An ugly occupation
Charles Glass
Tyre, South Lebanon The other night, while having dinner at a fish restaurant on the beach here, we became part of a scene which Luis Bunuel would have appreciated. It might have come from his Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie. We were seated at a table on the sand, only a few inches from the water, near about a dozen other tables filled with Lebanese families enjoying their evening out. There was enought moon and starlight to see the waiters bringing fresh fish and cold wine from the palm-thatched kitchen to the beach. Children were playing be- tween tables, as they do when they've eaten and their parents want to talk or drink in peace. It was South Lebanon at its best, with the half-standing columns of Tyre's Roman temple silhouetted against the night.
From the darkness there approached about a- dozen Israeli soldiers on foot, followed by a jeep. Looking to the roof- tops for snipers, pointing their rifles at phantom attackers and feeling the sand carefully for mines, they stalked through the beach restaurant as oblivious of the diners as we were of them. The children continued playing, waiters carried plates and bottles back and forth, men drank their wine and women laughed gaily. In a moment, the soldiers vanished back into the darkness from which they had come.
There are 15,000 Israeli soldiers and about one million Lebanese civilians in South Lebanon. Both groups are wonder- ing, particularly after the confusion of Monday's Israeli election results, when the Israeli army will leave. Many, if not all, the Israeli soliders want to end the occupation, which has killed amost 600 of them since the invasion began in June 1982. Hirsh Goodman wrote in the Jerusalem Post magazine last month: 'A year ago it seemed impossible that we would be writ- ing an article on the second anniversary of a war that was supposed to last 48 hours.' If the Likud's occupation policy endures, and if Goodman lives long enough, he may be able to write about the centenary of the Israeli presence in South Lebanon. The occupation is growing uglier, so Much so that even the Jerusalem Post characterises its salient aspects as 'road- blocks, curfews, spot checks, midnight sear- ches and random arrests'. The Post might have added economic strangulation, de- molition of houses, expulsions, accidental killings of civilians, and assassinations. Despite the occupation's harshness, the resistance is still unorganised. But that could change if the next Israeli government gives the impression that a negotiated Withdrawal is not part of its programme.
The outgoing government in Jerusalem said it intended to withdraw once it was able to instal the so-called South Lebanon Army in its place. The SLA is a mostly Christian force, composed of the remnants of the late Major Saad Haddad's Militia, the southern units of the Christian Lebanese Forces Militia and members of the village militias Israel set up in the wake of its invasion. They number almost 2,500 men, and Israel intends to recruit another 3,500 Lebanese over the next year or two. This is the only force the outgoing Likud government said it could trust to prevent PLO re-infiltration of the south and thus protect Galilee from those guerrillas whose parents fled from Galilee in 1948.
The SLA is commanded by a Christian retired Lebanese army general, Antoine Lahad, a debonair officer who smokes cigarettes the way Jean-Paul Belmondo used to and lives in a well-guarded stone house in Marjayoun. An Israeli flag flies over his headquarters, a former Lebanese army barracks. When I went to interview the General, an Israeli officer admonished me: 'Next time, let me know when you're coming.' Lahad said: 'Israeli help does not mean we are puppets. We have the same goals as the Israelis.' Those goals, accord- ing to the General, were to provide secur- ity in South Lebanon and to protect Israel's northern border. No Israeli spokesman could explain how Lahad's 2,500 men – or even the 6,000 he hopes to have in a year or two – can provide the security that has eluded Israel's 15,000 better trained and equipped troops.
Israel's estimated 15,000 men here are deployed in two ways: 10,000 facing the Syrian army in the southern Bekaa valley and 5,000 performing policing functions among the local population. The conclu- sion many southerners are beginning to draw is not that Lahad's SLA will replace the Israeli occupation, but that the SLA will take over the policing functions of the 5,000 Israelis – leaving the other 10,000 to check the Syrians and back up Lahad. The Lebanese government's alternative is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), the 5,600-man force which has been here since the first Israeli invasion of 1978. The government says Unifil could expand in size and area and receive support from the regular Lebanese army (or what is left of it). Unifil is more popular locally than either the Israeli army or the SLA. From the Israeli point of view, Unifil might not be an ideal solution, partly because of Israel's pathological hatred of the United Nations and partly because soldiers from France, Ireland, Norway, Fiji, Ghana and Senegal may not be able to control the movement of guerrillas in Lebanon.
The Lebanese and Israeli governments are not speaking to each other even to discuss alternative approaches to ending the occupation. The outgoing Likud gov- ernment was insisting on direct talks, even though it did nothing to save Lebanon from Syria's wrath the last time it dared to speak to Israel. Lebanon is waiting for Israel to accept a mediator – the UN, US, France, anyone Israel likes. The Lebanese would accept the next winner of the Times `portfolio' contest. They are desperate to see the Israelis out of the country.
Hirsh Goodman suggested an alternative to both Unifil and the SLA: an Israeli accommodation with the Shi'ite Muslim Amal movement. Goodman wrote in the Jerusalem Post that 'without the co- operation of Amal – an organisation with an immediate potential of 5,000 men (twice Lahad's force) – the IDE will probably never be able to get out of southern Lebanon and attain its basic security goals there.'
Shi'ite Muslims constitute from 70 to 80 per cent of South Lebanon's population, and Amal banners are prominent in every Shi'ite village. The movement has so far avoided public support for armed resist- ance, hoping that Israel could be persuaded by passive resistance —non-co-operation, boycotting Israeli goods, strikes and demonstrations. But incidents like the kill- ing of people in the villages of Borj Rahal, Bidias and Uanawi by plain-clothes Israeli security men make it hard for Amal's southern leaders to avoid the fight.
One accidental death can do more to force people into the armed resistance than all of Israel's security measures. These are not supposed to happen. The Israeli Chief of Staff reportedly warned his troops in Lebanon: 'We only kill in battle and in self-defence. That is a cardinal, basic and inviolable rule, and whoever transgresses it will be held accountable, regardless of position.' But Lebanese have been killed by Israelis who fired neither in battle nor in self-defence.
One was a woman, Mrs Wahiba Izze- dine, who left her home in the village of Barish early one morning last week to pick thyme in a field nearby. An Israeli patrol from its base in the village of Maroub was passing the field. United Nations soldiers said they heard the Israelis fire about 20 rounds. When they rushed to the scene, they found Israeli soldiers and the body of Mrs Izzedine. She was 40 years old and pregnant with her twelfth child. Her hus- band, Ahmed, is 56, poor, and repairs sew- ing machines for a living. He is also blind. We sat in his tiny house, sipping Turkish coffee and talking about his wife. He said he felt no bitterness towards the Israelis, ad- ding only that he wished they would leave so that no one else would be killed. But he could not see, as he talks of forgiveness, the look of hatred on the faces of his children and neighbours who crowded around him as he spoke.
Previous page
