Collective
Punishment
47
The men were first transported to the SLA headquarters in nearby
Hasbaiya and then moved to Khiam prison. They said that their initial days of
detention were spent in solitary confinement in small, windowless cells
measuring 1.5 meters by 80 cm, the only air coming through a tiny opening with
horizonal bars through which food was passed. Muhamed was held in solitary for
thirty-seven days, and Khalil for twenty-eight days. During this time, they said
that they were interrogated and tortured, pressured to confess that they were
supplying information about the SLA to the Lebanese government.
The brothers told Human Rights Watch that the charges were baseless.
Muhamed said that his own movements possibly raised suspicion because he
traveled frequently to Beirut for medical treatment.
57
But he
also stressed that
the reason that he and his brother were targeted may have been due to a dispute
they had with the SLA. He explained that he and his brother farmed two large
plots of land, owned by Sheba’ residents who lived in the Gulf, that yielded
cherries, walnuts, grapes and figs. The militia took part of this land to widen the
road between Sheba’ and Hasbaiya and cut down the trees. The brothers insisted
that the SLA remove from the property the trees that had been cut down. “Fifteen
days later they took us,” Muhamed told Human Rights Watch.
Khalil Hashem was released from Khiam on October 2, 1998, because
he was suffering from severe depression and other medical problems. His brother
Muhamed was released on December 24, 1998, and taken directly from the prison
to the Kfar Tebnit crossing and expelled.
58
Muhamed told Human Rights Watch:
They covered my eyes with a towel, handcuffed me,
and put me
in a car. Once we were outside the prison, they removed the
towel. After about twelve minutes, they told me that I was
being expelled.
57
He showed Human Rights Watch a radiology report from a Beirut hospital
that noted “degeneration and diffuse bulging” of three discs, and other spinal
problems.
58
Journalist David Hirst entered the occupied zone through the Kfar Tebnit
crossing, and described it this way: “I had left the last Lebanese
army post, on foot,
about 500 meters behind. The eery silence, the barbed wire and fortifications, the
row of burnt-out cars, casualties of a recent artillery exchange, made this passage from
one part of the same small country to another as striking as the border between enemy
states.” David Hirst, “South Lebanon.”
48
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon
He said that he was deposited at the crossing, and walked one
and a half
kilometers to the first Lebanese army checkpoint, where he was briefly
questioned. He had LL30,000 (about U.S. $20) that his wife had given to him
during her last visit to him in prison, and used the money to take a taxi directly to
a relative’s house near Beirut.
The next day, at nine in the morning, four SLA militiamen arrived at
Muhamed’s house and the nearby house of his
brother Khalil to gather the
remaining family members for expulsion. Khalil’s wife Ibtisam Ghayad
described the swiftness of the procedure: “They did not allow us to take
anything. It was immediate. We were out of the house in five minutes.” The
nine children of the two families were already in school, seven of them in
Marjayoun and two in Sheba’. The children were collected, and then the entire
group was transported to the Kfar Tebnit crossing. The SLA soldiers at the
checkpoint were informed that the families were not permitted to reenter the
occupied zone. Their permits were confiscated and torn to pieces in front of them.
The economic impact of the imprisonment and
then the expulsion on the
two families was considerable. In addition to their two houses, furnishings and
other personal effects, they said that other losses included about U.S. $5,000
annually from the harvest of cherries, $4,000 from vegetables that Khalil sold in
the coastal city of Sidon (which is located outside the occupied zone), and another
$5,000 from olives consigned to a producer of olive oil. Deprived of two
breadwinners during the time that Muhamed and Khalil were detained in Khiam,
the wives were forced to sell their jewelry and borrow heavily. Muhamed’s wife
Rabiha, with eight children to support, sold olives
and oil to generate some
income, and borrowed LL7 million (approximately $4,600), which she said had
not been repaid at the time of the interview. Khalil’s wife sold the two gold
bracelets that he had given to her when they were engaged. The women told
Human Rights Watch that they needed money not only for daily living expenses
but also to “purchase” access to their husbands at Khiam prison and bring them
food and other supplies. Ibtisam said that “it was well known that you had to bring
gifts” to obtain a visit, noting that families who arrived
empty-handed were
turned away. Ibtisam, describing one visit, said that she brought with her a large
vase, about four kilograms of honey, cartons of cigarettes, yogurt, and sweets.
The women also estimated that only about twenty-five percent of the items that
they brought for their husbands reached them.
59
59
These also included milk,
biscuits, Tang, Nescafe, fruits, vegetables, and
tissues. Human Rights Watch interviews, Na’ame, Lebanon, March 1999.