The
Nakba of SLA Refugees
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| Writer: |
Lily Galili
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| Source: |
Ha’aretz
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| Date: |
Monday, 22 July 2002
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Suleiman Nahla calls the day of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon - May 23, 2000 - "our Nakba" (catastrophe, usually attributed to Palestinians' experience in 1948). When he first speaks about the rally that the Southern Lebanese Army people in Israel held in May of this year to mark the date of the withdrawal, he naturally says "our memorial day." Then he corrects himself and says "Nakba."
"This is exactly our Nakba. This is the day of our great tragedy. They uprooted a tree from its land and put it into land that is foreign and no good."
Major (res.) Suleiman Nahla, 38, formerly a sapper in the Southern Lebanese Army, is not a man of big words. He is a soldier - it's what he knows how to do, and probably he did it well. In the modest apartment in Metulla hang photos of him in uniform with Israel Defense Forces generals - Gabi Ashkenazi, Amiram Levin and others. On a shelf stands a dusty wooden shield he received in 1998 from the IDF in recognition of his services.
All these are modesty displayed in various corners as if they belonged to a reality that is no longer relevant, like the big old Mercedes he drives. He bought the car cheaply in Israel from Battalion Commander Joseph Karam, a handicapped SLA officer who was injured in the explosion of a charge identical to the one that killed Brigadier General Erez Gerstein, when Karam was riding in a Mercedes exactly like the one in which Gerstein had been riding.
Nahla used to dismantle about four or five such explosive charges a week. Thus, the battered Mercedes, which was once very splendid, has become the embodiment of the expression "covenant of blood," which today, in light of the circumstances, has become a coinage without cover.
During the past two years, Nahla, who serves as an unofficial spokesman of the SLA people in Israel and also helps them in his part-time job with the association Friend of Rights in the Community, has been an angry and sad man. In the present, the members of this community are in a state of heightened tension.
On Sunday the government is slated to discuss the issue of continuing aid to SLA families, or more precisely, the fate of this group whose status has been linked in a kind of weird fatuity to that of new immigrants and is under the auspices of the Absorption Ministry. The six months during which the families enjoyed the benefits of the new immigrants' "absorption basket" are coming to an end, and their fate is still shrouded in mist.
In this context rumors are flying in the SLA community. Some say the aid will be extended for a year, others know for certain that that it will be extended for only half a year. There are those who swear they will be re-designated as recipients of guaranteed income, and those who hold that the aid will be extended for some limited period at the end of which they will be offered a financial incentive to return to Lebanon. If they are immigrants, they are certainly not desired ones.
Nahla is not eager, in any case, to be defined as an "immigrant," as if he had come here under the Law of Return from the Commonwealth of Independent States or Argentina. Although his house is on Etsel Street in the Tel Hai neighborhood, Nahla is not keen on being associated with the great Zionist ethos. "How can we possibly be defined as immigrants?" he demands angrily. "The immigrants choose to come here, they prepare for it. They sell all their property and begin to learn Hebrew even before they come. They have education, they have a profession into which they can be absorbed in Israel. We did not choose to come here. One day, within one hour, we changed our lives because you changed your politics. Each of us left behind all we had - property, land, family. Not because we decided, but because it was decided for us. All our lives we were soldiers. So now, are we immigrants?"
Once, before the withdrawal, Nahla was asked what he would do if there were a withdrawal and there were peace in southern Lebanon. He replied jokingly "I'd find work somewhere else. We'll go dismantle mines in Kosovo." Today, this idea does not sound like a joke.
Exceptions and
Others
The policy of Israel in dealing with the SLA refugees has been - and still is - to make every effort to get them out of here, as fast as possible.
This effort has had considerable success. Of the approximately 7,000 people who came into Israel with the withdrawal, only 2,200 remain - about 700 families. The endless fuss surrounding them and the huge bureaucracy that supposedly exists in dealing with them creates the impression that there are masses of people who are creating an insoluble problem for Israel.
In fact, the number of officials on the various committees and at the various ministries who are dealing with SLA problems is probably greater than the number of families. All the nastiness and insensitivity of Israeli society is embodied in this story, which produces mostly a great deal of paper and a lot of pain and anger.
At a government session in September the fate of the SLA people was discussed. A detailed decision, Number 720, which spreads over five pages and has many provisions, came out of this session. Hardly any of the provisions have been implemented in reality. Provision B1, for example, states that "SLA people who request the status of permanent resident will receive this status in accordance with the judgment of the minister of the interior."
"They haven't given it," says Nahla. Nor has there been any implementation of Provision C3, which stipulated that an operative program would be prepared to examine, among other things, the giving of permission to integrate SLA people into the Border Police or the security systems of government or private companies and would also see to the establishment of frameworks for the provision of religious services and the opening of day-nurseries for children. The "religious services" amount to a traveling Maronite priest who visits the many locales in which the SLA people are scattered.
It is no wonder the decisions have not been implemented - to do so would have led to the permanent settlement of the SLA people in Israel, which is contrary to the government's real policy. Thus provision B2 remains on paper. This provision stipulates that "in special circumstances, the interior minister will grant Israeli citizenship to SLA people."
"Maybe only the exceptions have received this," says Nahla. The "exceptions," in this context, are about 50 SLA families that have been separated from the rest of the community and have remained under the care of the Defense Ministry. This group includes the battalion commanders and the brigade commanders, and sometimes their drivers and others of the chosen few who come under criteria that are not at all obvious. The aid given to those under the wing of the Defense Ministry is far greater than that given to the others.
This is very damaging, as all that remained to the SLA people upon arriving in Israel was the sense of unity and a common fate. Their separation into groups of "the elite" and "the others" has torn the community to shreds. Sometimes it has split families in the classical style of "divide and rule" without any human sensitivity.
"It is not clear to the SLA people how it was decided which officer would be under the Absorption Ministry and which under Rehabilitation (Defense Ministry)," wrote Deputy Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra in a letter to the prime minister's military secretary.
Another piece of paper for the swelling pile of correspondence in the matter of the 700 families who were once a security asset and are now an economic liability.
Astounding
Stupidity
But not only nastiness and insensitivity characterize the treatment of the SLA people. There is also a lot of stupidity. Several hundred families have already chosen to return to Lebanon and face trial. The official policy pushes them out and encourages them to return to Lebanon with a monetary grant. Every family that chooses to return receives $27,000 per couple, and another $2,000 per child, which is supposed to help the family in its absorption in its former homeland. In practice, nothing of this approximately $30,000 per family remains in the parents' hands. This money changes hands during the course of the trial of the family member who had served in the SLA. In other words, the money goes to the Hezbollah or, to put it another way, thus far, some say Israel has indirectly transferred millions of dollars to the Hezbollah.
"This is what happens in all the cases," says Nahla, as something obvious. "Everyone who deals with SLA matters knows this story: Israel is sending gifts to the Hezbollah."
At the Defense Ministry they are indeed aware of this terrible perversion. An official and evasive response from the ministry states: "The aid that is given to the SLA is humanitarian aid. The people go back from their own choice, and they know to what they are returning. Of necessity, some of the money goes to paying for the trial and lawyer."
Unofficially it is said that there is no way of controlling the use that is made of the money. Thus, the treatment of the SLA people goes beyond a bad human story and becomes a story of astounding stupidity on the part of a state that is fighting to block the sources of funding for the Hezbollah and is itself transferring money to the organization indirectly. At the end of the process, Israel is emptying itself of SLA people (the outcome it desires), who spend years in prison without having any money left for rehabilitation, whereas the Hezbollah gets a bit richer.
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