If
the parents of the three “Israeli” soldiers captured by Hizbullah want to
secure the swift return of their sons, Hassan Balhas has the solution.“Release my son and the rest of our detainees,” he said. “Just let them go. The “Israelis” should have released our detainees a long time ago, then none of this would have happened. They only have themselves to blame.”
Hassan’s son, Ali, has spent nine years of a life sentence locked up inside an “Israeli” prison after being wounded and captured in the occupation zone on Nov. 12, 1992.
He is one of 13 Lebanese detainees known to be still languishing in “Israeli” jails.
The bulk of the prisoners were detained and sentenced for participating in resistance operations in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Two of them, Sheikh Abdel-Karim Obeid, a senior Hizbullah cleric, and Mustafa Dirani, the head of the Believers’ Resistance, were kidnapped by “Israeli” commandos to be used as bargaining chips to win information on “Israeli” servicemen missing in Lebanon. Both are held under “administrative detention,” a system condemned by human rights groups in which detainees are kept confined without trial for renewable six-month periods.
Ali’s “crime” was to participate in an ambush in which an “Israeli” soldier was killed between Srobbine and Beit Lif in the western sector of the occupation zone, just a few kilometers from his home village of Siddiqine.
He was captured when he and a comrade came under fire from “Israeli” soldiers in the wake of the ambush. Ali’s companion was shot dead immediately. Ali took cover and returned fire with his rifle. But his fate was sealed when a helicopter gunship hovered into view and blasted his hiding place with machine-gun fire. He was wounded in the arm and waist and had most of his foot shot off in the fusillade. The “Israeli” soldiers stormed Ali’s position and captured him.
He was taken to “Israel” and sentenced to a prison term of 99 years a life sentence for the killing of the “Israeli” soldier.
Fatmeh Balhas, Ali’s mother, recalled hearing the news of her son’s capture two days later.
“When I heard the news, I lost all control of my emotions,” she said. “But I contained myself and relied on God. My husband was very upset. He walked off alone into the olive groves to cry. I ran after him and said ‘Thank God, he’s only been detained and not killed.’ Neither of us knew that he was in the resistance.”
The family was initially not sure whether Ali had been taken to the Khiam detention center run by the “Israeli”-proxy South Lebanon Army or to a jail in “Israel”. His whereabouts only became known six months later when a Red Cross official visited the Balhas family with a letter from Ali written from Ashkelon Prison in “Israel”.
“I cried for days when I received that first letter and thanked God he was still alive,” Fatmeh said.
Hassan and Fatmeh continue to receive letters from Ali every six months. Sometimes Ali sends them pictures he has made from sewn beads depicting themes of prison life: a manacled hand clutching a rose, a water jug inscribed with Allah, a dove flying beside a barred prison window. The Balhas family hang the pictures on the walls of their sparsely-furnished sitting room.
“He shares a cell with five or six other Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners,” said Hassan. “He’s in Nafha Prison in the desert now. He says he’s always hot and thirsty. He reads a lot in prison and has learned English and Hebrew.”
Fatmeh remembered her son as a quick learner when he was young. “He was a stubborn little boy, but not naughty,” she said. “Whatever he asked for he received, we always gave-in to him.”
“He was very good at memorizing poetry,” Hassan added. “He loved poetry, especially al-Muttanabi and Abu Nawas. He could read a poem just once or twice and then recite it. He used to write poetry too.”
When Ali left school at 17 having gained a baccalaureate, he told his parents that he
had found a job with an agricultural company.
“He would disappear for a day or two and then tell us that he had been in Beirut or the Bekaa on business,” Fatmeh said. “We suspected that he might have joined the resistance but he always denied it. Of course, after he was captured we knew that his absences had nothing to do with work. He had been on operations against the “Israelis”.
“I think he took the right path by joining the resistance,” she added. “He believed in defending his country and his people. There is no justification for the sentence that “Israel” gave him. He was not fighting in “Israel”, he was defending his own land against occupiers. That is not a crime.”
Short of actually freeing the Lebanese detainees, the “Israeli” government claims to be doing its utmost to secure the release of the three abducted soldiers. It has given the soldiers’ families considerable moral and material support, flying them to the United States and Europe to win the sympathy of the international community. The families are expected to be flown to Vienna in the next few days to view a videotape shot by an Indian UNIFIL peacekeeper a day after the soldiers were captured.
Amid all the international concern for the captive “Israelis”, the ostensible cause for their abduction in the first place has been overlooked, Fatmeh said.
Asked what her message to the mothers of the “Israelis” soldiers would be, she said: “I would tell the “Israeli” mothers that their government doesn’t care about their children. If the “Israeli” government was at all concerned about their children, they would have released ours. Their children will be released once our children are free. What would be the point of keeping them any longer?”