Persona non grata

78 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
informer for the SLA. He told Human Rights Watch that he traveled several times 
a week to Beirut to sell farm products and buy supplies for a family store in the 
village. He said that he was approached by SLA security operative Hassan 
Moussa, who promised payment if he agreed to provide information:   
 
He said that no one would be suspicious of me because I was 
always going back and forth to Beirut. I was evasive. He 
summoned me to the security office because I would not    give 
him a direct answer. I was still evasive. He said that he had to 
take me to Metulla [a town inside Israel, close to the Lebanese 
border] to see an Israeli officer, who said that he wanted me to 
focus on a cousin who had relations with Hizballah.  He 
wanted me to convince my cousin to work for the SLA and 
inform on Hizballah. He also knew that my sister’s husband had 
links with Hizballah. I told the Israeli yes.   
 
Terrified, Majid left Kfar Kila in June 1991 and never returned.  His 
wife, who was pregnant at the time, stayed in the village and joined him in Beirut 
three months later.    “My parents still do not know why I did not come back.    For 
the first eighteen months in Beirut, it was very difficult and I stayed with relatives. 
My mother came to visit and said that she wanted me back. I finally explained to 
her that there were security problems,” he told Human Rights Watch.
113
   
Thirty-three years old at the time of his interview with Human Rights Watch, 
Majid was living with his wife and three children, aged eighteen months to eight 
years, and other relatives and their wives and children in a small, overcrowded 
apartment. 
Another example is a case from the northeast section of the occupied 
zone, where SLA security operatives relentlessly pursued Jamal Shahrour from 
1985, when he was seventeen years old, until 1988, when he left his village of 
Kfar Hamam and joined the resistance as a member of the Lebanese Communist 
Party. He told Human Rights Watch that in September 1985, as he was returning 
from the city of Sidon to his village, SLA security  operative Adel Wahab told 
him at the Zumrayya crossing to come the next day to the security office in 
Hasbayya, which was known as Zaghle. At the office,     
 
                                                 
     113     
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999. Name on file 
but withheld by Human Rights Watch. 

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Punishing Refusal to Serve the Occupation Security Apparatus 
79 
 
 
 
He asked me to cooperate with the SLA. I told him I did not 
want to work with anybody and that I intended to join the 
Lebanese army. So he hit me, and said: “Can one hand clap?”   
I told him no, and he said: “Why then don't you want to work 
with us?” Then he let me go. 
 
The next month, again at the Zumrayya crossing, Adel Wahab 
summoned Jamal to Zaghle, where this time he met Nidal Jamal, Wahab’s 
superior: “He told me that I    was going to work for them. When I refused, he said 
that I had promised Adel. I told him that I had not, and let Adel confront me. Adel 
came [in] and I told him that I had not promised him anything. He just walked 
away."  According to Jamal, Nidal Jamal tried to tempt him by offering "an 
appropriate salary" and made disparaging remarks about the Lebanese resistance 
to the occupation.  Jamal again refused any form of cooperation.  He told 
Human Rights Watch that in addition to being a student at the time, he was also a 
shepherd, which is why he believed he was targeted. "Shepherds stay all day long 
in the wilderness and have the best chances of seeing resistance fighters," he 
explained. 
Two or three months later, Nidal Jamal approached Jamal in the weekly 
market (souq al-khan) that was held on the outskirts of Hasbayya, and summoned 
him to Zaghle. He was held there from ten in the morning until six in the evening, 
and pressed again to work with the SLA. He again refused, and was released when 
his worried parents appeared. The pressure resumed at the beginning of the 
summer of 1987. Jamal told Human Rights Watch that Nidal Jamal visited his 
family’s house and asked his mother where he was working, which was a 
construction site in the nearby village of Rashaya al-Fukhar. Jamal said that the 
security official arrived at the site    in a red Mercedes civilian car, accompanied 
by Naji al-Qadi, another SLA operative, and ordered him to get in the vehicle, at 
gunpoint.  
Jamal testified that he was transported to the Hasbaiya security office, 
once again, and this time placed in a cell that measured 1.5 by 1.5 meters.  He 
was held there for six days without being questioned. Then he said that he met 
Alamedin al-Badawi, the top security SLA official in the eastern sector, who read 
from a file the names of residents of Kfar Hamam who lived outside the occupied 
zone. Badawi asked Jamal if he knew them. He wanted to know if Jamal had 
friends in the Christian village of Rashaya al-Fukhar, and if he knew about any 
communists there. He also asked if Jamal knew who had distributed 
anti-occupation leaflets on June 5, the anniversary of Israeli’s second invasion of 
Lebanon. Jamal said that he told Badawi that he had no information to provide, 
and he was released.   

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80 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
From the end of September 1987 until December 1987, Nidal Jamal 
repeatedly summoned Jamal to the security office in Zaghle, but Jamal did not go. 
Once, the security operative met Jamal and his mother in the market, chastised 
him for not going to Zaghle, and told his mother: "I'm going to put your son in 
Khiam [prison]." In January 1988, SLA militiaman Jamil Mitri visited the 
family’s house, asking for Jamal. Remembering the threat of imprisonment, his 
mother said that her son was not at home. Jamal fled as Nidal Jamal, Naji 
Al-Qadi, Riad Al-Hamra, and Amer Al-Halabi arrived in three unmarked civilian 
cars and surrounded the house. Jamal said that his father was detained in Zaghle 
for seven days, and was released when the SLA learned that Jamal was in the 
Beka’ valley, outside the occupied zone. Jamal told Human Rights Watch that he 
joined the Lebanese resistance in the Beka’, which led to the eventual expulsion 
of his parents and four siblings from Kfar Hamam (see “Collective Punishment,” 
above). 
114
     
A third case involves a family from the village of Tair Harfa, located in 
the southwestern sector of the occupied zone.  Rasmiya Nimr Rahad, fifty-five 
years old, told Human Rights Watch that her fifty-seven-year-old husband, Ali 
Ahmed Yousef, had been “expelled” from the village at the beginning of 1990. As 
the woman’s account unfolded, however, it became clear that her husband had not 
been formally expelled but fled the zone because of the pressure to collaborate 
with the SLA. According to Rasmiya:   
 
They said that our sons were in the resistance, and because of 
this my husband would leave the village only every five or six 
months, to avoid problems. The year before he was expelled, 
they began to summon him — they wanted him to bring 
information from the liberated areas [a term widely used to 
describe Lebanon beyond    the occupied zone].    He told them 
that he was illiterate. Then they threatened to put him in Khiam 
[prison] if he did not work for them. He had only two choices, 
so he escaped.
115
 
 
                                                 
     114     
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, May 1999. 
     115     
Family members have frequently been harassed and detained for leaving the 
occupied zone frequently if their relatives are known or suspected to be members of 
the resistance. 

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