Fleeing the wrath of
Hezbollah By Iason
Athanasiadis
LEBANESE-ISRAELI BORDER - The
wheelchair-bound Lebanese man had already been
stuck just inside the Israeli side of the border
for four hours and the Hezbollah intelligence men
were ready to take matters into their own hands.
With only a half-full bottle of water with
him and Israeli authorities apparently not willing
to accept him inside Israel, time was fast running
out for the would-be defector.
"There are
negotiations going on between our higher-ups in
Naqqoura [the southernmost
Lebanese city on the Mediterranean coast before
Israel and a major UN base] and Israel, but until
the Israelis tell us they don't want him and allow
us to bring him back, there's nothing we can do,"
said an Indian United Nations peacekeeper.
Next to a UN jeep, the Hezbollah
intelligence men had parked their aging white
Mercedes. One of them had flattened himself behind
the chassis and was watching the Israeli side
through binoculars.
"If you come with me,
we'll go in and get that m*********r back,"
another Hezbollah man told a member of the
international press. "They won't shoot at a
journalist," he whispered in an aside in Arabic to
his colleague.
With Hezbollah and the UN
men having overheard the Lebanese man conversing
with the Israelis in Hebrew, they were almost
certain that he was an agent of the Jewish state
trying to escape the wrath of a victorious Shi'ite
political party that claims to have routed Israel
over 34 days of conflict.
It is believed
that the spate of attempted defections has been
prompted by Hezbollah's strong showing in its
recent conflict with Israel. Analysts say Israel
used Lebanese collaborators who remained in the
south after its forces' withdrawal in 2000 as
human intelligence to identify Hezbollah cadres in
each village.
A Shi'ite source with good
connections to Hezbollah and local knowledge said
that only the houses of Hezbollah members were
destroyed in his southeastern village of Blaat.
The Hezbollah center of Khiam - formerly a base
for Israel's proxy South Lebanon Army - was also
largely wrecked from shelling, air strikes and
pitched battles between Hezbollah and Israeli
soldiers.
About 16 people have crossed the
Lebanese-Israeli border to the settlement of
Metulla since the ceasefire came into effect two
weeks ago, the Lebanese press reported, quoting
local security sources.
Residents of Kfar
Kila, a southern village, told the Beirut Daily
Star newspaper that some of the fugitives had been
employed by Israel's proxy South Liberation Army
and fled to Israel in 2000 when the south was
liberated. After Hezbollah assurances that no
revenge attacks would be made, they returned to
their properties in Lebanon.
But since the
latest war, Hezbollah has been particularly
anxious to dismantle Mossad networks inside
Lebanon that have used everyone from a Druze
villager in the southern village of Hasbaya to
Sudanese doormen in Beirut's Shi'ite al-Daahiah
suburbs to pinpoint buildings affiliated with
Hezbollah or that house its cadres. A Lebanese
source said the reward was US$1,000 per verified
target.
Israeli intelligence has
reportedly equipped collaborators inside Lebanon
with radios and sophisticated satellite equipment
to stay in contact and receive sensitive
information on Hezbollah's movements. In one case,
it was discovered that Israeli spies in south
Beirut were marking buildings with crosses that
were invisible to the naked eye but could be
detected by sensors inside Israeli fighter jets.
Hezbollah members have launched several
raids in the past few months and especially in the
aftermath of the war in a bid to counter this
phenomenon. In one case, they discovered
equipment, according to the source from southern
Lebanon, that allowed informants to pinpoint the
exact geographic coordinates of a target.
In addition, an Israeli website
specializing on intelligence affairs
(www.debka.com) revealed that Hezbollah's security
service has begun, in the northern Bekaa Valley,
Baalbek and southern Lebanon, rounding up people
suspected of tipping off Israeli intelligence on
the location of the storehouse holding long-range,
Iranian-supplied Zelzal missiles. These missiles,
the website notes, were held in reserve as
Hezbollah's most devastating weapon but were
destroyed in the first 34 minutes of the Lebanon
war on July 12, according to Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert.
After the Israeli
army's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and
until Hezbollah's dogged fighters earned their
party a strategic victory during the recent war,
there was spreading dissatisfaction reported in
the formerly occupied areas among Lebanese who had
desisted from collaborating with Israel. The
common perception was that members of Israel's
South Lebanon Army proxy earned $2,000 a month for
little more than guard duty and could afford to
build themselves opulent villas, with little more
punishment than four months' imprisonment and a
pardon after 2000.
But the current spate
of defection is unlikely to continue, given
Israel's track record of sending such cases back
to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
"I have my doubts that this will continue,
as the other side [Israel] usually calls us within
a day and hands them back to us, and we hand them
over to the Lebanese authorities," a UNIFIL source
said.
Iason Athanasiadis is an
Iran-based correspondent.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
.)
