http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=36842&mador=4
Ha'aretz, December 27, 1998
Whose security zone?
By Gideon Levy
Every occupation has its own methods of
obfuscation. For years, we called the occupied
Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip by varied and peculiar names: first,
"the liberated territories," then the
"administered territories," then somewhere along
the line there was the "enlightened conquest,"
and of course "Judea and Samaria," and finally
simply "the territories" as most of us call them
today. The Golan we always called the Golan, not
"occupied" or "held," because, of course, it is
not part of the "territories.". But the most
consensual lie of all is "the security zone."
This is territory that for all intents and
purposes is under military occupation - but has
never been described here as such. For 20 years,
ever since the Litani Campaign of 1978, southern
Lebanon has been occupied by Israel and we keep
on talking only about a "security zone."
The fact that we are referring to a piece of land
that has been ripped away by force from another
sovereign state, where Israel behaves as if it
were in its own back yard, contrary to all laws
and international agreements, is marginal.
Moreover, in the debate over a withdrawal from
Lebanon, this fact plays no role, not even among
those who favor a withdrawal. Israel has a hard
time coming to terms with the fact that for long
periods it was surrounded on all sides only by
the sea and by occupied territories. And even now
when it has occupied territories to its east and
its north, it has invented a name for occupied
foreign sovereign territory: the security zone.
This "security" zone was born, of course, in
order to ensure the security of the residents of
the Galilee. And only for the residents of the
Galilee, needless to say. The security of the
residents of this zone is of no importance at all
as far as Israel is concerned.
Nadwa Othman, who was killed last week with her
six children, was not the first mother to have
been killed by mistake by Israel in "the security
zone."
In April two years ago we killed a mother and her
seven children, by mistake of course. Five days
earlier, an Israeli attack helicopter fired on a
Lebanese ambulance and two mothers and two girls
were killed; a mother and her daughters were
killed in August of last year by a roadside bomb
set by the Hezbollah; in August of this year, a
civilian named Abd al Hassan Bushar was injured.
According to reports, he was 110 years old. Three
children were wounded three months earlier, also
in an Israeli bombing attack; a 17-year-old boy
was killed last week, a few days before the
Othman family met its death.
The lives of the Lebanese citizens in the
security zone - women, children and old people
who found themselves in this situation through no
fault of their own, exactly like the residents of
the Galilee - are far less secure than the lives
of the Israeli mothers and children south of the
border. This is the way it should be, according
to the Israeli perception, when the alternatives
are always either us or them. However, it is
doubtful that this is the true alternative.
As occupied territories go, the occupied
territory in southern Lebanon couldn't be better
from an Israeli point of view, because there, the
profoundest wish of Yitzhak Rabin and many other
Israelis is fulfilled: there's no High Court of
Justice and no B'Tselem. Few take any interest in
the danger to the lives of the mothers and
children in the village of Janta where the
Othmans lived; there are even fewer who care
about the human and civil rights of the residents
of this village and others like it.
The Khiyam prison is full of men and women whose
illegal arrest and conditions of imprisonment are
Israel's direct responsibility, just as it is
responsible for everything else that is done in
the security zone.
Israel grabs and arrests people, and transfers
them for interrogation to within its own borders
and detains them, finally, at Khiyam or in
Israeli prisons, without trial and without time
limits. Israel is allowed to imprison Lebanese
citizens - even the High Court of Justice has
said so - without limitations as "bargaining
chips" to be used on a rainy day or in
negotiations over Israelis missing in action
about whom it has long been clear that they are
no longer in Lebanon or perhaps even still alive.
Israel builds, paves and fortifies there, and
confiscates and takes control of private
property, but in contrast to the bypass roads in
the West Bank, from there no voices are even
raised in protest.
The only protest that is heard is the violent
protest of the Hezbollah. In Israel, it is very
convenient to depict this not as a protest
against the military occupation, but rather as
yet another expression of the desire to wipe us
off the face of the earth.
Reuven Merhav, a senior Mossad veteran and
formerly the representative of the Foreign
Ministry in Beirut, has said that if all the
opponents to the withdrawal - Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader MK Ehud
Barak, Labor MK Dr. Ephraim Sneh and retired
chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak - had been
born Shi'ites, they would be fighting the same
stubborn war against the occupier that the
Hezbollah is fighting. "The Hezbollah," says
Merhav, "are freedom fighters in every respect,
an authentic expression of the deep desire to
eject Israel from southern Lebanon."
Freedom fighters? An authentic expression?
Occupied territory? This is not convenient for
Israel to see, neither for the Likud nor the
Labor Party, who are united on the issue of
Lebanon in a miserable alliance that only spells
disaster. It is much more convenient to talk
about "the security zone," "Hezbollah
terrorists," and "they want to wipe us off the
face of the earth," than to admit to reality
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