Persona non grata

Punishing Flight from the Militia 
71 
 
 
 
Daily Star: “They were summoned to the SLA’s Hasbaya security headquarters in 
the eastern sector of the occupation zone for questioning and then driven to the 
Zimraya crossing, from where they continued on foot to the Lebanese army 
checkpoint.”
104
    On April 12, the three remaining children of one of the deserters 
were expelled, bringing the total number of people expelled from the village 
between April 6 and April 12 to twenty-one.
105
   
                                                 
     104     
Ibid. 
     105         
Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Yehia Ali, head of the 
Arqoub Citizens Committee, June 1999. 

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72 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
The expellees included six relatives of militiaman Khalil Bou Hwaileh: 
his father, Radi Khalil Bou Hawaileh, sixty-seven years old;    his mother, Fatima, 
sixty-eight; his sister, Selma, thirty-five; and his wife, Lamia Nasser, and their 
two children, Waad, seven, and Walaa, three.    Other expellees were the parents 
of militiaman Safi Saab: his father, Khalil, sixty years old, and his mother, 
Khadija, fifty-five. The mother of militiaman Jamal Saab, Houriya Hamdan, fifty, 
was also expelled.    Six relatives of militiaman George Rahal were expelled, three 
of them on April 6: his father, Adeeb Nicola Rahal, fifty-five years old; his 
mother, Hannah Abu Rizk, forty-five; and his brother, Bassam, fourteen.  On 
April 12, the remaining siblings of George Rahal were expelled: Johnny, twelve 
years old; Michel, nine; and Farah, seven.
106
 
                                                 
     106     
Ibid. 

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73 
 
 
 
VI.    PUNISHING REFUSAL TO SERVE THE OCCUPATION 
SECURITY APPARATUS 
 
“I told them that I do not work for anyone.” 
 
—Kamal Abdel Karim Yunes, expelled from 
the village of Markaba with his wife and two 
children in December 1989. 
 
In villages throughout the occupied zone, members of some families 
have been hounded for months or years to serve as informers for the ubiquitous 
security apparatus that is maintained by the SLA with the participation and 
oversight of Israeli intelligence. For those men and women who refused to 
succumb to the pressure, expulsion has been a last and punishing resort. In one 
case, described below,  a man’s refusal to collaborate resulted in his own 
expulsion and that of his wife and two children, making the punishment collective 
in nature. The accounts of the families indicate the persistence of occupation 
security operatives in the pursuit of potential Lebanese informers. Targeted 
individuals were threatened with imprisonment if they refused to cooperate, and 
some were imprisoned in Khiam or detained for short periods in local SLA 
security offices.    In some cases, Israeli intelligence operatives also pressured the 
victims.  
 
1985-1992: Kfar Kila 
Hassan ‘Akil Hammoud from the village of Kfar Kila, who said he was 
expelled in 1992 when he was about fifty-eight years old, told Human Rights 
Watch that prior to his expulsion he was under constant pressure during the five 
years that his son Jihad was detained without charge in Khiam prison.
107
    He said 
that the pressure to serve as an informer with the occupation security apparatus 
began before Jihad was imprisoned. He explained:   
 
                                                 
     107     
According to the family, Jihad was detained in December 1985, when he was 
nineteen years old, and released in October 1990.    He received a permit to leave the 
occupied zone in February 1991 but was not permitted to return.   

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74 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
They knew that I had relatives in the resistance. They wanted 
me to go to Beirut and gather information.  They wanted to 
know about training and where bases were located. They also 
wanted me to monitor people from Kfar Kila who had moved 
away to other parts of Lebanon. They promised me that my son 
would be released if I worked with them. 
   
 
Hammoud noted that when Jihad was detained he had only one month 
and a half remaining in his    last school year and had a scholarship to continue his 
education in what was  then the Soviet Union. "He wanted to study medicine.  
Now he is a mechanic," he added. “He    was not in the resistance. They took him 
just to put pressure on me." 
Hammoud testified that he repeatedly refused to cooperate with the 
occupation security apparatus. He worked as a housing contractor, and said that 
he was also subjected to economic pressure. Several years before his expulsion, 
he said, residents of Kfar Kila were warned not to sign contracts with him. “I did 
not realize that this was happening until a relative contracted with someone else to 
build a house. He told me that Ahmad Abdel Jalil Sheet [the SLA security official 
responsible for Kfar Kila] had been threatening people not to come to me. It 
reached a point where I had to sell my personal possessions in order to live,” 
Hammoud told Human Rights Watch. 
By his own account, Hassan Hammoud was one of the “notables”  in 
Kfar Kila.
108
  He was trusted by the residents, and was openly outspoken about his 
resistance to the Israeli occupation. When the SLA began to target him, “they 
were trying to distance me from the people,” he speculated. He said that prior to 
his own expulsion, five of his eight children were expelled.    In addition to Jihad, 
his son Ammar was the first one expelled, directly after he was released from 
Khiam prison in 1985, when he was twenty-seven years old.  He said that his 
daughter, Salam, was expelled later the same year, when she was twenty-five; his 
son Zuhair was expelled in 1988, when he was nineteen; and another son,  
Karim, was expelled in 1989, at age twenty-one.   
After his own expulsion, Hammoud settled in Beirut, where his wife 
Rasa’el Fares visited him twice. Then she was expelled from the village with the 
couple’s thirteen-year-old daughter Wafa’ in 1994.
109
         
                                                 
     108     
A prominent, respected person in a local community. 
          109         
Human Rights Watch interviews, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999 and June 
1999. 

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