Persona non grata

Collective Punishment 
57 
 
 
 
On October 19, 1988, seven Israeli soldiers were killed instantly and 
eight wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a car with 330 pounds of 
explosives near an IDF military convoy at the border gate that leads to the Israeli 
town of Metulla. The New York Times reported that “[a]n Israeli Army official 
said the suicide bomber, driving a Toyota, detonated the explosive as the Israeli 
convoy of six vehicles, including a small bus loaded with troops, stopped next to 
another small convoy headed in the other direction.”
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  An eighth Israeli soldier 
died from his injuries several days later. Hizballah’s military wing, the Islamic 
Resistance, claimed responsibility for the attack,    and then-Israeli Prime Minister 
Yitzak Shamir pledged that “Israel’s just and secure hand will reach the killers.”
76
   
On October 23, 1988, the Israeli Army  said it had had carried out arrests of  
residents it suspected were involved in planning the attack, and that the IDF had 
“apprehended the terrorist who is suspected of escorting the suicide car bomber to 
the area of the terrorist attack.”
77
   
Khadija Naim Raghda, from the village of Markaba in the occupied 
zone, told Human Rights Watch that it was her seventeen-year-old son Mustafa 
Abdel Karim Hamoud who had accompanied the suicide bomber in the vehicle.
78
   
She said that after the attack her son returned to the village, which is located about 
five miles southwest of Metulla, and that the SLA promptly apprehended him. 
According to Mustafa’s brother Ismail, the suicide bombing occurred at about 
11:00 or 11:30 in the morning, and Mustafa was arrested at about 4:00 that 
afternoon. The next day,    the SLA returned    to the family’s house. According to 
Khadija: 
     
They found nothing. They came back again and ransacked the 
house. They put a gun to my head and said: “Where does your 
son hide the weapons?”  Then they sprayed something like 
gasoline and set the house on fire. I watched this. Then they 
grabbed me and put me in a car, while the house was burning, 
and took me to Khiam prison. During the ride there, Ahmed 
                                                 
          75         
Joel Brinkley, “A Car Bomb in Southern Lebanon Kills 7 Israeli Soldiers and 
Hurts 8,” New York Times, October 20, 1988. 
          76         
Ibid. 
          77         
“Bombing Suspects Seized by Israelis,” New York Times, October 24, 1988. 
          78         
As a security measure, residents of occupied Lebanon are not permitted to 
drive vehicles unaccompanied by passengers. 

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58 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
Abdel Jalil Sheet [an SLA security officer] kicked me with his 
boot and spit in my face.     
 
The day after her arrest, a high-ranking Israeli intelligence official and 
another Israeli commander, accompanied by at least four SLA security officials, 
arrived at the family’s burnt house and dynamited it, according to Khadija’s son 
Ismail who was hiding in the village and watched.
79
 
                                                 
          79         
The names of these officials were provided to Human Rights Watch.   

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Collective Punishment 
59 
 
 
 
Three days after the bombing, Khadija said that her husband, Abdel 
Karim Hamoud, who was ninety-nine years old, was expelled from the village and 
the occupied zone.     
Khadija, who was fifty-seven years old in 1988, told Human Rights 
Watch that at Khiam prison she was interrogated and tortured for fifteen days in 
the investigation room, with two Israeli officers present. “They wanted 
information, but I had none,” she said, mentioning that electricity was applied to 
her fingertips and breasts. After fifteen days, she said that she was handcuffed and 
blindfolded, and transported to somewhere in Israel, where her son was already in 
custody. She recalled that this time she was interrogated by Israelis, with one 
Lebanese in attendance. On the first day, “it was the same type of investigation [as 
in Khiam], but there was no torture. They brought my son Mustafa, and I passed 
out. The next day, an Arabic-speaking policewoman told me not to faint. They 
brought my son again and I hugged and kissed him. I never saw him again,” 
Khadija said.
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    She added that Mustafa was quickly tried in an Israeli court — 
“which he refused to recognize” — and is serving a twenty-year sentence in 
Ashkelon prison in Israel.    Khadija and her son Ismail emphasized that Mustafa 
was just seventeen, born in 1971, although Israeli newspapers in 1988 reportedly 
said he was twenty-eight years old. They repeatedly requested that Human Rights 
Watch include this information in the report. 
                                                 
          80         
Khadija and other family members have not been permitted to visit Mustafa in 
prison, although they said they do exchange letters. Khadija pleaded with Human 
Rights Watch to help arrange a visit with her son. In October 1997, Human Rights 
Watch recommended to the government of Israel that it facilitate family visits for 
Lebanese prisoners, either directly or through the good offices of the International 
Committee of the Red Cross. See Human Rights Watch, “Without Status or 
Protection: Lebanese Detainees in Israel,” A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 9 
no. 11 (E), October 1997, p. 9. 

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