While I was doing some background reading on the net for my last diary (on Eurotrib) on the Amnesty International Report alleging prima face evidence of war crimes committed in Lebanon, I came across a link-up that the BBC did yesterday which was basically a web discussion that was not immediately relevant. Going back to it, I have found some very interesting links. These help give the lie to the Israeli claim that the whole incident started with the capture of their soldiers. Even more interesting, it gives an insight into why the Israeli Defence Force targeted one site shown in the picture and it was nothing to do with Hezbollah fighters firing rockets from there. There are also some surprising insights into Hezhollah as an organisation
(Cross posted at Eurotrib and the orange one)
Yesterday’s BBC web discussion was a very simple set-up. One of their website workers, Martin Asser, went to a badly bombed village in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel and got together a group of returned residents. They then answered questions coming in using the BBC’s laptop link. This diary was intended just to be about that but the links I came up with to verify some of the wording I was going to use changed that. The name of the town, Al-Khiyam (also spelt without the “y”) had already rung bells. I was the site of a notorious prison run by the “South Lebanese Army” (SLA) during the Israeli occupation. The SLA was effectively a subsidiary of the IDF used to provide a “Chinese wall” to insulate Israel from criticism of the human rights abuses committed there.
Abuses by the SLA and involvement of the IDF and Shin Bet (the Israeli secret service)
The culpability of the then Israeli governments is of course strongly denied in official circles. For that reason I have set out in some length the evidence from a variety of sources.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave some information in a profile of Zvi Rish, a human rights lawyer
From 1992 on, he represented a group of 19 Lebanese who had been brought secretly to Israel in 1986-87 after being abducted by the Israel Defense Forces and Lebanese militias that “sold” them to Israel in exchange for money or its equivalent. For years, no one knew where they were. The Israeli authorities did not admit that they were holding them and Red Cross representatives did not visit them.
In court documents, these men appeared under the Hebrew equivalent of “John Doe.” The censor prohibited publication of their names and the circumstances of their arrival in Israel. Their names were published for the first time in March, 1998, on the basis of information distributed by Amnesty International.
The Haaratz article (written in 2004) recognises the Israeli involvement in its reference to “Hezbollah members whom the IDF was holding at Al-Khiam Prison in southern Lebanon”
A briefing paper written for the UK government in 1999 as background for those considering asylum applications gives the history of the conflict and the SLA`s use of the prison. The dufferent atitudes of the then Israeli government and the current one to UNIFIL on the border should be noted.
3.17 In June 1982 Israeli forces entered Lebanon with the declared objective of finally eliminating the PLO’s military threat to Israel’s northern border. A Multinational Force (MNF) of US, French and Italian contingents was deployed in Beirut after the Israeli siege of the city, to supervise the evacuation of the PLO fighters to various Arab countries. The MNF returned in September following the assassination of Bashir Gemayel (the President-elect) and the subsequent massacres committed by Christian Phalangist forces in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. A British contingent (of approximately 100) joined the MNF in February 1983. In early 1984 fighting erupted even more intensely than before, and in response to this deterioration of the security situation the MNF was withdrawn in the Spring. [1,3]
3.18 The new Israeli Government, formed in September 1984, pledged to withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon. The Lebanese government demanded that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) be permitted to police the Israeli-Lebanese border. However, when the last phase of the Israeli withdrawal was completed in June 1985, Israel maintained a buffer zone along the border, between 10 km and 20 km wide, to be policed by the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army. With the Israeli presence in Lebanon reduced to a token force, Syria withdrew 10,000-12,000 troops from the Beka’a valley in July, leaving some 25,000 in position. [1,3]
7.38 Israel holds an estimated 50 Lebanese prisoners inside its borders and the SLA is estimated to hold a further 120-150 at its detention facilities at al-Khiam and Marjayoun. [4(q),5(b)(c),7(e),8(b)] In April 1998, the UN Commission on Human Rights stated it was;
“Gravely concerned at the persistent detention by Israel of many Lebanese citizens in the detention centres of Khiyam and Marjayoun, and at the death of some of these detainees as a result of ill-treatment and torture”.
The Commission also deplored the Israeli;
“abduction and ongoing arbitrary detention of Lebanese citizens, the destruction of their dwellings, the confiscation of their property, their expulsion from their land, the bombardment of peaceful villages and civilian areas, and other practices violating the most fundamental principles of human rights”. [29]
Fourteen detainees have died at al-Khiam. [7(e)]
An article written by Virginia N. Sherry, Human Rights Watch’s associate director of the Middle East and North Africa Division in October 1999 at the time of the prison’s closure explains Israel’s culpability for the torture and deaths committed there. It refers to an affidavit to the Israeli Supreme Court from the IDF in a case concerning 4 detained in al-Khiyam.
The carefully worded affidavit attempts to distance Israel from direct legal responsibility for crimes committed at Khiam, describing the prison in the present tense only, with no mention of Israel’s role there in past years. It states that “the interrogators, the jailers, and all of the staff of the facility are Lebanese.” It mentions repeatedly that the prison is administered, maintained, and guarded by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), Israel’s surrogate Lebanese militia that it finances and arms. It also notes that the SLA has a “common hierarchic military structure” and is headed by Lebanese commander General Antoine Lahd. The affidavit concedes that Israel “has influence over the SLA,” even to the extent of forcing suspension of visits of the International Committee of the Red Cross to the prison, but maintains that matters concerning Khiam’s detainees are “under the responsibility and discretion of the SLA” and “not within the authority” of the Israeli defense ministry.
Even if this is the official line, Israel is obligated as a state party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to investigate Gen. Lahd, current and former SLA commanders of the prison, and other militiamen responsible for the crimes of inflicting, instigating, and acquiescing to acts of torture at Khiam. If it is necessary to take Gen. Lahd and other potential suspects into custody to carry out this investigation, Israeli authorities should do so. Since Israel does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, the torture convention requires Israel to exercise criminal jurisdiction. Because Gen. Lahd is also known to travel to France, where his immediate family reportedly resides, authorities there are likewise obligated under the convention to initiate an investigation of Gen. Lahd and if necessary detain him when he again sets foot on French soil.
….
It is indisputable that systematic torture occurred in Khiam. And the continuing partnership between Israel and the SLA on matters related to this prison implicates Lebanese and Israelis with legal responsibility for criminal actions. In addition to the periodic visits of GSS personnel, the defense ministry’s affidavit admitted that Israel and the SLA “consult each other regarding the arrest and release of people in the Khiam facility” and that “information from the interrogations in Khiam is transferred by the SLA to Israeli security forces.” The international community must insist that Israel not turn a blind eye to its complicity in torture at Khiam, which now includes admitted use of information yielded from abusive interrogations. Israel is obligated under international law to hold accountable and prosecute its own citizens and Lebanese nationals who participated in or condoned acts of torture at Khiam. If Israeli authorities refuse to act on this legal obligation, countries that are state parties to the torture convention definitely should.
After the Israeli Withdrawal in 2000
The BBC description of the town describes what happened to the prison.
After Israeli forces left Lebanon in 2000, and the SLA collapsed, the jail was taken over by Hezbollah, many of whose members had passed through its gates.
The site became a memorial to the liberation struggle and a symbol of the victory claimed by Hezbollah over Israel.
Thousands of people came from across the Arab and Muslim worlds and beyond to visit the jail, their way pointed out by brown “heritage site” road signs, and placards set up by Hezbollah’s public relations department telling the story of the resistance.
One of those visitors was a journalist from the Pakistan newspaper The Daily Times which was copied here as the paper has a subscription wall. The piece was published on 14 July 2006 and her visit was of course just before the war. She describes the use the prison had been converted to. On her way to Al-Khiyam she visited Qana, site of the Israeli bombing that was to prove the turning point in the war.
We later drove further South, passing by Qana, the site of Israel’s Grapes of Wrath operation in 1996. Over 150 people were killed in the operation; after warnings of an aerial assault many people left their homes and took shelter in a UN camp which was bombarded by Israeli
planes. A memorial maintained by the townspeople and their political representatives marked the site of the massacre. The memorial housed photographs of those killed, heart-wrenching and yet also an exhibition space where local artists had captured the grief of their town. There was a collage of words and images that asked in red “where are u arabs?” and another six-foot long painting that was inescapably Picasso’s Guernica done in blue. A statue for the Fijian UN peacekeepers who had died under the attack was erected in granite near the memorial. The site where a church had been burned to the ground, leaving the 54 inside it dead, was preserved. The equanimity of the remembrance was striking.
The situation that day was tense; an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, had been captured days before in the Occupied Territories and Israel had commenced a series of air strikes and bombings on Gaza that has killed more than 75 civilians to date. Israel is calling this operation “Summer Rain” — one wonders who comes up with all these sentimental, poetic operation names for the IDF, and where he was when Operation Enduring Freedom was thought up.
Her party then went on to Al-Khiam
Our last stop that day was to be the Al-Khiam prison, used by the South Lebanese Army (SLA) and later Israel during the Lebanese civil war. It is now run as a museum by Hezbollah. The prison was built in 1933 by France as barracks for their men and was turned into a Lebanese-Israeli detention centre in 1985. The prison which held 5,000 people, including 400 women, was liberated in 2000. The prison guards and major domos left in their Mercedes accompanied by tanks without releasing any of the prisoners. It was the townspeople that stormed Al Khiam and broke free the men and women who had been jailed during the civil war for their resistance. When you enter the gates of Al Khiam you notice how well it has been preserved. And the Hezbollah are not without a sense of humour either; near the prison’s gates there is a room that bears two signs — the first reads “Previously: dormitories of the traitors and collaborators and their bosses” and the second reads “Now: Men’s Bathroom”. There are signs in English and Arabic explaining each and every room and nothing has been altered — the single bulbs that lit both the corridors and the dank cells are still hanging from the ceilings, no other form of electricity guides you around the place. The cells don’t feel empty at Al Khiam. There are toothbrushes in the bathrooms and pillows and sheets still left on the beds. The solitary confinement cells — which were not much larger than the 8ft by 3ft cells that used to house up to four men at a time before the Red Cross inspected the site in the mid-90s — were so small I couldn’t stretch out my arms.
The caption to this BBC picture from their slide show (obviously shot after the war) explains the presence in the open of the large gun.
The jail – where captured military equipment is also on display – has been heavily bombed by Israel in the recent conflict with militant group Hezbollah.
So the jail had been transformed into a visitor attraction much the same as Robben Island in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held, or Alcatraz with a few captured weapons as trophies in the grounds. Here are those solitary confinement cells after the war, note the thickness of the reinforced concrete walls and the damage caused to them.
This picture shows other damage. The BBC caption ascribes the damage to shrapnel (presumably the smaller holes) and cannon fire from aircraft. Clearly this place was subject to prolonged and probably repeated attack.
Hezbollah Surprises
I was of course wary of using as evidence an article in a newspaper from a Muslim country. The alarm bells rang when I read this section of Fatima Bhutto’s piece:
As we left Al Khiam we found ourselves hopelessly lost. Mustafa had no clue how to get us back to Tripoli. We stopped an elderly man on the roads to ask for directions and he offered to show us how to get back to Sidon if we followed him. As part of our newly formed friendship with him, Mustafa asked him if he had been at Al Khiam. He replied that he had. “How long were you jailed for?” we asked. “Jailed?” he responded indignantly. “I was with the Jews. I was a guard there.” He didn’t whisper, he didn’t lower his eyes. He had been a collaborator and he told us so right there in the middle of the road. He had nothing to fear, not from the Hezbollah. They were ruthless, yes, but only to those that had killed. They understood that people did what they had to survive and left them to their homes and their communities after the war. This kind of reconciliatory attitude is not exactly prevalent in the Middle East, nor in all honesty has it ever been.
Surely this was an exaggeration I mused bearing in mind all we have heard about how ruthless they are and how their military and political wings are so closely intertwined. That was until I found a more recent version of that UK government briefing(.PDF file)
6.53 Revenge killings did not occur after Hizbollah entered the former “security zone”, as many had feared might be the case. There are no known reports of violent acts of retaliation against suspected ‘collaborators’ or their families attributed to members of Hizbollah or Amal. [14a] Hizbollah handed over former SLA militiamen and suspected ‘collaborators’ they detained to the Lebanese Army or gendarmerie. [8b] In spite of certain threatening and inflammatory remarks by Hizbollah leaders, it is evident that former SLA members, their families or others accused of ‘collaboration’, are not at risk of violent retribution from Hizbollah or other armed organisations in Lebanon. However, Hizbollah’s stated position is that such people should surrender themselves to the Lebanese authorities to face trial. [16h]
Have many of our preconceptions been shaped by deliberate demonisation by the Israelis? This is what Zvi Rish had to say when interviewed for the Haaratz profile:
“Most of the accusations security sources made against Dirani that were published in the media were not brought up in court – for example, that he tortured Ron Arad; that he locked him into the trunk of a vehicle in which he was traveling; that he sold him to the Iranians. They knew that this wasn’t true. The way the authorities demonize suspects, in most cases on false bases, allows the security services to obtain remands from the judges and support from the public. This dynamic is very disturbing.”
Even more fascinating is the analysis of Hezbollah in the 2004 UK Home Office brief, particularly in respect of the involvement of Iran.
6.39 Iranian Revolutionary Guards sent to Lebanon founded Hizbollah in 1982. A seven-member Shura Council runs it. The Secretary-General is Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. [24][49] The organisation is not directly controlled by either the Syrian or Iranian governments, but the three are said to share a symbiotic relationship. Iran is the major supplier of arms and funds to Hizbollah and its leaders are said to have a strong influence on Hizbollah in political and ideological affairs. [24] However, Iran’s President Khatami clearly indicated during his visit to Lebanon in May 2003 that, were Lebanon, Syria or Hizbollah to give Israel “a pretext for an escalation”, the y would find themselves without the military support of Iran. [23q] Syria’s relationship with Hizbollah is reportedly based primarily on shared short-to-medium term goals with regard to Israel. Syria controls the flow of arms from Iran to Hizbollah, via Damascus airport. [24] Both Syria and Lebanon were reportedly under pressure from the United States of America in 2003 to stop the activities of Hizbollah, which is seen as a legitimate political as well as military organisation by both countries. [23p]
6.40 Hizbollah maintains a strong presence in predominantly Shi’a areas such as parts of West Beirut and the southern suburbs of Beirut, Ba’albek and the Beka’a Valley in the east, and throughout southern Lebanon. Lebanese government control over Hizbollah, which has remained legally armed in order to fight against the Israeli occupation forces in the south, is said to be limited. However, Hizbollah has been willing to submit to state authority, especially regarding criminal justice. [2a][2b] There have been no reports of
Hizbollah harassing or threatening people who publicly disagree with its policies. It does not recruit its members by force. The leadership of Hizbollah is aware that there is a large section of the Lebanese population that disagrees with its ideology, and there have been no known instances where the government has had to provide protection to ordinary citizens because they were afraid of Hizbollah. [2b]
6.41 There is reportedly a strong separation between the political and military wings of Hizbollah and a party member is not necessarily a military man. [24] Hizbollah has 11 and charities. [48][45] The military wing, also known as ‘Islamic Resistance’, is estimated to consist of a core of 300-400 well-trained, experienced guerrilla fighters, and around 2000-3000 reserves. [18][24] Recruits for military operations are volunteers and there is apparently no lack of new recruits [2b][2h] they pass through a strict screening process to eliminate possible double agents. [2b][10] Recruitment for the Islamic Resistance requires strong ideological beliefs, as well as rigorous military training. The principal ideological beliefs are sacrifice to the cause of liberation of Lebanese territory, and martyrdom. The Islamic Resistance leadership must be totally convinced of the person’s trustworthiness, something that cannot be ascertained in a short period of time. [2b][7a][18] A third group, the ‘External Security Organisation’, is Hizbollah’s terrorist arm and this specific group is proscribed under the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act 2000. [57] The group’s known or suspected activities include truck bombings against US targets in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, the kidnapping and detention of Western hostages in Lebanon and an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992. [56]
6.42 According to the USSD report on Human Rights Practices for 2002, Hizbollah has, on occasion, undermined the authority of the Lebanese government and interfered with the application of law in parts of the country not completely under government control. [5g] However, according to the Secretary-General of the UNIFIL’s report, dated July 2003, the Government of Lebanon has demonstrated its ability to increase its authority throughout southern Lebanon. [15c] Hizballah forces through early 2002 have continued to launch sporadic military strikes on Israeli positions, drawing responses that have produced casualties on both sides. UNIFIL has recorded numerous violations of the Blue Line by both sides since Israeli withdrawal. [5g][15b][15c] The USSD report on Human Rights Practices for 2002 stated that there were no reports in 2002 of the perpetration of arbitrary arrests by Hizbollah. [5g]
Here in the part of 6.41 I have highlighted we have an explanation of why the Israelis have had so little human intelligence about Hezbollah compared to the wealth it has gained from informers about the Palestinians. Such intelligence can only be gained if the local population is aware of who the Hezbollah fighters are and where they operate. Obviously the who and to some extent where are known but there is a further factor, a positive motive to give this information to the IDF. Such a motive would come IF Hezbollah regularly jeopardised their safety by firing rockets from their vicinity or basing their forces next to civilian houses. Is this strong evidence to deny the Israeli “human shield ” claim?
The Israeli “Causus Belli” False?
Despite the more recent claims that Israel started the war over “daily rocket attacks by Hezbollah”, the original excuse was the abduction of the two reservists and indeed Bush has repeated it recently in his press conference. So far the rebuttal that the capture was part of an on-going round of tit-for-tat has been a bit muted. Certainly so far I have seen nobody giving an immediate Israeli action that would have led to the “cross border raid” by Hezbollah. Now Bhutto’s article provides that piece of the jigsaw. Remember her visit took place on the Saturday before the paper was published, ie 8 July.
[After the visit to Qana] We drove on, reaching the border between Lebanon and Israel. It was the first time I had seen Israel, albeit through the barbed wire that was supposed to represent a border. It was also as close as I’d probably get – my Pakistani passport does not allow me to enter Israel. There was a Hezbollah gift store facing the border. There were huge flags waving out towards the settlements and blaring music strung together with the soundbites from the Party’s speeches. It was certainly ballsy.
We were looking around at the key chains, T-shirts and tapes in the store when we heard Mustafa, our former Baathist cab driver, calling us from the balcony above the store. I climbed the stairs with my friend, Sophia, while my family sat downstairs having a cup of coffee. There were several men standing on the balcony, we were told they were mukhabarat, Lebanese intelligence. They were there because a Hezbollah man had been captured in Israel that day — an event that would spark the capture of two more Israeli soldiers and the talk of another possible Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The mukhabarat men pointed out a group of soldiers, gathered behind a row of cement columns. They were nothing like what I expected them to be. They were boys. They were as young as Sophia and I, maybe younger. It’s the young that die on both sides. I hadn’t processed Israel into this equation before; I hadn’t imagined them as victims in this way, too. When Sophia asked Mustafa if she could turn on her camcorder, he nervously yelped that it would not be wise to. One of the mukhabarat men leaned forward and said, “Yalla,just do it quickly.” Mustafa nodded and told us to duck down if we heard “pop-pop!” We weren’t encouraged by Mustafa’s miming of us being shot in the head and so the camcorder was put away and we got back into the car and continued our journey
Targetting Decisions Explained?
The jail at Al-Khiyam in its new role as essentially a museum to the previous occupation by Israel was clearly a valuable asset for Hezbollah propaganda. I think we have to seriously question whether they would risk this by placing rocket launchers or even their fighters near it. So we get back to the question that kept cropping up throughout the conflict – why did the IDF target there?
One answer may come from the identity of the officer who made that affidavit to the Israeli Supreme Court. It begins:
I, the undersigned, Brigadier Dan Halutz, hereby state as follows:
1. I serve as the head of the Operations Division in the IDF and am in
charge, among other things, of the operational activity of the IDF in the
Security Zone in Lebanon….
This is none other than the now Lt-Gen Dan Halutz. Is it conceivable that as well as “taking care of business” in terms of his share dealings the day the two Israeli reservists were captured by Hezbollah, he used the cover of the wider conflict to get rid of that reminder of his previous failures in the “Security Zone”? Did he want to deny Hezbollah that propaganda asset? Even more worrying, were the attacks on Qana along a similar line, to wipe out the evidence of the previous atrocity when the IDF fired on a UN base sheltering civilians? Was that the real reason those children died?