’Sullivan and Rudge, “Fighting Against Time,” Jerusalem Post.  Unnamed 
Israeli military sources provided these statistics to the journalists. The Jerusalem Post 
reported in 1999 that the IDF has increased civilian assistance portion of the funds 
allocated to the security zone to about $13 million, up from $8 million in    1998.    It 
noted that “[t]he additional funds are to be used for upgrading 120 kilometers of roads 
throughout the zone and to improve facilities at Marjayoun and Bint J’bail hospitals.” 
David Rudge, “IDF boosts funds to security zone,” Jerusalem Post, June 19, 1999.
 

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The Occupied Zone: An Overview 
21 
 
 
 
Israel has also long maintained a multi leveled intelligence presence in 
Lebanon that is involved in activities and decision making with respect to the 
civilian population. This presence reportedly includes operatives from its external 
intelligence services, the IDF military intelligence unit of the Army Intelligence 
Branch (known by its Hebrew acronym AMAN),  the Mossad, and the Israeli 
domestic security service, the General  Security Service (GSS) or Shabak, also 
known by its former name Shin Bet.
14
  In April 1999, then-defense minister 
Arens provided some limited information about the nature of Israel’s role in the 
zone with respect to security matters.    He said that he did “not dispute that there 
is cooperation in various security areas between the security establishment of the 
State of Israel and the SLA, with both forces constantly facing hostile forces in 
South Lebanon, and that the State of Israeli [was] interested in strengthening the 
SLA in its war opposite the said hostile forces.”  He added that “the parties 
consult together concerning the arrest and release of people in the al-Khiam 
installation,” but maintained that decisions to continue the detention of Lebanese 
prisoners in Khiam are “under the responsibility and judgment of the SLA, and 
not within the authority of the Respondent [the minister of defense].” The  
defense minister also acknowledged that “indeed, information from the 
interrogations at al-Khiam [prison] are transferred by the SLA to Israeli security 
forces.  In addition, several detainees underwent polygraph tests by the Israeli 
side in the framework of the security cooperation between the parties.”    He made 
no mention, however, of the exchange of information obtained from SLA 
questioning of residents of the occupied zone who were not imprisoned in Khiam, 
nor did he discuss the    practice of Israeli intelligence operatives’ questioning of 
civilian residents of the zone, either within Lebanon or in Israel. 
15
   
In 1989, Israel’s GSS (Shin Bet) is said to have created a security 
apparatus within the SLA: 
 
In light of the difficulties that the Army Intelligence Branch 
was having in Lebanon, a decision was made in late 1989 to 
ratchet Shin Bet involvement in the region up a notch.  With 
visions of creating an efficiently coordinated intelligence 
network, the Shin Bet set up an intelligence service call 
“Mabat” (an acronym for mangenon ha’bitachon — “security 
                                                 
          14         
Ronen Bergman, “Fighting blind,” Ha’aretz Magazine, May 14, 1999. 
 
     
  15      
Suleiman Ramadan et. al. vs. The Minister of Defense, High Court of Justice 
1951/99.  

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