Persona non grata

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Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
 
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village of Aitaroun, located east of Bint Jbail, close to the Israeli border. One of 
their sons, Ali, who lives in Beirut, is a member of Hizballah.    The couple’s story 
began in 1997, when Khalil obtained a medical report from a doctor in Bint Jbail, 
recommending surgery to remove a kidney stone.    He secured a permit to leave 
the occupation zone and had the operation at a hospital in Sidon.    He told Human 
Rights Watch that the surgeon said to return for a checkup in three months. Khalil 
and his wife obtained exit permits and left the village in mid-June 1997. They said 
that another son, Castro, was imprisoned in Khiam one day after they left the 
village, either on June 18 or June 19 (they could not remember the exact date). 
They said that they knew from residents of the village who visited Beirut that the 
SLA had searched and ransacked their house after Castro's detention, and that 
several windows were broken. Castro was still in Khiam at the time of Khalil’s 
interview with Human Rights Watch. Khalil and his wife said they believed that 
Castro was    detained to put pressure on their son Ali, the Hizbollah member. 
On June 29, 1997, Khalil and his wife went on an extended visit to 
Germany to see other sons who they said had left the zone years ago to escape 
serving in the SLA. They returned to Beirut on February 15, 1998. According to 
Khalil, they stayed in Beirut for four days and then traveled back to the occupied 
zone on February 19 in a bus with other travelers.  Khalil and his wife were 
refused entry at the Beit Yahoun crossing.   
The couple traveled for the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on 
March 27, 1998, and returned to Lebanon on April 24, 1998. Khalil said they 
stayed for three days in Beirut and again traveled to the zone in a bus with other 
passengers.  He and his wife were hoping that the SLA would not check the 
names properly and they would be allowed to enter. But again they were denied 
entry. Zeinab described her argument with SLA security official Jihad Qassem 
Fakih. She said that she shouted at him: “You have never seen me!    How come 
you will not let me in? I am not going to your father's home; I'm going to my own 
home! Why don't you let me in?"    Zeinab said he responded: "Get out of my face 
now." Zeinab replied: "Call the Israelis now, and if we have done anything, then 
let them take us to    Khiam camp."    She said that    he responded:    "I work in the 
Israeli intelligence."   
Khalil told Human Rights Watch that he visited the Council of the South 
after it was clear that he and his wife would not be allowed to return to the 
village.
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 He said that he asked the council for the compensation payment it 
                                                 
     117     
The Council of the South is an arm of the Lebanese government that provides 
monetary compensation to expelled families and individuals. See Summary for 
additional information. 

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Othe Forcible Transfers 
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provides to expellees but was denied this on the grounds that his case had not been 
published in Lebanese newspapers. He said he explained that he had registered his 
and his wife’s expulsion at the ICRC and with the Lebanese army. "They told me 
that they approve the names that are published in newspapers," he said. So he 
provided information to al-Safir newspaper (a leading Lebanese daily) which 
published several lines about the case on September 12, 1998. Nevertheless, 
Khalil said, the Council of the South maintained that the date of his expulsion was 
not published.    As of the date of his interview with Human Rights Watch, he said 
that he had not yet received his compensation.
118
  On June 21, 1999, Human 
Rights Watch wrote to Qabalan Qabalan, the head of the Council of the South, on 
behalf of Zeinab and Khalil Beydoun.   
 
August 1997: Chihine 
The widowed mother of seven children, who earned her living as a 
tobacco farmer, described the events that preceded her expulsion from the village 
of Chihine in the western sector of the occupied zone in August 1997. “They said 
that I could not enter the village any more because my son was in Hizballah,” the 
woman testified.    She explained that her son, who had lived outside the occupied 
zone since he was in his early teens, was a member of Hizballah but did not serve 
in its military wing. He was killed in an accident on July 7, 1997, and his funeral 
was held in Bezouriyeh, a town east of the southern port city of Tyre. The widow 
said that she stayed in Bezouriyeh for her son’s traditional forty-day mourning 
period, and then traveled back to the occupied zone. She was turned away at the 
SLA crossing point for her village, where militiamen informed her that she had 
been expelled. “I cried from the crossing to here,” she told Human Rights Watch 
during an interview at the home of another son who lives in Bezouriyeh.     
                                                 
     118     
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, June 1999. 

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Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
 
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In addition to her house, the woman estimated that she had forfeited LL7 
million (US$4,600) in annual  income from ten dunums of land planted with 
olive trees, tobacco, and vegetables. She said that she had a license from the 
Lebanese government to grow tobacco, and after her expulsion she asked a land 
agent to plant tobacco on her land, but the SLA told the agent that this was 
forbidden.
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    She was also not permitted to retrieve any   possessions from her 
home. “None of my relatives are allowed to enter the house,” she said.  “They 
warned them not to remove anything, and my father was not allowed to send me 
the furniture.” She noted that most of the residents of the village had left, and that 
at the time of her expulsion there were only about thirty families living there.
120
 
The woman expressed her desire to return to Chihine, where her parents, sisters, 
and the wives of her brothers still live.     
 
1991: Mhaibib 
SLA security officials attempted to use the promise of    a requested exit 
permit to force Rasmiya Fawzi Jaber, a resident of Mhaibib village, to become an 
informer for the militia. Rasmiya told Human Rights Watch that she had been 
initially pressured by the SLA in 1986, when she was twenty-one years old. She 
said that militiamen took her into custody one afternoon and transported her first 
to the security center in Kfar Kila and then to somewhere inside Israel, where an 
Israeli officer spoke with her in heavily accented Arabic. He asked questions 
about relatives, and then said that she would be paid five hundred dollars for every 
piece of information that she supplied, and more money if she identified 
individuals who were planning military operations. Rasmiya refused, and told the 
officer that her parents would kill her if she engaged in such activity.   
In January 1990, when Rasmiya was twenty-five years old, two SLA 
militiamen came to her house and drove her directly to Khiam prison. She said she 
was tortured under interrogation:     
 
Mahmoud Sa’ed Amar and Zuhair Shukair came to the house.   
They told me: “We want you to see your brother.”    They drove 
me directly to Khiam.    Before we reached the prison gate, they   
put a sack over my head and handcuffed me.  I was under 
                                                 
     119     
The woman identified the two SLA security officials responsible for Chihine 
as Akram Alayan and Abu Eissam Alayan, neither of whom live in the village.   
     120     
Human Rights Watch interview, Bezouriyeh, Lebanon, March 1999. 

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