28
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon
The militiaman drove Salah to the Kfar
Tebnit crossing, where he was
expelled. “I walked to the Lebanese army checkpoint, and a taxi driver whom I
knew took me to Zahrani [a town on the coast south of Sidon], and told my family
what happened,” he said. His wife, who was pregnant, joined him twenty days
later.
28
In a separate interview, another former resident of the
zone testified
about his own encounter with Israelis in March 1998. Fifty-one-year-old Ahmad
Sari Beddah, a prominent figure in the village of Beit Lief who said that he
administered the local
waqf and had been involved in distributing aid to needy
villagers since 1978, was taken to the SLA military barracks in Bint Jbail
following the killing of his son Yousef, who was a guerrilla,
in a military
operation. Beddah told Human Rights Watch that he was brought to a room filled
with SLA security operatives and about ten Israeli military officers and
journalists. “They wanted me to condemn the resistance in front of the cameras,”
he testified. “I called for peace. Then an Israeli officer said: ‘We killed your son.’”
Beddah said that he explained why his son had joined the resistance, which
provoked the officer to hit him and threaten that he would be taken to Khiam
prison. “He also told me to tell him where Ron Arad was, or my son’s body would
never be released.”
29
Beddah told Human Rights Watch that, fearing
imprisonment, he fled the zone. He
testified that ten days later, some time in early
April 1998, SLA security operatives put his wife and three-year-old child into a
car and expelled them at the Beit Yahoun crossing. “They told her that she could
not take anything with her,” Beddah added.
30
28
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1999. Name and
name of village withheld by Human Rights Watch.
29
Captain Ron Arad, a navigator in the
Israeli Air Force, bailed out of his
aircraft while flying over Sidon in south Lebanon on October 16, 1986. According to
the Israeli government, Arad “landed safely,” was taken prisoner by the Amal
Movement, and was “later transferred to the Iranians in Lebanon.” His whereabouts
remain unknown. Letter to Human Rights Watch from the Israeli Ministry of Justice,
Foreign Relations and International Organizations Department, March 13, 1997.
30
Human Rights Watch interview, Beirut, Lebanon, March 1998.
The Occupied Zone: An Overview
29
The resident of another village in the zone, who requested anonymity,
described the events that preceded his expulsion in 1997. He told Human Rights
Watch that five SLA militiamen arrived at his home at eight o’clock one
morning
in July 1996, while he was eating breakfast with his wife and children: “Three of
them surrounded the house, and one waited in the car. The one who came to the
door told me that Ahmed Shibley Saleh [the SLA security official responsible for
the western sector of the occupied zone from Bint Jbail to Naqoura] wanted to see
me.” The man said that he was brought to “Position 17” of the SLA in Bint
Jbail, where telephone calls were made. He stated that he was then informed that
he was being taken to Khiam prison. He testified that he was held for the first
eleven days in Khiam in complete darkness in solitary confinement, and then was
tortured and
interrogated for sixty days, blindfolded and handcuffed. He said that
he was hanged from a ceiling with his toes just touching the floor; doused
repeatedly with hot and then cold water; and threatened with electric shock. His
interrogators threatened that his wife, mother and sister would be arrested, he
added.
The same man recounted that his interrogators, whom he identified as
SLA, asked questions about his relationships with Lebanese
intelligence,
Hizballah, and the Amal Movement. He said that after sixty days he was brought
to an office equipped with a computer, where he was questioned by an Israeli
interrogator who used a polygraph:
The interrogator in Khiam [prison] told me: “Now you are
going to a place where they will know if you are lying.” They
took me from Khiam to somewhere near the Israeli border.
They made me lie on the back seat of a car, handcuffed and with
my eyes blindfolded. Once I was inside an office, they removed
the blindfold and handcuffs. There were five Israelis — one in
civilian clothes named “Jackie,”
who was wearing jeans and a
T-shirt, and four with uniforms.
According to the man’s account, Jackie, an Israeli who spoke heavily
accented Arabic, questioned him for two hours. “He had my file in front of him,
written in Hebrew, with parts of it underlined in blue ink,” he said. He described
how Jackie wanted specific information about various individuals, including their
addresses, and also asked more general questions. After this session, the man was
returned to Khiam prison and held there until January 1997.
On the day of his