Persona non grata

22 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
apparatus”) within the SLA, employing SLA men  to gather 
intelligence in the field under the professional tutelage of Israeli 
experts.”
16
     
 
In 1994, Jane’s Intelligence Review described some of the activities of this 
apparatus:  
The SLA is supported by the General Security Service (GSS), a 
Lebanese-staffed intelligence organization under the 
supervision of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet. 
Having operated in the region for over 20 years and enjoying 
unchallenged air supremacy, Israeli forces have built up a 
detailed intelligence picture of South Lebanon. The GSS keeps 
this picture up to date and is also responsible for taking captives 
to the prison camp at El-Khiam.  This notorious camp is 
regularly stocked with terrorist suspects as well as Lebanese 
civilians taken hostage to ensure the good behavior of their 
families and villages.
17
       
 
                                                 
     16      
Ronen Bergman, “Fighting blind,” Ha’aretz Magazine, May 14, 1999.    The U.N. 
also reported that “[within the Israeli-controlled area (ICA), Israeli continued to maintain a 
civil administration and security service.”    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. 
          17         
Andrew Rathmell, “The War in South Lebanon,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 
April 1, 1994. 

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The Occupied Zone: An Overview 
23 
 
 
 
David Hirst, the veteran Beirut-based correspondent for the Guardian   
(London), described the Lebanese GSS as “the local extension of Israel’s Shin 
Beth.” A senior Lebanese foreign ministry source told Human Rights Watch that 
the Lebanese intelligence operatives comprise the “elite” of the SLA, adding that 
the Lebanese government has proof, in the form of taped intercepted 
conversations, that the operatives receive orders from Israeli intelligence.
18
 
During a visit to the occupied zone, journalist Hirst interviewed one Lebanese 
GSS agent who said that his monthly salary was $1,200, approximately double 
that of SLA conscript soldiers, one quantitative indicator of a higher status.
19
   
The Lebanese security agents who have monitored and harassed civilian residents 
of the occupied zone, summoned them for interrogation, pressured them to serve 
as informers, and carried out expulsions, are almost certainly members of the 
Lebanese GSS, although former local residents interviewed by Human Rights 
Watch identified them only as “security” with the SLA and never used the full 
organizational name. In their testimony, however, these residents always 
distinguished between the individuals that they described as security operatives 
and ordinary SLA soldiers.   
 
Actions of Israeli Intelligence Officers       
                                                 
          18         
Human Rights Watch interview, Washington, D.C., May 1999. 
          19         
David Hirst, Guardian, March 13, 1999. 

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24 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
As the testimony in this report makes clear, one of the activities of the 
occupation security   apparatus has been to identify and recruit Lebanese men 
and women who live inside the zone to serve as informers and gather information 
about the Lebanese military resistance to the Israeli occupation. Those who have 
resisted the pressure to collaborate have either fled the zone or have been 
expelled. The search for intelligence information, and the corresponding pressure 
on the civilian population, takes place in the context of growing uneasiness within 
the ranks of the SLA concerning their fate in Lebanon after an Israeli withdrawal 
from the zone, increasing desertions of both SLA soldiers and security operatives, 
and Israeli suspicions that serious intelligence breaches may have facilitated the 
killing of its own forces in Lebanon.
20
    By Lebanese and Western accounts, the 
armed wing of Hizballah, in particular, has made major advances in its own 
intelligence-gathering, beginning in 1995-96. David Gardner, the respected 
Middle East editor of the Financial Times, noted this:       
 
Hizbollah’s ability to identify and attack vital Israeli 
occupation targets has been evident since roughly October 
1995. It was then that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began 
noticing a qualitative change in the Shi’ite movement’s tactics 
— in particular its ability to anticipate the movements of senior 
Israeli intelligence officers and elite units.
21
         
 
                                                 
          20         
Just after midnight on September 5, 1997, for example, twelve Israeli soldiers 
with the Naval Commando Unit were killed when Lebanese guerrillas ambushed them 
inside Lebanon, where they were carrying out what the IDF termed “an initiated 
action” — meaning a commando raid — north of the occupied zone, near Insariyyeh 
along the Lebanese coast.     
       
21      
David Gardner, “Hizbollah sharpens up its tactics,” Financial Times 
(London), March 2, 1999. 

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