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.
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.
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.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |