‘Security Zone’ Residents Are Stuck in Middle

On the fifth day of “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” Israeli Brig. Gen. Giora Inbar stood on the rooftop of this border outpost surveying the steep Lebanese mountains that reverberated with the sound of outgoing artillery fire.

Israeli troops continued their barrage of more than 5,000 shells on suspected Hezbollah positions beyond those mountains, sending hundreds of thousands of Lebanese refugees north in a message to Beirut that it must rein in the Shiite Muslim guerrillas. And the muscular general who oversees Israeli operations in southern Lebanon declared himself satisfied with the results.

“We started this operation five days ago after the situation here in south Lebanon became intolerable,” Inbar said. “Soldiers . . . and civilians all over the security zone could not go on living under the threat of shelling, bombing and Hezbollah attacks on their villages. We hope we achieve the goal of bringing a peaceful existence to this area.”

But peace has never come easily to southern Lebanon, and particularly not to the area patrolled by Israeli troops and their local Christian allies, the South Lebanese Army (SLA).

The stone rooftop where Inbar stood surrounded by tanks and barbed wire sits at the edge of the 9-mile-wide strip that Israel calls its “security zone,” a buffer against guerrilla attacks on northern Israel.

But the Lebanese government and Hezbollah call this land “occupied,” and ever since the Israelis dug in here in 1985 it has proved to be a double-edged sword as sharp as the craggy mountains stretching north.

*

Israeli and SLA soldiers have suffered many casualties here at the hands of Hezbollah guerrillas, and the approximately 200,000 Lebanese civilians living in the zone are caught in the middle--helping one side, hiding their sympathies from the other or playing both. When Hezbollah guerrillas fire their Katyusha rockets at the town of Kiryat Shemona in northern Israel, they usually reserve at least one for the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun.

“This is no accident,” said an Israeli who spent much of his three-year military service in southern Lebanon. The town has been friendly to Israelis, and so residents are viewed as collaborators by Hezbollah.

To the Lebanese government, Israel is bringing the violence upon itself. If the Israeli army would relinquish the occupied territory, the government in Beirut would control Hezbollah and guarantee that no guerrillas crossed its border into Israel, the thinking goes. But as long as Israel remains in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has a raison d’etre and a base of popular support.

“People in [the security zone] believe that as long as they are occupied they have a basic right to fight,” said Ghasan Salamet, a Lebanese political scientist at Paris University.

Israel’s response is that the only way it will leave southern Lebanon is if it is carrying a peace agreement with Syria, the de facto ruler of Lebanon and overseer of Hezbollah. Lebanon has long been characterized by a weak central government with various militia and guerrilla forces operating freely on the ground, officials say, and it is in no position to guarantee anyone’s borders.

“Syria dominates 90% of Lebanon, and Israel has influence over about 10% in order to protect our vital interests,” said Israeli Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, who once commanded Israeli troops there. “The Lebanese army is dominated and controlled by Syrians. If we abandon south Lebanon, we will have proxies of the Syrians on our border.”

*

Not to mention the Hezbollah guerrillas now kept far to the north by the buffer zone. Although they have the capacity to operate within the Israeli security zone, Hezbollah fighters are based primarily in the dozens of villages outside the zone that are now being attacked by Israeli aircraft and artillery.

When Israelis first entered southern Lebanon in 1978’s “Operation Litani,” their enemy was the Palestinian guerrillas entrenched in the neighboring state. They wanted to bring an end to attacks such as the one four years earlier that led to the deaths of more than 20 children at the Maalot kibbutz in northern Galilee.

They then joined forces with Lebanese Christians who eventually formed the SLA.

Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982 in the middle of the country’s civil war, this time making it all the way to Beirut to evict Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization from the capital. Arafat was out in months, but it took three years before Israel agreed to leave, and then the withdrawal went only as far as the south, where Israeli troops have remained ever since in the self-styled security zone.

In response to the Israeli invasion, outraged Lebanese militia formed Hezbollah with the support of Iran. Today, the Israeli military estimates that there are about 1,000 Hezbollah combatants.

The southern buffer zone ostensibly is controlled by the SLA, a force of about 2,500 soldiers. But Israel controls the purse strings--the SLA reportedly is paid and supplied by Israel--as well as the routes into and out of the zone, where Israeli soldiers are present and active.

After his rooftop news conference Monday, Inbar slapped a couple of SLA officers on their shoulders, calling them the “real commanders” on the ground and eliciting weak smiles from the two. They had not been invited to speak at the news conference.

After more than a decade of uninterrupted presence, Israel clearly is deeply entrenched in the security zone. Trade is conducted in Israeli, Lebanese and U.S. currency. Several thousand people who live here work in Israel, and many of them speak Hebrew.

For this, they may pay a price in Lebanon.

Lebanese guards are stationed at the crossing points from the security zone to the rest of Lebanon, and they reportedly keep blacklists of suspected “collaborators” with Israel to detain should they try to cross.

Both sides claim to own the hearts and minds of the residents. Hezbollah says the predominantly Shiite Muslim population in the zone is part of its constituency and shares its goal of expelling the occupiers. Israelis say the local population does not support the radical group that wants to build an Islamic fundamentalist state on the model of Iran.

“Most of the population is very sympathetic to us,” Sneh said. “I was in a Shiite town there a couple months ago. The high school girls there were in jeans and T-shirts. They like Western music and want to work. They don’t want to wear veils.”

*

But even some Israeli soldiers say public opinion in the zone may be shifting against them.

Now, despite the exchange of Katyushas and artillery fire in the biggest battle between Israel and Hezbollah since 1993, residents of the security zone see peace in their future. They look at the peace accords Israel has signed with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians and figure it is only a matter of time before an agreement is reached with Syria leading to an Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon. And they don’t want to be left behind as Israeli collaborators.

Some military observers believe this accounts, in part, for Hezbollah’s increased success in hitting Israeli targets in the security zone in recent months: It seems to have better intelligence--better information on the movements of Israeli troops.

“They seem to know when our cars and caravans are moving, when they resupply and what vehicles and what roads they use,” said Gabriel Ben-Dor, a political scientist at Haifa University.

Some observers suggest there may be leaks from the SLA, which recently has incorporated more Shiites into its predominantly Christian ranks. Shiites account for about 60% of the border zone population.

Inbar acknowledged that there is “an amount of uncertainty about the future” but said the stepped-up Hezbollah attacks that led up to Operation Grapes of Wrath have more to do with supplies and motivation than with intelligence.

“They have very good support from Iran--rockets, night vision, antiaircraft missiles . . . and very high motivation to act. And they have become very extreme in their spirit, willing to commit suicide,” Inbar said.

Inbar insisted that he has never had a soldier in southern Lebanon object to doing a job that was asked of him--unlike in the occupied West Bank during the intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, he said.

But even those who believe Israel needs to be in southern Lebanon say they feel like sitting ducks there.

“Many soldiers have been killed,” said one who is serving there now. “It is a waste of ammunition and life. They [Hezbollah] know the terrain better. It’s their turf. It’s like Vietnam.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Israel Continues Strikes

The Israeli drive to avenge cross-border rocket attacks by Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas raged for a fifth day.