June Saturday 3-2000:

Introduction

Hizbullah's Secretary General H.E. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stressed that the Lebanese who collaborated with "Israel" must be tried as "partners in crime and not as individuals", warning of the danger of their immediate return to villages in South Lebanon. Also, he vowed that the resistance against "Israel" will continue "as long as one inch of land" remains occupied.

Meanwhile, Lebanon expressed reservations regarding the views of the international teams over the demarcation of South Lebanon with Beirut sticking firmly to its demand that "Israel" relinquish three locations it still holds within Lebanese territory.

Nasrallah: lock up "Israeli" agents or deport them…(1)

"The fight against "Israel" will continue so long as one inch of the Shibaa Farms remains occupied, even if the United Nations rules that the Jewish state has indeed implemented Resolution 425, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared on Friday.
Hizbullah’s secretary-general also cautioned against leniency toward militiamen who served in the "Israeli"-proxy militia during the occupation, saying they would have to either be locked up in prisons or sent abroad, but not allowed back to southern villages.
Nasrallah spoke at a rally in Haret Hreik to commemorate the martyrdom of 11 resistance fighters martyred in operations against "Israel" during their three-day withdrawal last week.
“These martyrs are the luckiest because they witnessed both the honor of the victory and the honor of martyrdom,” he said, drawing loud cries of Allahu Akbar from tens of thousands who had gathered for the event.
While he said it was the government’s prerogative to either accept or repudiate the border demarcation by United Nations experts, Nasrallah advised people to carefully monitor the process and support the government in its struggle to recover Lebanese territory.
“I wonder whether the UN, the US or anybody else in the world really thinks that the Lebanese will give up an inch of their land?” he asked.
He added that the resistance had forced the "Israelis" to change their withdrawal plans, transforming what was supposed to be a “strategic pullout into a chaotic rout.”
He warned against postponing critical issues for future negotiations with the Jewish state, including the Shibaa Farms and the fate of detainees in "Israeli" prisons.
“We don’t care about the political translation of Resolution 425 or 242, what we care about is that we want the Shibaa farms, which are part of our land no matter what,” he said.
He advised the Palestinians that they should not count on negotiations if they want to compel "Israelis" to return their land.
“I assure you that negotiations will not lead anywhere,” he said, adding that "Israeli" Prime Minister Ehud Barak “always says that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of "Israel" and is not willing to give up one street of it.”
Jerusalem, he said, lay at the heart of the Arab-"Israeli" conflict.
He noted that 1967 and 1982, the dates of the "Israeli" conquest of Jerusalem and Beirut respectively, were years that were engraved in the memory of all Arabs.
“We’re even with the "Israelis" on the second count because our land has been liberated, and we’re still waiting for the liberation of Jerusalem to erase the memory of 1967,” he said.
Nasrallah said the issue of the defunct collaborators was delicate and was creating a culture of fear among some pockets of the community. He added that it was the government’s duty to assuage these fears.
“The president, the premier, the speaker, MPs and ministers ­ all of them tried to tell these people not to worry,” he said.
“But we should be careful not to go to the other extreme, though, and start promising that the "Israeli" agents will be released soon,” he added.
To do this, he continued, would be a slap in the face to those who had known militia oppression and were counting on justice to be served.
“We’ve heard of a group of Lebanese lawyers who are planning to defend militiamen before the Lebanese courts, and it’s shameful to find in Lebanon people willing to defend them,” he said.
“All "Israeli" agents, no matter what there religion, are collaborators in the crimes that occurred, and they should get the punishment they deserve,” he added, though he assured his listeners that Hizbullah members would not seek revenge.
“Whenever one of us sees a collaborator, he has orders to inform either military intelligence or the Internal Security Forces,” he said.
“We’re counting on the judiciary to make sure that no mother sees the killer of her son walking free in the village.”
Nasrallah cautioned politicians against trying to pressure the judiciary into freeing the militiamen, and said that if any of the collaborators were released they should be barred from returning to their villages.
“Let the government send them abroad, or put them in a rehabilitation center. But don’t allow them to go back to their homes,” he said.

Beirut hammers away over border
Differences remain, but Larsen says agreement is within reach…(2)

"Lebanon and the United Nations remained locked in arduous negotiations over the demarcation of the southern border on Friday, with Beirut sticking firmly to its demand that "Israel" relinquish three locations it still holds within Lebanese territory.
Nevertheless, UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen was optimistic that an agreement would soon be reached.
“We have, by and large, reached an agreement on all relevant issues related to the implementation of Resolution 425,” he said after three-and-a-half hours of talks with President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Salim Hoss at Baabda.
Also on hand were Major General Jamil Sayyed, the head of the Surete Generale; Zouheir Hamdan, director-general of the Foreign Minister; and Yehya Mahmasani, a senior diplomat at the Foreign Ministry.
Larsen said there were “three sticking points which remain to be looked into,” adding that “I have good reason to believe that we’ll be able to bridge the remaining gap.”
“The atmosphere of the talks is … very constructive,” he said.
The presidential palace said in a statement that Lebanon “expressed reservations regarding the views of the international teams on three locations between Rmeish and Metulla, as well as an area along the southeastern edge of the border.”
The areas in question are where "Israel" had pushed the border fence into Lebanese territory to occupy high ground with dominant views of the south.
On Wednesday, Lebanon accused the UN border verification teams of showing bias toward "Israel" over the line to which the "Israeli" Army is required to withdraw. The boundary being demarcated by the UN team is supposed to follow the original Anglo-French border delineated in 1923.
The statement added that Lebanon also insisted “that a solution to the Shibaa Farms is a vital component of the Lebanese position as well as the need to release all detainees in "Israeli" prisons and repatriate all the bodies of resistance martyrs.”
The Shibaa Farms and the release of detainees inside "Israel" were excluded from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report on the implementation of Resolution 425. The UN has promised to help secure the release of the detainees and has suggested that the sovereignty of the Shibaa Farms could be settled separately.
“They concluded the meeting agreeing that the international team would present proposals regarding the pending issues,” the statement said, although it was unclear if the Shibaa farms was included among the pending issues.
A conclusion of the border demarcation and verification that "Israel" has withdrawn in compliance with 425 would allow UNIFIL to begin deploying in vacated areas. The government has said it will not consider sending Lebanese troops to the South until after UNIFIL has deployed along the border. However, France has decided against sending extra troops to Lebanon unless Lebanese soldiers are also present along the frontier.
Larsen said he would travel to "Israel" on Saturday to meet Premier Ehud Barak in a bid to conclude the verification process.

Le Monde: agent Robin Aboud insulted "Israeli" general, accused him of selling the militia…(3)

What happened in south Lebanon? Did the "Israeli" occupation's militia collapse, or did the occupation army's command betray its puppet militia?

These questions were raised by the French newspaper Le Monde which published on Thursday a report with the title "Israel's" former mercenaries blame Barak for their collapse".

"Twenty-four hours after the former Lahd militia, including Robin Abboud and his family, crossed the border into "Israel" to flee Hizbullah's advance, Aboud confronted the commander of the liaison unit between "Israeli" and the militia, Gen Beny Gantz and said to him, "You, the Jews, are a low ungrateful contemptible people; your prime minister (Ehud Barak) is a frantic dog; we will raise our children to hate "Israel" and breastfeed them with our venom against you. You can't trust Barak, for he will sell you like he sold us, when the turn of the Golan comes," Le Monde wrote.

Gen. Gantz was the commander of the unit that ran the political, administrative and operational communications between ""Israel"" and Lahd's militia; the two men (Gantz and Aboud) dealt closely with one another for years, but Col. Aboud chose to hold his old "colleague" responsible for the defeat besides accusing him of preparing a plot that led to the militia's collapse in order to explain the "Israeli" pullout from south Lebanon, it added.

Occupation encounters problems in settling collaborators…(4)
Canada's immigration ministry refused to receive the "Israeli" occupation's collaborators who had run the al-Khiam detention center and those accused by Amnesty International of practicing torture.

Germany said it would receive 400 of the collaborators' families.

A spokesman for the German interior ministry said that Bonn's acceptance to give asylum to the Lebanese was upon a request from ""Israel"" and for "humanitarian reasons".

The spokesman said ""Israel"" was surprised by the wave of Lebanese refugees after its withdrawal.

He said ""Israel"" will be paying the residence costs for the Lebanese in Germany for a year.

Germany expects to receive forty Lebanese families within two weeks.

Lebanese hurl stones, bottles at "Israeli" troops across border…(5)

" Singing "we will rock you," Lebanese students hurled stones and bottles Friday at "Israeli" soldiers across the border, resuming protests they staged last week following the "Israeli" withdrawal.

The protest begun peacefully when male and female high school students sang at Fatima gate between "Israel" and Lebanon, prompting the soldiers on the other side to clap their hands.

Then another group of students, some wearing Islamic scarves, started to sing a song by the British group Queen, "we will, we will rock you," playing on the word "rock".

They picked up rocks and other objects and threw them at the soldiers, who retreated to their sentry boxes behind tall steel fencing.

When asked why they did what they did, one student replied: "We wanted to let loose."

On May 28, four days after the "Israeli" withdrawal, three young Lebanese and one Palestinian were wounded in the leg by bullets or grenade fragements while throwing stones over the metal fence.

Some of the stonethrowers even ventured to the "Israeli" side.

Militiamen interrogated…(6)

Four Military Examining Magistrates interrogated 69 members of the disintegrated "Israeli"-allied militia on Friday, bringing to 379 the number of militiamen who have appeared for questioning since the sessions began last week on the heels of the "Israeli" withdrawal.
Meanwhile, Chief Military Examining Magistrate Riad Talih accused 13 militiamen from Hasbaya of collaborating with a wartime enemy.
Ninety-two militia detainees have now been charged and the Military Tribunal is due to start prosecuting them on Monday. The indictments will be issued on the same day.
Talih had recommended that all those charged serve between three to 15 years in prison with hard labor.
Around 1,700 militiamen have so far surrendered to the Lebanese authorities to stand trial before the Military Tribunal.

Torchlight vigils announced for June…(7)

To celebrate the liberation of the south, media and political officials announced Friday that June 4 and 5 of each year will feature candlelight vigils dedicated to the Lebanese victory.
“These candles will be the sign of the Lebanese victory over the "Israeli" Army which was forced to retreat from Lebanese territory,” Nasser Qandil, head of the National Audio- Visual Media Council said in a news conference.
“Lebanese and Arabs all over the country and the world are being called upon to light candles on their balconies or windows during these two nights to signal the start of a new era.”
The June dates were chosen because these days marked a period of heavy shelling prior to "Israel's" June 6, 1982, invasion.
Various MPs, political heavyweights, and media officials attended the news conference at NAVMC headquarters.
The head of the Press Federation, Mohammed Baalbaki, said that the media had contributed to the liberation by confronting the “"Israeli" media’s lies.”
Tyre MP Mohammed Abdel-Hamid Beydoun said that the Lebanese had lifted the feeling of defeat from all Arabs.
“We call on every Lebanese citizen to light a candle ... to a new Lebanon and national unity,” Beydoun said.
Manar television’s Nayef Krayyem said the media deserved to be recognized for its resistance to the "Israeli".

Hanine: A story of village suffering an "Israeli" destruction…(8)

“Let’s go to the western neighborhood and see what the "Israelis" did to grandpa’s house,” seven-year-old Hussein Soufan suggested excitedly to his younger sister Zeinab.
The two children ran through overgrown fields and above the torn-down houses of the village of Hanine, Bint Jbeil, which was destroyed by the "Israelis" in 1976.
The only thing Soufan, who was born in Tyre, knows about his village comes from the stories his grandfather told him when he was growing up.
“I also remember a black-and white picture of my grandmother pounding meat in the garden of her house,” he said.
Only a few meters away, on the village’s main road, stood four tents. Nearby, around 50 white plastic chairs were set out for visitors.
Issam Qashaqesh pitched his tent over the ruins of his former home, explaining: “I stayed away from my village for 24 years and I am here today to challenge time.”
Around 2,500 people lived in Hanin before 1976; now, save for the tent-dwellers, it is deserted. “I am here because this is my land,” Qashaqesh said, adding that other villagers would be arriving next month, after the school year ended.
Qashaqesh said he was anxious about the government’s plans for the area and hoped it would begin compensating people so they could rebuild their homes. In another part of the village a bulldozer roared. Workers from Jihad Al-Binaa, a construction firm with Hizbullah ties, were completing public bathrooms and doling out water to locals. Mohammed Qashaqesh, 18 and a distant relative of Issam, regrets that he did not get to spend his childhood in his home village. “The most beautiful part of one’s life is youth and I feel my childhood has gone to waste because I was never in my village,” said Qashaqesh, who was born in the town of Aqbieh near Sidon.
Another man, in Hanine to reclaim his land, could not afford a tent but turned his van into a makeshift home. “I have an apartment in Beirut. The only reason I’m here now is because I want my children to know that they have a village and used to have a home in that village,” Mohammed Soufan said.
He predicted difficult times ahead for his children.
“It’s going to be tough for them because they grew up in the city and have no idea what living in a village is like. My wife and I are going to try to get them accustomed to Hanine by taking them on a tour and telling them how each neighborhood used to be,” he said.
As he spoke, UNIFIL vehicles filled with Irish soldiers, approached the village. Accompanied by some foreign reporters, the peacekeepers listened to Soufan as he explained how the houses were destroyed.
“Even the mosque did not escape the "Israeli" shelling,” Soufan said. Mohammed Fadlallah handed out sweets to the visitors and criticized the government for failing to help the southerners.
“There are 250 houses that were destroyed and people are living out in the open. But not one government official has visited us to check on us. Don’t we deserve a visit?” he asked.
Meanwhile, children dribbled a ball through a demolished house. They screamed and adults ran over to discover a snake had frightened the youngsters. Soufan killed the snake, promising the children that he would guard over them at night. He told them they could sleep soundly and had nothing to fear.
“Until the government does something, this is how it’s going to be,” Soufan said.

Woman who almost killed Lahd returns to old cell at Khiam…(9)

"Neither the 10 years Soha Beshara spent at Khiam prison nor her emotional release in 1998 made her cry.
It was only on Friday, when she finally revisited her former cell, that the woman who tried to assassinate the "Israeli"-proxy militia commander Antoine Lahd in 1988 was reduced to tears.
“This is the first time I’ve cried but I’m crying because of the joy and pride I feel being here a free woman and following our victory over the enemy,” Beshara said as she stood in the solitary confinement cell to which she was often sent.
“This is the first time I’ve realized how small it is,” she said. “In the past, I used to feel that it was limitless. But now, one can see more clearly the reality of our suffering.”
Beshara, 33, was released in September 1998.
Beshara’s detention for trying to kill Lahd turned her into a national symbol of resistance.
Her efforts to keep spirits high among the other detainees played a tremendous role in keeping their faith.
The one thing that Beshara cannot get out of her mind, particularly now that she was back at the place which caused so much suffering for so many people, is the detainees who passed away in detention. “They’re the only people on my mind at the moment,” she said.
Scanning her cell once again, Beshara described how she used to cut pieces of bread into squares to play chess with an inmate.
She also used to occupy herself by thinking of ways to entertain her friends.
“I used to pass them on secretly,” she said. Insisting on remaining strong and sane, Beshara would pace her cell daily in an attempt to walk at least 4.5 kilometers a day.
One of the painful ordeals she experienced was watching through the bars of other cells as her fellow inmates were being tortured. Although light filtered through to her cell during the day, Beshara rarely got to feel the sun.
“What can I say?” she replied when insistent reporters asked her how she felt being back at Khiam. “I’m very happy and very proud of what has been achieved. You do have to believe this is actually the first time I cried.”

"Israel" must explain killing of civilians in final spasm of violence…(10)

"Israel's" occupation of Lebanon had less than 24 hours to go when Abed Taqqoush, a long-time driver for the BBC and other foreign news organizations, became the last civilian fatality of the 22-year conflict.
Taqqoush, who had survived the civil war as well as subsequent conflicts in the south driving for foreign journalists, was killed when a tank shell hit his parked Mercedes. The round was fired by an "Israeli" Merkava tank outside the "Israeli" settlement of Manara on the border.
Veteran BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen and Reuters cameraman Malek Kenaan were filming about 100 meters from the car when it was hit. Both Bowen and Kenaan were pinned down for an hour by an "Israeli" machine-gunner while Taqqoush’s body remained in his blazing car.
Taqqoush’s killing has prompted separate investigations by the BBC and Amnesty International into the circumstances surrounding the attack. Amnesty is also examining the killing of two other civilians a day earlier, also by an "Israeli" tank in almost exactly the same location.
On May 23, "Israel's" occupation was drawing to a rapid close. The day before, hundreds of former residents of Houla and Markaba in the central sector had streamed into their villages as the "Israel's" proxy militia collapsed and fled. On Monday night, the western sector folded completely, isolating the "Israeli" troops and remaining militiamen to the eastern and northern sectors. By Tuesday morning, thousands of civilians and fighters were pouring into the abandoned western sector.
The Daily Star’s Nicholas Blanford ran into Taqqoush, 54, in Blida at the southern end of the central sector shortly before midday. “He was clearly delighted to be working with the BBC again,” said Blanford. “His face was lit up in a huge grin.”
Bowen told Blanford that he, Taqqoush, and Kenaan were planning to head to the frontline area of Odaisseh. “We were planning to go to Odaisseh as well, so I said I’d see them there,” Blanford recalled.
Less than 20 minutes later, as Blanford drove through Meis al-Jabal, he heard an explosion and saw smoke rising north of the village. “We were told that an "Israeli" tank was shelling the road and a civilian had been killed in his car,” he said. “I didn’t know it was Abed until later.”
Taqqoush had stopped his car 2.5 kilometers north of Meis al-Jabal. Bowen wanted to film the border area, including the settlement of Manara and a group of "Israeli" civilians standing at an observation point overlooking Lebanon.
Knowing that they were being observed by "Israeli" troops, Bowen, who was wearing a distinctly unmilitary pink shirt, waved his hands in the air to signal that they were civilians. Bowen and Kenaan then walked on about 100 meters to set up the tripod and camera equipment.
“Two minutes later, there was huge explosion,” said Bowen. “I looked and there was a huge fireball. At first I thought the grass was on fire but then I realized that it wasn’t the grass.”
Just as they were about to run to the car to see if Taqqoush had somehow survived, Bowen and Kenaan came under machine-gun fire. “I felt I should try and rescue him,” said Bowen. “I still feel bad.”
Instead, the two ran for cover behind the wall of a nearby petrol station. At one point, the machine guns fell silent and they saw some people walking down the road. “I stood up and the firing began again,” said Bowen.
The shooting also prevented Red Cross workers from retrieving Taqqoush’s body.
Pinned down behind the wall, Bowen called "Israeli" Army spokesman Sharon Gringha.
“Who is doing this? I demanded,” he recalled.
“Gringha replied: ‘It was the militia.’ Of course the militia.”
A quarter of an hour later, contact was made again. Gringha reportedly said that it was difficult to organize a cease-fire since he was uncertain who was doing the shooting. “So in 15 minutes, he went from blaming the militia to being unsure who was responsible,” said Bowen. “"Israel" must keep a log of what was fired. It was just after midday because I looked at my watch. They must know who fired.”
An hour later, the shooting stopped and Taqqoush’s body was finally recovered.
The initial "Israeli" excuse that their allies had conducted the attack immediately fell flat on two counts. First, there were no militiamen in the area. They had all fled to "Israel" or turned themselves in to the Lebanese Army during the previous night. Furthermore, the militiamen never operated from inside "Israel".
Secondly, the killing of Taqqoush by an "Israeli" tank was witnessed by several reporters on the "Israeli" side of the border ­ the crowd of civilians which Bowen had been filming at the viewpoint beside Manara.
One British reporter contacted The Daily Star to give his account of what had happened. He said he had seen an "Israeli" Merkava parked in some trees fire a shell into the car.
“I saw it fire, I saw the smoke from the barrel, and I saw hit it a car in Lebanon,” he said.
The tragedy became all the more sinister when the British reporter’s "Israeli" driver overheard some soldiers speaking in Hebrew. “One of the soldiers said into a radio ‘two terrorists escaped’ and he then directed the machine-gun fire at the two civilians,” he recalled.
The reporter said it was clear to everyone that the car was carrying civilians and was non-plussed at why the "Israeli" Army had opened fire on them.
However, the killing was not without precedent. During the collapse of the central sector the day before, two civilians were killed by an "Israeli" tank just 200 meters down the road from where Taqqoush died.
Blanford and American photojournalist Stephen Wallace had a narrow escape shortly afterward when another, or possibly the same, tank fired at them as they stood on the side of the road just south of Houla and about 1.5 kilometers north of the petrol station where the two civilians had just been killed and Taqqoush was to die the next day.
The shell exploded 5 meters away. Both reporters escaped unhurt thanks to the soft verge on the far side of the road, which absorbed the impact. Seconds later, the "Israelis" fired a machine gun and an anti-tank missile at a group of reporters, civilians and fighters, forcing them to retreat around the corner toward Houla.
The death of Taqqoush, who worked for the BBC for 25 years, has prompted the British television company to conduct its own investigation.
“We’re conducting an investigation on both the Lebanese and "Israeli" sides,” said Adrian Wells, who is heading the BBC investigation. “Our initial findings point to an "Israeli" tank being responsible for firing a shell at the car.”
Their findings are based on various eyewitness reports and video footage which shows that the shell could only have come from a tank located inside "Israel".
If "Israel's" justification for firing was that it believed Bowen, Taqqoush and Kenaan were “terrorists” aiming weapons at them instead of cameras, Wells said, then “then why was the car hit and not the people holding the ‘military equipment’?”
Also, it took at least two minutes for Bowen and Kenaan to walk 100 meters from the car and set up the camera equipment ­ plenty of time for the "Israelis" to realize that the man in the pink shirt was a journalist.
Wells added: “If the press people in Manara could see that it was a journalist working on the Lebanese side, why couldn’t the "Israeli" military?”
Amnesty International’s Claudio Cordone, who arrived in Lebanon last week to investigate the killing of civilians during the "Israeli" retreat, said that the Jewish state could be sued if it was proven that "Israel" was responsible for the deaths.
“If it was an "Israeli" tank firing at civilian cars knowing that they were civilians then this is as a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” he said. “The principle of the law is that there must always be a distinction between civilians and military. We don’t yet know if this is the case here but we’re looking into it.”
If it can be proven that "Israel" intentionally fired a shell at a civilian, then according to international law, “any country has the authority to bring this country to justice,” Cordone said.
The soldier who fired the shell can then be held responsible, he added, and the state would have to compensate the victim’s family and re-evaluate its military tactics.
For Taqqoush ­ much loved by hundreds of journalists worldwide ­ the end came as he was talking to his son Mohammed, 21, on a cellular phone.
Mohammed said that his father had been excited at watching the "Israelis" withdraw from Lebanon. “He told me” ‘You should see it down here. A settlement is right next to me and it looks beautiful,’” Mohammed recalled.
Suddenly, the line went dead.
Mohammed thought it was just a bad connection.
Taqqoush’s wife, Hana, was cleaning the apartment when the phone rang.
“Abed is hurt,” she was told by a cousin who happened to be in the South. Hana tried in vain to call her husband on his cellular. She too thought there was a bad signal. Then she heard a commotion in her neighbor’s apartment. After hearing Taqqoush’s name on television, a woman was screaming.
But she refused to tell Hana what was wrong.
The phone rang again. It was an uncle. “I’m sorry about Abed’s death,” he told her.
Hana collapsed. “Abed was my mother, father, uncle, sister, brother,” she said tearfully. “I’m nothing without him.”
Taqqoush had one dream: for his three children to attend university. Every penny he earned went toward his children’s college fund. He himself was forced to leave school at an early age to support his family. He worked until he saved up to buy a car and drove foreign tourists around Lebanon. They were his first teachers of the English language.
“He’d come home and tell me of a new English word he had picked up that day,” said Hana. “And according to how he pronounced it, we looked it up in the dictionary.”
In time, he became fluent in English and landed a job with the BBC and America’s NBC. He quickly became known as a font of local knowledge. He had contacts in every part of Lebanon ­ foreign journalists couldn’t do without him. Known for his dedication to his work, Taqqoush was continuously on the phone informing various journalists of any unfolding events.
“He got the whole family involved,” said Hana. “My son was preparing to collect a Japanese reporter from the airport when he was killed. Abed had called up several times to make sure that we wouldn’t forget. Abed never forgot anyone.”

Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon storm "Israel" borders…(11)

"Some 3,000 Palestinians from refugee camps in Lebanon rushed the barbed wire fencing on the border with "Israel" on Friday, reuniting with family on the other side and calling to "liberate Palestine."

The refugees gathered at the southern end of this tiny village, east of the coastal town of Naqoura, while around 500 Palestinians from "Israel" and others from Gaza and the West Bank pressed against the fence from the other side.

They first exchanged gifts, candies, traditional dishes and letters over the barbed wire fencing, but in their enthusiasm the crowd on the Lebanese side flattened the barbed wire and came within a metre (yard) of the border fence.

"Israeli" soldiers fired three smoke bombs, but the youths hurled stones in reply, at which they took cover behind military jeeps and a truck, as the crowd surged forward to meet again at the fence.

The soldiers made no further attempt to intervene, but after four hours they indicated to the "Israeli" Arabs that it was time to go home, and they left the area.

The occasion was an emotional meeting of families and friends who had been kept apart by 22 years of "Israeli" occupation of the southern border zone which ended on May 24, but it took on more militant overtones as well.

Some of those present hung red, black, white and green Palestinian flags on the barbed wire, and chanted: Palestine is Arab land.

A teenage girl, who had come with about 50 other youngsters by bus from Beirut, grabbed the barbed wire, and oblivious of the blood on her hands, shouted across to a group of about 15 people of her own age on the other side:

"We have come from Sabra and Shatila. You have heard about the massacre. They killed our families... Lebanon has liberated its own land by fighting "Israel". Do the same thing, we are counting on you."

Some 80 buses and minibuses had brought the Palestinians from the camps in Lebanon, while others drove to the border in their own cars. At one point in the early afternoon the queue snaked back for more than a kilometer (about a mile).

Those on the "Israeli" side had come mainly from the Upper Galilee, with a few from the West Bank.

Most of them were dressed in western fashion, with some of the girls even wearing shorts and with their hair flying loose, pointing up the contrast with those from the camps, who were dressed mainly in the traditional style of dress they wore when they fled their Galilee villages in 1948 -- women in ankle-length dresses and their heads covered.

On both sides they sang traditional songs and formed circles to perform the typical Palestinian folkdance.

There are some 350,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, half of whom live in 13 camps scattered around the country, mostly in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese constitution forbids their permanent settlement for fear of upsetting the country's delicate community balance, and their eventual fate remains one of the outstanding issues in any peace deal that "Israel" makes with either Lebanon or the Palestinians.

Footnotes:

1-            The Daily Star, 3-6-2000.

2-            Same source.

3-            Manar TV, 2-6-2000.

4-            Same source.

5-            AFP, 2-6-2000.

6-            The Daily Star, 3-6-2000.

7-            Same source.

8-            Same source.

9-            Same source.

10-         Same source.

11-         AFP, 2-6-2000.