THE OCCUPATION :

WHAT A SHAME THAT WE HAVE NOT CALLED A SPADE A SPADE

By Gideon Levy, HaAretz, January 9, 2000

Now is the right time, when Israel is perhaps already standing with one foot outside Lebanese territory, to stop and ask ourselves some tough questions. How did this happen? How is it that the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon has lasted for twenty years? Although it has not been much less cruel than our occupation of Palestinian areas, there has not been even a whimper of protest in Israel against the moral aspects of the Lebanese occupation. We are not interested in the two hundred thousand inhabitants of the security zone, who have undergone the conditions of occupation that, among other things, have caused more than half of them to become displaced persons.

Now is the right time, when Israel is perhaps already standing with one foot outside Lebanese territory, to stop and ask ourselves some tough questions. How did this happen? How is it that the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon has lasted for twenty years?

Although it has not been much less cruel than our occupation of Palestinian areas, there has not been even a whimper of protest in Israel against the moral aspects of the Lebanese occupation. We are not interested in the two hundred thousand inhabitants of the security zone, who have undergone the conditions of occupation that, among other things, have caused more than half of them to become displaced persons.

Ever since Operation Litani, up to this very day, significant waves of protest against the so-called Israeli Presence in the Lebanon have washed over our society, yet no one has ever called this Pesence an Occupation. Rather, the protests have always focused exclusively upon the blood of Israeli soldiers that was being spilt there in vain. The vaious groups of protesters have called themselves, among other names, Four Mothers, Three Fathers and so on. But it makes no difference because only the lives of our soldiers were under discussion.

Of course, no subject is more important than human life and one cannot take it lightly. However, we must not allow ourselves to turn it into the sole consideration against the prolongation of our occupation of Lebanon. The occupation of Palestinian areas was also once perceived by Israeli society as a phenomenon with which one may live forever, without moral soul-searching.

Israel boasted then that the rise in the standard of living in the occupied territories, that is, more tractors and more universities, was an indication that we should realize what a great blessing it is for the inhabitants. Only after quite a few years of occupation, and only after the Intifada riots had broken out, did we begin to understand that something very morally distorted was going on in the areas of our back yard that we had occupied.

In South Lebanon, this did not happen far removed from our eyes and hearts. The sins of the Israeli occupation hardly interested anybody. The denial of access to the media of communication and the Israeli human rights organizations created a situation in which the security establishment became almost the only supplier of information about what is happening in the area of occupation opposite the north of Israel. Any concurrent foreign reports originating in the Lebanon or elsewhere were automatically regarded as hostile and labelled as such.

Thus it came about that the occupied territory was not perceived by public opinion to be occupied, since it was after all referred to as a Security Zone. Here again, one may say that the Israelis figured that they had reached a wasteland, empty of any native inhabitants. In Israeli eyes, the only inhabitants of South Lebanon were blood-thirsty Shi'ite terrorists who deserve proper punishment. Confronting them are the righteous soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the South Lebanese Army (SLA) who are guarding the security of Israel.

Fortunately, these righteous soldiers were restrained by petitions to the High Court of Justice (in Hebrew: the acronym Bahgahtz) and by watchdog civil rights groups such as B'tzelem (in English: In the Image, a reference to the Creation). Otherwise, the IDF and SLA could have freely done there almost any arbitrary act of repression, all of course in the name of security for the northern settlers. In their repertoire were deportations, torture, administrative detention without trial, limitation of movement, use of forbidden weapons - in short, the sheriff makes the laws.

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What about security for the Galilee? You know all about that. But what about security for the inhabitants of South Lebanon? No one has asked about them. The High Court and the B'tzelem civil rights group have lately begun to slowly wake up. The High Court has recently begun to discuss the so-called Bargaining Chips, that is, the abducted Lebanese citizens whom we have been holding.

And now, at a pitifully late date (but better late than never) B'tzelem has published its first report about this occupation. This, after ten years of activity that have been so important and influential for other occupied territories that they cannot be overestimated. It has already created for itself a position of reliability as a factor whose publications cannot be ignored, not even by the security establishment.

Despite the objective difficulties, B'tzelem has decided to try to shed some light upon this dark corner of Israel. The result is a 66-page report which B'tzelem is making public today, It spells out things that we knew but did not interest us, together with things that we did not know about the escapades of Israel and its proxies in the so-called Security Zone.

What about explosive charges? Those are the weapons used by the terrorists, right? Yet according to the report, Israel has more than once also planted explosive charges of its own manufacture at the doorstep of innocent civilians. In 1997 alone, such explosions killed at least seven Lebanese civilians were killed and wounded six others. In December of 1998, a thirteen year-old Lebanese child was killed in a similar way. Yet Israel is a signatory to the covenant which forbids the use of explosive charges in areas where civilians reside.

Athough the regulations governing warfare also forbid the use of phosphorous bombs against civilians, the report states that at least two children and a few adults have been killed and wounded by Israeli bombardments of phosphorous shells. B'tzelem also reports that Israel has an arsenal of anti-personnel cluster bombs, which explode in mid-air and rain down a shower of tens of thousands of steel nails

One also finds in the report shocking testimony about the tortures in the El-Khayam prison, roadblocks, transit permits, demolition of homes, arbitrary deportation to the north of hundreds of inhabitants, long-term detention without trial, temporary quarantines, and roughhouse tactics used to recruit collaborators. When in occupied territory, do as a conqueror does. In the so-called Security Zone, less than half of the original 200,000 inhabitants have remained, as said. Those who have stayed behind apparently have nowhere to flee. They also are worthy of security and basic human rights, even if they are not Jews who live in the Galilee, but rather Arabs who live in South Lebanon.