Persona non grata

Punishing Flight from the Militia 
63 
 
 
 
because I had sons that they wanted,” said sixty-five-year-old Muhamed Eissa, 
the father of ten children, who lived in the village of Ramieh, which is located 
close to the Israeli border in the western sector of the zone. He told Human Rights 
Watch that he left the village with six of his seven sons, and that his oldest son 
remained behind with his wife and three daughters. At that time, he claimed, a 
family could avoid conscription of a son by paying U.S. $5,000 directly to Lt. Col. 
‘Akil Hashem, the SLA commander of the western sector.
86
     
                                                 
          86         
Human Rights Watch interview, Ras al-’Ain, Lebanon, March 1999. 

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64 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
In a separate interview,  former residents of Kfar Kila described the 
case of  their younger brother Karim (not his real name), who was forcibly 
conscripted when he was fifteen or sixteen years old. They said that he served in 
the SLA for nine years, and was wounded three times. The family said that they 
obtained from Gen. Antoine Lahd, the commander of the SLA, a document 
ordering Karim’s release on medical grounds. “My father brought it to Robin 
Abboud [whom he identified as the SLA military official responsible for the 
western sector of the occupied zone] and he tore the paper into pieces,” an older 
brother testified. He said that the family then paid $5,000 to Abboud, and Karim 
was released, about eighteen months to two years before the interview with 
Human Rights Watch.
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    In 1998, a resident of Mhaibib, a small village located 
between Meiss al-Jabal and Blida, told Human Rights Watch that he was detained 
for six days in the SLA security office in Aitaroun after his seventeen-year-old 
son fled the militia. He was said that he was released after agreeing to pay $2,000 
to the SLA.
88
 
Lebanese men, women, and children have been expelled because male 
relatives either deserted the SLA or fled the zone in order to avoid being 
conscripted into these occupation forces. There have been numerous reports about 
this practice but generally little or no details about the circumstances surrounding 
each case. The U.S. State Department, for example, noted that a family of twelve 
was expelled from the village of Mayss al-Jebal on September 21, 1996, because a 
family member had allegedly deserted the SLA.
89
     
                                                 
          87          
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999.  Names 
withheld by Human Rights Watch. 
          88         
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, April 1999. 
          89         
U.S. State Department, Lebanon Country Report on Human Rights Practices 
for 1996, January 30, 1997. 

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Punishing Flight from the Militia 
65 
 
 
 
More recently, in 1998 and 1999, additional families have been expelled 
as SLA desertions mounted. For example, the Daily Star (Beirut) interviewed 
Hajj Rida Bou Hwaileh, an elderly man who said that he was expelled with his 
wife and four other family members from Sheba’ on April 6, 1999, because his 
son Khalil, twenty-five, refused to join the militia.
90
    He explained that the family 
was summoned to the SLA headquarters in nearby Hasbaiya: “I left my work and 
headed for the SLA office in Hasbaiya as I was told and asked to see the person in 
charge but we were prevented from entering and told to wait.” Then the family 
was informed that they were being expelled. “I asked them to take me to Khiam 
prison instead because I would not leave my home and property.    I’m an old man 
and I can only work my plot of land,” he told the newspaper.    His appeal had no 
effect, and the SLA drove the family to the Zumrayya crossing point and expelled 
them.
91
   
Human Rights Watch examined  the cases of two families who were 
expelled because their sons fled service in the occupation militia.     
 
1996: Houla 
On September 17, 1996, four members of a farming family from the 
village of Houla were expelled, about one week  after one of the sons deserted 
the SLA. At the time of the expulsion, Abdullah Abdullah was sixty-seven years 
old and his wife Khadija was fifty-seven; their daughters Miriam and Rima were 
twenty-six and twenty-three, respectively. Abdullah and Khadija were the parents 
of twelve children.  Two of their sons,  members of the Lebanese Communist 
Party, fought as guerrillas  and were killed, one in 1982 and the other in 1993. 
After their son Zeid was killed in 1993, no one from the family was permitted to 
leave the village.  Family members said that Abdullah developed an illness in 
one eye and was denied an exit permit to go to Beirut for medical treatment. The 
illness spread to his other eye, and he lost his sight. (Old, frail, and blind, 
Abdullah was guided into the living room by one of his sons during the family’s 
interview with Human Rights Watch.) 
Sakr Abdullah told Human Rights Watch that he was forced to leave 
Houla in February 1994, when he was twenty-one years old. He had been enrolled 
in a training school in Khaldeh since 1992, and traveled frequently to and from the 
                                                 
     
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          He told the Daily Star that the other family members expelled were his wife 
Fatima, his daughter Salma, and his daughter-in-law Lamia and her two children. 
          91         
Mohammed Zaatari, “Deportees adjust to ‘life’ in Sidon,”    Daily Star, April 
8, 1999. 

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