Persona non grata

68 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
broadcast on Radio Lebanon said that the family members who were expelled 
numbered nine, and that the family had been dropped at the Beit Yahoun 
crossing.
95
  The international news agency Reuters also put the number of family 
members expelled at nine, citing an interview with Ali Nasrallah’s wife, Yosra 
Qaansoh, in the Lebanese daily al-Anwar. “They told us: ‘The reason for your 
expulsion is because your son Hassan Ali Nasrallah fled his service in the South 
Lebanon Army more than two months ago,’” Qaansoh was quoted as saying. She 
said that the family’s request to bring clothes and utensils with them was denied.
96
 
 
1997: Markaba 
                                                 
          95         
Radio Lebanon (Beirut), November 8, 1996, as reported by FBIS, Daily 
Report, November 15, 1996, FBIS-NES-96-221. 
          96         
Reuters, "Lebanon family tells of expulsion from Israeli zone,” November 10, 
1996.  

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Punishing Flight from the Militia 
69 
 
 
 
A woman from Markaba described how her son Khalid (not his real 
name), who worked as a tractor driver, was forced to serve in the SLA when he 
was sixteen years old.    She said that a militiaman came to the house and asked for 
Khalid, telling her: “We are taking him for a while, and then we will give him 
back.” When her son did not return home, she visited the SLA security office in 
Markaba and asked about him. “They told me that he would not be coming back.   
We went there for twenty days to get information. After this, they told us that they 
had taken him to the militia.”
97
  Her son was first held at the security office, then 
was moved to the SLA’s Magidiyya training center near Hasbaiya. He served in 
the militia for seven years, living the entire time in military barracks and returning 
home two days a week. 
Khalid deserted the SLA at the beginning of 1997 and fled the  zone. 
His father was then summoned three times to the SLA security office in Markaba.   
He was questioned, and warned that if his son did not return, the family would be 
expelled. Fifteen days after the son’s desertion, “they came to us in the afternoon 
and said that we had to leave in the morning,” Khalid’s mother told Human Rights 
Watch.  
She was expelled the next day with her husband, a fourteen-year-old son, 
and a daughter in her twenties. An eighteen-year-old daughter and 
twelve-year-old son were not allowed to leave with the rest of the family. “They   
made them stay for seven months, just to harass us,” she    said. The family was 
not permitted to take any possessions with them, and left behind a car and six 
cows. Deprived of annual income from the land they planted in tobacco,  the 
family was living in difficult economic circumstances in Beirut at the time of the 
interview with Human Rights Watch. The woman’s request for anonymity was 
out of concern for a close relative who still lived in Markaba but was prohibited 
from leaving the zone.     
 
1999: A New Pattern of SLA Defections and Expulsions   
                                                 
          97         
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999.   

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70 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
In 1999, there has been a cycle of defections from the SLA, which has 
been followed by    expulsions of civilians from the occupied zone. It was reported 
that on February 11, 1999, the head of SLA intelligence in Sheba’, Muhamed 
Naba’, deserted the SLA and fled the zone on foot with his wife and six-year-old 
son.
98
  Naba’ had assumed the post after his predecessor, Ghassan Daher, was 
killed in December 1998, an attack that provoked the expulsion from Sheba’ of 
twenty-five relatives of the suspected killers (see “Collective Punishment,” 
above). After his desertion, Naba’ disclosed information to Lebanese army 
intelligence about “a terrorist and spying network created by Israel” which led to 
the arrest in Lebanon of “some 20 alleged operatives,” Future News reported.
99
 
On April 6, 1999, six relatives of Muhamed Naba’ were expelled from Sheba’: his 
father, Khalil Ahmed Naba’, sixty-seven years old; his mother, Zubaida 
Mohssina, sixty-five; his son, Ihsan, sixteen; his brother Fadi’s wife, Hana’Hareth 
Shehab, thirty-five, and her children, Maher, nine, and Abdallah, six.
100
         
Lebanese security sources said that on March 15, 1999, SLA militiaman 
Khaled Mundhir from the village of Ibl al-Saqi fled the zone and turned himself in 
to the Lebanese army.
101
  His brother Naji had deserted the militia in September 
1998, reportedly after killing an SLA intelligence operative, which led to the 
expulsion of his parents in October 1998 (see “Collective Punishment,” above).   
On April 4, 1999, four SLA militiamen from Sheba’ fled the zone and 
turned themselves over to the Lebanese Army, Future News reported.
102
    The 
Daily Star reported the names of the militiamen as Khalil Bou Hwaileh, Safi 
Saab, Jamal Saab, and George Rahal.
103
  Two days after the four men deserted, the 
SLA expelled eighteen Sheba’ residents,    most of them women, children, and the 
elderly, and some of whom were relatives of the four deserters. According to the 
                                                 
     98         
Agence France-Presse, "SLA intelligence official defects to Lebanon,”  
February 11, 1999. 
          99         
Future Television,    Daily Report, February 12, 1999. 
     100         
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Yehia Ali, head of the 
Arqoub Citizens Committee, June 1999. 
     101     
Agence France-Presse, "SLA militiaman deserts, SLA banishes policeman,” 
March 15, 1999. 
     102     
Future Telvision, Daily Report, April 5, 1999. 
     103     
"Lahoud condemns Israeli ‘barbarism,’” Daily Star, April 7, 1999. 

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