arens@UCBKIM (04/03/83)
From: arens@UCBKIM (Yigal Arens) Received: from UCBKIM.ARPA by UCBVAX.ARPA (3.332/3.20) id AA18021; 3 Apr 83 04:08:59 PST (Sun) To: net-politics@BERKELEY Following are excerpts from the April issue of the monthly newsletter of CAFIOT, the Committee for Academic Freedom in the Israeli Occupied Territories, a Berkeley campus group. The newsletter is in fact published in cooperation with CoJME, a Stanford group, and CSPP, a UC Davis group. Anyone can become a member, student membership being $2 and including a subscription to the newsletter. Regular membership is $5. The newsletter contains some 10 pages of information about the occupied West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon plus announcements of events in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. CAFIOT also sponsors (together with the ASUC) a 2 credit course called Peace and Conflict in Palestine. It is held Mondays 7:30-9:30pm at 105 Northgate. So here's the news: The Israelis are also organizing village militias, collectively known as the National Guard for the Villages of the South, both in Haddadland and in the UN areas [of southern Lebanon]. In [the village of] Haris, reporter Robert Fisk interviewed villagers about Israeli actions. "Two weeks ago," he was told, "Haim (an Israeli Army intelligence officer) came here and told our mukhtar Mohamed Yussef El-Ali that we had to pay 15,000 Lebanese pounds a month to raise a local militia. The Israelis want the UN out and they want to put Haddad's men in here with guns. They have ordered us to pay for them." "We have asked for the UN to stay here, but Haim has given us to the end of the month to pay," another reported. The mukhtar of a nearby village said, "Yes, I will tell you, and Israeli called Haim came here this morning with some soldiers. They want 4000 Lebanese pounds a month from this village, but we have no money. What can we do?" He took a sheet of paper from his pocket that said, in Arabic, "February 27, 1983. This is an order from the leader of the Haddad army. You must pay 4000 pounds to pay for the people to protect your village, signed: Haddad Militia, with thanks." "As we left," Fisk relates, "a woman standing outside spoke quickly to us in French. 'I will tell you what the Mukhtar did not tell you,' she said, 'There are 20 men from this village who are in the Israeli prison camp at Ansar and they have told us that these men will not be released until we agreed to pay the money. They are taking over our village in this way.'" The UN officers and Col. Haim himself evaded Fisk's questions about the orders, although one Dutch soldier warned, "There will be a lot of trouble over you being here. Col. Haim will accuse us of tipping you off." Militias are also being set up in the refugee camps. In Ain-el-Hilwe, the leader, Abdullah Nasser, openly opposes the PLO and praises the Israelis, the Phalangists, and Haddad. Over the past month the Phalange and the Guards of the Cedars have been carrying out their own campaign to terrorize and expel the Palestinian population of southern Lebanon. Refugees have been exposed to bomb attacks, murders, kidnappings, threatening leaflets, and visits in the night by hooded vigilantes trying to terrorize them into leaving their homes and retreating to the overcrowded refugee camps or quitting Lebanon altogether. The following incidents have been reported by the UN Relief and Works Agency. * February 9 -- Ten refugee families living in Addousiyeh, a village near Sidon, were warned by "Christian Militia Forces" to leave their homes within 24 hours and go to the Ain-el-Hilwe and Rashidiye refugee camps. * February 10 -- 40 Palestinian refugees were intimidated into leaving their homes in Sidon and instructed to take refuge in the nearby Ain-el-Hilweh camp. The families said that "threats were made to them by armed men wearing masks or by notes pinned on their doors." In one case a bomb exploded outside the door of a refugee's home. * February 21 -- 120 Palestinian families living in Aqbiye, near Sidon, received knocks on their doors late at night. Men shining torches in their eyes told them they had 24 hours to leave their homes and their citrus groves and go to the refugee camps. * In the last week of February, leaflets signed "Lebanese Unity" or "Revolutionaries of the Cedars" were put in plastic bags weighted with stones and hung on the from doors of Palestinians living in the Sidon area. The leaflets said "You have turned all your houses into arsenals. You must go to the camps where we can control you. We can't give you protection while you are here. Remember, nobody likes you." "Noble sons of Sidon and environs, we shall accomplish our slogan: no Palestinian in the Land of Lebanon, whatever the obstacles in our path." * February 28 -- Abdullah, a Palestinian who had lived for years in his Sidon apartment, moved into the Mieh Mieh camp. He had heard several reports the week before of Palestinians in his camp being dragged from their homes at night and murdered. After someone left a threatening note at his door, he packed up his family and a few belongings and left his apartment. The following day he returned, and found the door padlocked from the outside and a note tacked up warning anyone against trying to enter. * During the first week of March, two bombs exploded in the Mieh Mieh camp, leveling two shops and damaging 16 houses. (In early August, Christian militiamen had set fire to and then bulldozed 160 refugee homes in Mieh Mieh.) * Ahmad Sebai did not take the threats seriously as his home belonged to him. At 9:30 on Saturday morning the men came to his house and the front door was answered by his wife. They demanded from her money and her husband. She told them to take the 3,000 Lebanese pounds in her possession, but to leave her husband alone. After some time they forced her husband outside and shot him dead. The list of horror stories goes on and on. The only consistent factors in all of the events taking place are that Israel appears to be consolidating and expanding its hold on southern Lebanon and that the Palestinians are continuing to suffer at the hands of all the other parties. They have, ironically, only the Israelis to turn to for protection from the Phalange. Israeli Arab representatives have appealed to their government to stop the harassment, and to appeal directly to Haddad. It may be out of sheer desperation that some Palestinians are now collaborating with the Israeli- organized militias. There is simply no one who will protect them. (Compiled from: Manchester Guardian, 2/13/83, CBC Sunday Morning, 2/27/83, LA Times, 2/17/83, 2/25/83, 3/11/83, NY Times, 2/18/83, 2/22/83, 3/12/83, London Times, 3/4/83, Jerusalem Post, 2/2/83, 2/10/83.) Yigal Arens