44
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon
January 1999: Sheba’
In an extraordinarily
sweeping action, on January 7, 1999, twenty-five
members of the families of five brothers — including their wives, sixty-year-old
mother, and sixteen children between the ages of nine months and thirteen years
old — were expelled from Sheba’.
49
The expulsion followed the imprisonment
on December 27, 1998, of two of the brothers, Ismail Naba’, thirty-five, and
Hassan, twenty-seven, both traders, in the wake of the December 26 killing of
Ghassan Daher, the head of SLA security in Sheba’. The Lebanese press
speculated that the killing of Daher was not a political act but was linked to a
dispute “over sharing the spoils of the SLA-run protection racket concerning
Sheba’s lucrative smuggling trade.”
50
A Lebanese
foreign ministry official
expressed a similar view to Human Rights Watch.
51
Human Rights Watch visited the families in Shuweifat, near Beirut, in
March 1999. The adults and children were sharing a small two-room apartment
that a relative had made available for their temporary use. Ten of the children
were under the age of six. The youngest of the five brothers, twenty-five-year-old
Qassem Naba’ — who was expelled with his wife Nawal and their six-month-old
daughter and twenty-month-old son — described what happened:
We
were at home, preparing
iftar [the meal that breaks the
sunrise to sunset fast during Ramadan]. It was about 4:30.
Three civilian cars came to each house, with three men in each
car, SLA and Israelis. [He said that the Israelis wore military
clothes and spoke Hebrew]. They said that all of us had to come
with them to Hasbaiya. They gathered us with our cars at the
entrance of Sheba’.
In my car was my mother, my wife and my
two children. There was one security car in front of my car,
and two cars behind me.
The families were thus escorted to the security office in Hasbaiya. “We
stayed outside in the cold for one hour, until about 6:30,” Qassem said. “Then
Alameddin al-Badawi and Fares al-Hamra [two senior SLA security officials]
told my brother Ahmad that they were expelling us. Ahmad asked why, and he
49
See Appendix B for the names and ages of the expelled family members.
50
See, for example,
Daily Star, January 9, 1999.
51
Human Rights Watch interview, Washington, D.C., May 1999.
Collective
Punishment
45
was hit with a Kalashnikov on his back. Then four militiamen beat him in front of
us for five minutes. He was bleeding from his face.”
52
52
At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit, Ahmad, twenty-eight years old,
was reportedly still suffering from the injuries that he sustained that day. His brother
Qassem said that his spine had been injured and he was visiting a chiropractor twice
weekly.
46
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon
The twenty-five family members were then crammed into two cars,
including the trunks, and expelled at the Zumrayya crossing point. Qassem was
allowed to bring his car, but four vehicles belonging to his brothers were seized.
53
In Beirut,
the families received clothes, bedding, canned goods and some
basic household furnishings from the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), the Council of the South, Hizballah, and members of the community, but
ongoing financial support came from one of the brothers’ uncles. At the time of
the interview with Human Rights Watch, the standard one-time payment of LL3
million (U.S. $2,000) that the government provides to expelled families through
the Council of the South had not yet been paid.
54
Qassem expressed his
frustration at the families’ predicament, with two
brothers in prison in the
occupied zone, and his older brother Ahmad injured: “There are twenty-four
people
55
living in these two rooms and we have no money. I am responsible for
all of them. I am trying to get work in a factory, but they prefer to hire Syrians.
Even when I get a job, how can I feed twenty-four people?”
December 1998: Sheba’
Two middle-aged brothers, along with their wives and nine children,
were expelled from Sheba’ in December 1998. This family’s ordeal began almost
one year earlier, on November 22, 1997, when Muhamed Hassan Hashem,
fifty-four,
and his brother, Khalil, forty-two, were taken from their homes by SLA
security officials Muhamed Naba’ and Ghassan Daher.
56
“They said that the
Israelis wanted to talk to us. They didn’t say that we were being arrested,”
Muhamed Hashem told Human Rights Watch.
53
He said that the SLA took the keys of his brother Ismail’s 1978 Mercedes 230,
his brother Muhamed’s 1984 Mercedes 280, and a 1980 Datsun and 1983 Nissan
pick-up truck that belonged to his brother Hassan.
54
Qassem Naba’ informed Human Rights Watch later during the mission that
the money had finally been received from the Council of the South.
55
Muhamed Naba’, one of the brothers who had been expelled, was arrested by
Lebanese authorities
after the expulsion, and was detained at the time that Human
Rights Watch interviewed the families.
56
Daher was later assassinated in December 1998, and his successor, Muhamed
Naba’, deserted the SLA in February 1999. See “1999: A Pattern of South Lebanon
Army Defections and Expulsions,” above, for additional information.