Between Israel, Lebanon, They Have No Home

NAHARIYA, Israel â€”  For most of his adult life, 35-year-old Robert Fares fought alongside Israeli soldiers in his homeland of Lebanon. He was an intelligence officer in the South Lebanon Army, the proxy militia Israel set up after its 1982 invasion, and the Israelis were his friends, brothers-in-arms who dined in his home, met his family and called him up when in need.

That world collapsed in May 2000, when Israel hurriedly pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon after 18 years. With only a few hours’ warning, hundreds of SLA soldiers were forced to flee, chased into Israel by guerrillas from the radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

Battle-scarred SLA soldiers wept, unsure they would ever set foot in their native land again. But they were confident that Israel, which had funded, equipped and trained their army, would take care of them, just as it had said it would.

Three years later, many of these displaced SLA veterans feel betrayed and humiliated by the same state whose existence they helped safeguard.

They have not been granted Israeli citizenship. They struggle to fit into a society in which Jews and Arabs alike regard them with suspicion. Claiming modest government benefits is a bureaucratic nightmare, yet Israel offers payments of $30,000 for them to go back to Lebanon.

Hundreds have opted to return to their homeland, preferring to risk jail time and punishment as traitors than to stay in a foreign country that seems eager to be rid of them.

The SLA veterans who remain in the Jewish state live mostly in the north, in towns like this one, often in sight of the hills where they grew up. A large number of these proud former soldiers are out of work and dejected, reduced to waiting for government relief measures that are slow to pass, for job-training programs that never get off the ground. Many have staged protests demanding better treatment from the Israeli government.

“We were friends. You shouldn’t behave like this with friends who worked together like we did,� said Fares, in tones edged with steel. “We’re asking for respect.�

The Israel-SLA partnership began shortly after Israel pushed into Lebanon to besiege the Palestine Liberation Organization, then based in West Beirut. The invasion turned into a protracted, bloody occupation that many Israelis call their Vietnam.

By 1985, Israel had pulled back to an approximately 400-square-mile zone along the border that it said it needed to prevent attacks on northern Israel. To maintain the zone, Israel sponsored the SLA, a 2,500-man militia of mostly Lebanese Christians. The Israel Defense Forces built roads, hospitals and schools for its allies to strengthen their loyalty.

“They said that our army is like part of the IDF, and every soldier of ours deserves what an IDF soldier deserves,� Fares recalled.

When the IDF pulled out, about 7,500 refugees -- SLA men and their dependents --followed them. Within hours, Hezbollah fighters overran southern Lebanon and celebrated by trashing cars the SLA fighters had abandoned on the Lebanese side of the border.

The SLA veterans spent their first chaotic weeks in a series of Israeli hotels, hostels and kibbutzim. Senior army commanders and politicians spoke of the moral duty to care for their former comrades. Israelis flooded the new arrivals with donations of clothes, toys, diapers and food.

The soldiers were paid monthly rent subsidies and given grants to furnish their apartments. Special campuses were set up for Lebanese children. Companies tried to find jobs for veterans with skills.

But four months after their arrival, Israel found itself embroiled in the Palestinian intifada, the current uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that has killed hundreds and decimated the economy.

The SLA veterans soon saw their plight elbowed out of the public eye. To more and more Israelis, the Lebanese soldiers began to look like the Palestinians and Arabs they increasingly distrusted; to Israeli Arabs, the men were mercenaries who collaborated with the Israeli military and deserved to be shunned.

Desperate for help, some SLA men looked up old buddies in the Israeli army. Some got a sympathetic hearing, but others were dismayed when their calls went unreturned or, even more humiliating, when Israeli soldiers who were once their frequent dinner guests and lodgers in Lebanon claimed not to recognize their former hosts.

“They’ve forgotten our names,� Nabil Asmar, a former SLA intelligence officer, said angrily. “I told them, ‘I served with you for 12 years.’ They said, ‘You won’t get anything from us.’ �

“They expect all those senior officers they worked with to help them, to visit them,� said Yoseph Peled, who was the Israeli army’s northern commander from 1986 to 1991. “I’m absolutely sure if I were in their place, I’d feel the same, maybe more. You can’t blame them.�

Peled headed a committee created by the Defense Ministry to deal with the SLA resettlement issue. He both defends the government’s efforts to help the SLA soldiers and acknowledges that not enough has been done.

His panel has disbanded, but Peled still lobbies on the soldiers’ behalf. His greatest victory, he said, was convincing officials last spring to renew the soldiers’ expiring three-year benefits package, mostly rent subsidies, for another three years. A two-child family receives up to $500 a month for rent. If one parent works, the family receives an extra $330 a month, as an incentive for the adults to find jobs. But the extra aid is a mirage in most SLA communities, where unemployment is as high as 75%.

Peled and others acknowledge that various bureaucratic tie-ups have conspired to worsen the situation for the exiles. For example, although their background as soldiers makes them logical candidates for security-guard jobs, the law forbids noncitizens from owning and handling guns. Officials said that exceptions were being made, but mostly on an ad hoc basis.

“Frankly speaking, I’m quite ashamed of how the Israeli government has treated the former SLA soldiers,� said lawmaker Ephraim Sneh. “I don’t say that we didn’t open the gate for them; I don’t say we didn’t facilitate their absorption here. But there’s a discrepancy between the sacrifice they made and the treatment they receive.�

The government’s most resented decision was to transfer responsibility for most SLA veterans last year from the Ministry of Defense, which takes care of Israel’s soldiers, to the Ministry of Absorption, which takes care of Israel’s new immigrants.

To many of the veterans, it was another indication that they were deemed less worthy than the Israeli troops with whom they had fought.

“They think of us in the army as though we are [willing] immigrants to this country,� said Fares, who ekes out a living as a house painter. “But we are not.�

Israeli officials wouldn’t detail what benefits Israeli soldiers got, but said the SLA veterans under the Ministry of Absorption were entitled to more assistance than regular immigrants.

Still, hundreds of ex-SLA soldiers, whether out of homesickness or disgust at their treatment -- or a combination -- have left. Only about 2,500 of the original 7,500 SLA refugees remain in Israel, said Ran Melamed, associate director of Yedid, a community empowerment group. Of the 5,000 who left, about 1,000 went to Lebanon, while the rest moved to other countries.

The decision to return to Lebanon is not an easy one. Many former soldiers have been tried and sentenced to prison in absentia; high-ranking officers have been sentenced to death. But if they go back, Israel offers a send-off of at least $30,000, based on their years of service and number of children.

The ex-soldiers say a significant portion of that money gets doled out as bribes for safe passage to the Hezbollah guerrillas who control southern Lebanon. In effect, Israeli funds are being given to a militant group officially dedicated to Israel’s extinction. Lebanese judges also take payoffs in return for waived or shortened sentences.

Critics say that the not-so-subtle message of the handsome farewell packages is that Israel would prefer to see their Lebanese allies leave rather than stay.

“This was pretty much a strategic decision, with the thought that the families’ stay in Israel would cost more in the long run,� said Zion Eshel, an Israeli who has taken up the soldiers’ cause.

But for many of the veterans still in Israel, a return to Lebanon is out of the question because of possible retribution.

Without Israeli citizenship or passports, they cannot emigrate from Israel except under special circumstances, such as the periodic agreements Israel reaches with other nations to take in ex-SLA soldiers and their families.

A new bill in the Israeli parliament seeks to grant citizenship to those SLA veterans who want it, as well as compensation for their losses because of Israel’s military pullout. But the bill’s chances of passage are unclear.

For now, Nabil Asmar, a former SLA intelligence officer, feels stuck.

“I can’t go back. If I do, money will do nothing for me. They will hang me because I was in intelligence,� he said. “I don’t have any choice. Not me. Not my family.�