Persona non grata

8 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
and women has literally forced them to flee their villages out of fear, political 
principle, and often a combination of both. While most of these individuals 
described themselves to Human Rights Watch as “expelled,” we have 
distinguished these individuals who have fled the territory from those expelled or 
otherwise forcibly transferred. 
The SLA practice of forced conscription of teenaged boys who live in 
the    zone has also been a long-standing nightmare for families who are opposed 
to the occupation and despise Israel’s surrogate militia. Some families moved out 
of the zone on their own initiative to ensure that their sons would not be forced 
into SLA service. Others stayed in their villages but sent their sons out when they 
reached fourteen or fifteen years of age. According to testimony, children have 
been forcibly pressed into service. “They take them at fourteen, fifteen, and 
sixteen years old,” said a woman from the village of Markaba, whose own son 
was forcibly conscripted at sixteen. She told Human Rights Watch that a 
neighbor’s son was forcibly taken at fourteen.   
Farmers and other residents who earned their livelihoods in the occupied 
zone also recounted massive corruption within the top ranks of the occupation 
security apparatus, in the form of arbitrary “taxes” on business purchases, 
harvests, and other income. Some families also said that they directly paid cash to 
SLA security officials to secure the release of sons from the militia or to ensure 
that these young men and boys would be spared conscription. By several 
first-hand accounts, militiamen who conducted searches of residents’ homes also 
“confiscated” — looted — cash, gold, and vehicles, resulting in losses equivalent 
to thousands of U.S. dollars.   
Despite the omnipresent stress, residents who remained in the zone were 
determined to educate their children, farm the land, maintain local jobs as 
Lebanese government employees, and manage small, private businesses in their 
villages. These men and women who did not flee used their own savings, and the 
money provided by family members who worked abroad or in Beirut and other 
Lebanese cities, to invest in their homes, agricultural land, and enterprises in the 
zone. It is in this broader context that the punishing consequences of any family’s 
expulsion and permanent dispossession should be understood.   
 
The Israeli Role in the Occupied Zone   
The Israeli-occupied zone, which borders Israel and comprises about 10 
percent of Lebanese territory, has within it over one hundred villages and towns in 
the south of the country. The zone's current boundaries took shape in 1985, when 
the Israeli military withdrew in stages from areas of Lebanon that its troops had 
occupied to the north, following Israel's invasion of the country in June 1982. 
After Israel's invasion in March 1978, the U.N. Security Council adopted 

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Summary 9 
 
 
 
Resolution 425, which called upon Israel "immediately to cease its military action 
against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all 
Lebanese territory." The resolution remains in force.   
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) maintain a headquarters in a former 
Lebanese army barracks in the town of Marjayoun, inside the zone. An Israeli 
flag, with Lebanese flags on either side of it, flies atop the group of buildings in 
which the barracks is located. Heavily fortified IDF military positions throughout 
the zone, strategically located on the highest hilltops, such as the position at the 
imposing Crusader-era Beaufort Castle which towers above the village of 
Arnoun, also fly Israeli flags. "We have thousands of soldiers and officers doing 
the day-to-day work in Lebanon, risking their lives," then-Israeli defense minister 
Moshe Arens told the Jerusalem Post in March 1999.   
Israel controls the occupied zone with its own military and security 
forces as well as with those of its auxiliary militia, the South Lebanon Army 
(SLA). The SLA, while composed of Lebanese recruits, is armed and financed 
directly by Israel. Successive Israeli governments have persistently argued that, 
while Israel coordinates with and has influence over SLA, the militia is 
autonomous and Israel is not responsible    for the SLA’s conduct in the zone, such 
as the operation of the notorious Khiam prison and the torture of detainees there.   
The international community takes a different view.  In twice-yearly reports to 
the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. secretary-general does not even mention the 
SLA by name.  Rather, the militia has been consistently described in these 
reports as “de facto forces” and named as the “local Lebanese auxiliary” of the 
IDF.    It is in part through the deployment and use of the SLA as its surrogate that 
Israel has maintained the occupation.  The IDF Liaison Unit to Lebanon, 
commanded by an Israeli military officer with the rank of brigadier general, 
reportedly directs Israeli and SLA military activities in the occupied zone. 
In April 1998, the government of then-prime minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu acknowledged "IDF control" over the territory that Israel occupies in 
southern Lebanon. On April 1, 1998, the Israeli Ministerial Committee for 
National Security announced that Israel was accepting U.N. Resolution 425 "so 
that the IDF will leave Lebanon," and called on the Lebanese government "to 
begin negotiations...to restore its effective control over territories currently under 
IDF control..." (italics added). Israeli officials continue to evade accountability 
for the actions of the IDF's Lebanese auxiliaries in the occupied zone, however, 
and to maintain that Israeli influence falls short of "effective control." This 
notwithstanding, Human Rights Watch shares the view of the international 
community that Israel is the Occupying Power in the Lebanese territory it refers to 
as its “security zone,” and is ultimately responsible for its own actions and those 
of its local Lebanese auxiliary there.   

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