Persona non grata

28 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
The militiaman drove Salah to the Kfar Tebnit crossing, where he was 
expelled.    “I walked to the Lebanese army checkpoint, and a taxi driver whom I 
knew took me to Zahrani [a town on the coast south of Sidon], and told my family 
what happened,” he said. His wife, who was pregnant, joined him twenty days 
later.
28
   
In a separate interview, another former resident of the zone testified 
about his own encounter with Israelis in March 1998.    Fifty-one-year-old Ahmad 
Sari Beddah, a prominent figure in the village of Beit Lief who said that he 
administered the local waqf and had been involved in distributing aid to needy 
villagers since 1978, was taken to the SLA military barracks in Bint Jbail 
following the killing of his son Yousef, who was a guerrilla, in a military 
operation. Beddah told Human Rights Watch that he was brought to a room filled 
with SLA security operatives and about ten Israeli military officers and 
journalists. “They wanted me to condemn the resistance in front of the cameras,” 
he testified. “I called for peace. Then an Israeli officer said: ‘We killed your son.’” 
Beddah said that he explained why his son had joined the resistance, which 
provoked the officer to hit him and threaten that he would be taken to Khiam 
prison. “He also told me to tell him where Ron Arad was, or my son’s body would 
never be released.”
29
  Beddah told Human Rights Watch that, fearing 
imprisonment, he fled the zone. He testified that ten days later, some time in early 
April 1998,    SLA security operatives put his wife and three-year-old child into a 
car and expelled them at the Beit Yahoun crossing. “They told her that she could 
not take anything with her,” Beddah added.
30
   
                                                 
          28         
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999.  Name and 
name of village withheld by Human Rights Watch. 
          29         
Captain Ron Arad, a navigator in the Israeli Air Force, bailed out of his 
aircraft while flying over Sidon in south Lebanon on October 16, 1986. According to 
the Israeli government, Arad “landed safely,” was taken prisoner by the Amal 
Movement, and was “later transferred to the Iranians in Lebanon.” His whereabouts 
remain unknown. Letter to Human Rights Watch from the Israeli Ministry of Justice, 
Foreign Relations and International Organizations Department, March 13, 1997. 
         
30     
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1998. 

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The Occupied Zone: An Overview 
29 
 
 
 
The resident of another village in the zone, who requested anonymity, 
described the events that preceded his expulsion in 1997. He told Human Rights 
Watch that five SLA militiamen arrived at his home at eight o’clock one morning 
in July 1996, while he was eating breakfast with his wife and children:    “Three of 
them surrounded the house, and one waited in the car. The one who came to the 
door told me that Ahmed Shibley Saleh [the SLA security official responsible for 
the western sector of the occupied zone from Bint Jbail to Naqoura] wanted to see 
me.”  The man said that he was brought to  “Position 17” of the SLA in Bint 
Jbail, where telephone calls were made. He stated that he was then informed that 
he was being taken to Khiam prison. He testified that he was held for the first 
eleven days in Khiam in complete darkness in solitary confinement, and then was 
tortured and interrogated for sixty days, blindfolded and handcuffed. He said that 
he was hanged from a ceiling with his toes just touching the floor; doused 
repeatedly with hot and then cold water; and threatened with electric shock. His 
interrogators  threatened that his wife, mother and sister would be arrested, he 
added.    
The same man recounted that his interrogators, whom he identified as 
SLA, asked questions about his relationships with Lebanese intelligence, 
Hizballah, and the Amal Movement. He said that after sixty days he was brought 
to an office equipped with a computer, where he was questioned by an Israeli 
interrogator who used a polygraph: 
 
The interrogator in Khiam [prison] told me: “Now you are 
going to a place where they will know if you are lying.” They 
took me from Khiam to somewhere near the Israeli border.  
They made me lie on the back seat of a car, handcuffed and with 
my eyes blindfolded. Once I was inside an office, they removed 
the blindfold and handcuffs.    There were five Israelis — one in 
civilian clothes named “Jackie,” who was wearing jeans and a 
T-shirt, and four with uniforms.   
 
According to the man’s account, Jackie, an Israeli who spoke heavily 
accented Arabic, questioned him for two hours. “He had my file in front of him, 
written in Hebrew, with parts of it underlined in blue ink,” he said. He described 
how Jackie wanted specific information about various individuals, including their 
addresses, and also asked more general questions. After this session, the man was 
returned to Khiam prison and held there until January 1997. On the day of his 

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30 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
release, he said that SLA militiamen drove him immediately to the Beit Yahoun 
crossing, where he was expelled.
31
 
                                                 
       
 31
     The man also requested that Human Rights Watch withhold the name of 
his village, which is located in the western sector of the occupied zone. Human Rights 
Watch interview, Tyre, Lebanon, April 1999. 

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