The Real Israeli Interests in Lebanon
By Israel Shahak
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
July 1996, pgs. 19, 111
When facing atrocities like those caused by the “Grapes of Wrath”
operation, it is more important than ever not to lose sight of the
real reasons the atrocities are committed. It means asking ourselves
what are the real Israeli interests in Lebanon. Those interests are
not connected with security of the northern Israeli localities. On
the contrary, the security of those places (and the sight of their
inhabitants sitting in their shelters) are an excuse for the pursuit
of the real Israeli interests.
The proof of this is simple: For almost seven years, from June 1985
to February 1992, there was no attack from Lebanon on Israeli
territory. Then in February 1992, Israel killed a Hezbollah leader,
Sheikh Mussawi, together with members of his family, while they were
driving in a car north of the “Security Zone” occupied by Israel and
its mercenary force, the “South Lebanon Army” (SLA). The first
shelling of Israel by the Hezbollah only occurred after this murder.
It is obvious that Israeli interests in keeping the “Security Zone”
under its control must be very great, because it risked a shelling
of its population in order to try and lessen the danger to the
“Zone” by killing a leader of the forces which up to that point had
not assaulted Israel.
What are those interests? We have to go back to the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 in order to understand them. One of the first
things that Israel did on invading Lebanon was to remove the customs
barriers separating the two countries, as far as entry of Israeli
merchandise is concerned.
Ordinary Lebanese goods are still forbidden to enter Israel,
although a brisk import of drugs (re-exported to other countries) is
going on. But Israeli merchandise enters Lebanon with the full
encouragement of the Israeli government, without paying custom
duties of any kind, and is also re-exported to other countries.
Needless to say, such a situation is totally unprecedented. It was
first seen as such even in August 1982, by that staunch Israeli
ally, Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel who, when meeting Israeli
Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Nahariya, made him very angry by
requesting that the customs barriers be restored at the
internationally recognized border between the two countries. Begin
angrily rejected the demand of his ally, who soon after was
assassinated under mysterious conditions, and there are no customs
barriers to this day. The Lebanese government had tried several
times to set customs north of the “Zone,” but each time the response
was an Israeli bombardment which lasted until the barriers again
were removed.
The presence of the Israeli navy in Lebanese territorial waters is
largely intended to protect Israeli trade.
Thus it can be presumed that the main Israeli aim in Lebanon is the
economic exploitation of this country and other Middle Eastern
states, and that the use of the “Zone” is to serve as an instrument
for the realization of this aim. “The solution” often proposed by
former Prime Minister Shimon Peres with regard to the “Zone” also
indicates real Israeli aims. He offered an Israeli withdrawal from
it, but only on condition that “the South Lebanon army will be
integrated in the Lebanese army.” That is, on condition that Israel
will continue to rule the “Zone.”
Let me now illustrate in some detail how the “Zone” functions, by
quoting from two articles by Ronen Bergman (Ha’ir, Tel Aviv’s Friday
newspaper, July 15 and 22, 1994) which, as the author himself
admits, rely exclusively on official Israeli sources. Bergman says
(July 15) that Lebanon is treated by Israel as an ordinary export
market.
By Israeli law, agricultural exports are a monopoly of a
government-owned company, “Agrexco,” the director of whose Lebanese
department, Yossi Tzafrir, and its present spokesman, Hayim Keller,
were Bergman’s crucial sources of information. Bergman also was
helped by the director of the Lebanese department in the Agriculture
Ministry, Benny Gabbay.
“Only since 1982 has all of Lebanon stood open to Israeli trade,”
says Tzafrir. He insists that tough measures on the part of the
Israeli security forces were, after the invasion, needed to enforce
the monopoly of “Agrexco,” which alone was allowed to deliver
Israeli agricultural produce to several locations right behind the
Lebanese border. A few duly authorized Lebanese merchants could
appear at those locations in order to buy what they were offered,
reload the merchandise onto their own trucks and transport it to
wherever they pleased.
But, complains Tzafrir, after the June 1985 Israeli withdrawal from
a large chunk of south Lebanon, “land traffic became problematic.”
At first Israel approached the SLA for help. Bergman complains about
the SLA’s incompetence and even obstacles set up by its commander,
General Antoine Lahad, to smooth operations of the Israeli trade.
He gives examples: “At all stages of Israeli trade with Lebanon and
other Arab countries, senior SLA officers insisted on pocketing a
hefty share of the profits. General Lahad’s private driver was one
of the main go-betweens between Israel and the Lebanese merchants,
notwithstanding the fact that the Israeli army branded him ‘a
butterfly’ on account of his cowardice.”
Bergman’s July 22 article describes in ample detail how General
Lahad would from time to time (apparently when he felt relatively
strong vis-a-vis Israel) temporarily ban imports of specific
commodities into his “Zone” in order to thus extort a heftier bribe.
Alternatives to the SLA
It was thus found advisable to search for a trade route that
would not depend on Lahad’s good graces. The first-adopted solution
was to let some major interested Lebanese merchants live in Israel,
and thus place them beyond Lahad’s reach.
In his July 15 article, Bergman portrays one of the richest among
those merchants, Amin El-Haj. “For over 15 years he was handling a
large part of Israeli trade with Lebanon and indirectly with other
Arab countries. Now he is living in Nahariya, connected by a special
phone line to the central Lebanese phone-exchange.”
The next stage in bypassing Lahad was to construct a harbor in
Nakura, in the “Zone,” made off-limits for the SLA. From Nakura,
ships would take the Israeli produce to Beirut and other Lebanese
ports. “Often those ships would be escorted by an Israeli navy
escort up to a safe distance from Beirut.” Actually, explains
Tzafrir, most of those ships, “which navigate under the flags of
various Latin American countries,” don’t depart from Nakura, except
in their records. “They really depart from Haifa or Ashdod.”
Needless to say, the uninterrupted and massive presence of the
Israeli navy in Lebanese territorial waters, although normally
justified as an “anti-
terrorist measure,” is largely intended to protect Israeli trade.
Let me refrain from further descriptions, especially in the view of
the constantly changing nature of that trade, directed not only to
Lebanon but through it to other Arab countries. Instead, let me pass
to the second economic Israeli interest in Lebanon, also served by
its rule of the “Zone,” namely the drug trade.
Although there are plentiful sources, I will rely on a comprehensive
article by Etty Hassid (“Yerushalaim,” Jerusalem Friday Paper, July
22). She offers her conclusions at the very beginning of her
article: “Even though it may be hard to believe, the state of Israel
is actively engaged in drug trade, especially on its northern
Lebanese borders. The participants are on one side the Israeli army,
Shabak, Mossad and the Israeli police, and on the other side,
Lebanese drug merchants, Israeli Bedouins from the Negev and retired
[Israeli] senior officers. The operational principle is: We will
close our eyes to all the filth to which you stoop, and even give
you some money, if only you provide us with intelligence of interest
to us. In my article I am going to prove it or at least to
substantiate it as highly probable on the basis of the trials of
large-scale drug merchants.
“Since I was forced by censorship to skip some facts, let me tell
you that the realities are even more ghastly than what you find
here. What I do reveal is ghastly enough. It turns out that the
state of Israel, which professes to wage an uncompromising struggle
with the epidemic of drug addiction, is in reality the largest-scale
importer of drugs in the Middle East. It is as if we were trying
with one hand to apprehend the drug users and peddlers or at least
pretending to do so, while using the other hand to plunge the
syringe deep into the drug addict’s veins.”
As evidence for this conclusion, Hassid uses minutes of secret
trials of both Israelis and Lebanese charged with big drug offenses
in Israeli courts. But she also says that “in recent years a number
of publications have appeared abroad disclosing information about
involvement in drug trade by individuals serving in Israeli security
services.” She discusses in detail only one such affair, which she
investigated by approaching the Israeli lawyer of one defendant so
involved, Yosef Amit, an ex-major in military intelligence Unit 504.
According to the London magazine Foreign Report of July 1993, this
unit was known as ‘mini-Mossad.’”
As sometimes happens to people in “the only democracy of the Middle
East,” Amit “disappeared” in 1986 and his name couldn’t be mentioned
in the media. The London publication then revealed that he had been
secretly sentenced in Israel for unspecified “security offenses” in
Lebanon. Foreign Report disclosed that Amit’s offenses were
connected with the regular work of military intelligence Unit 504,
whose agents are remunerated by hashish acquired in “special
operations in Lebanon.” The drug was said to be transferred to Cairo
whenever needed.
According to Hassid, Amit’s subordinate was caught selling hashish
“apparently derived from the military intelligence central
stockpiles” for his own profit. Since “the suspicion rebounded on
Amit,” he also was charged.
“Officially Accepted” Drug Trading
Hassid also was able to record other trials of high-ranking
Israeli officers serving in Lebanon who were charged with trade in
hard drugs. In the case of Colonel Meir Binyamin, charged with such
trade in 1989, the accused was acquitted, since the court accepted
the argument of his advocate, Meir Ziv, that his client’s undenied
involvement in the drug trade was carried out under orders of his
superiors and conformed to an “officially accepted method of trading
in drugs.” Colonel Binyamin also claimed, rather plausibly, that “in
reality the Israeli authorities are manipulated by large-scale
Lebanese drug traders who are exploiting their good relations with
the [Israeli] police for the sake of smuggling enormous quantities
of drugs behind their backs.”
In substantiating this claim, two Israeli witnesses, subcontractors
of large-scale Lebanese drug merchant Ramzi Nahara, “with long
records of excellent cooperation with Israel,” testified that in one
of their operations they “smuggled 250 kg. of heroin into Israel.”
Ramzi Nahara himself also testified in this case. Hassid describes
Nahara’s deals in detail.
Let me select only one of his feats. A single transport, detected in
Israel by sheer chance by the traffic police due to a minor traffic
infraction, consisted of 3,000 kg. of hashish destined for re-export
to Egypt. Let me quote here an opinion of advocate Ziv with which I
concur. “The state of Israel is by far the largest importer of drugs
into Israel itself. The import is sponsored by the police, under the
hardly credible pretext that it will help catch drug offenders.”
Many more stories of this nature could be adduced, but the Israeli
involvement in the drug trade warrants some conclusions in regard to
the nature of political realities in the Middle East. There are
grounds to suspect that Israeli encouragement of the drug trade, and
consequently also of drug consumption, cannot be entirely explained
by the familiar excuse of acquiring intelligence, extending
influence and reaping profits. Part of the motivation must be to
weaken the disaffection of Middle Eastern masses by encouraging drug
addiction and thus promoting political apathy. The suspicion can be
buttressed if we consider the known facts about the encouragement of
Palestinian drug dealers by the Israeli authorities. The coddling of
Palestinian drug dealers was one of the reasons for the outbreak of
the intifada.
Lastly, massive involvement of Israeli intelligence in drug
trafficking must be condoned by its American opposite numbers. Ample
precedents exist for that kind of policy. However, a support for the
Is-raeli drug trade is a rather safe affair. If Israeli involvement
in the narcotics trade were exposed in the U.S., powerful
organizations such as AIPAC would scream bloody murder.
A lot of American liberals, happy to denounce American intelligence
for encouraging drug traffickers, would protest if Israeli
intelligence were denounced for anything. For example, the invasion
of Panama was said to be launched for the sake of suppressing the
drug trade: yet the well-documented Israeli connections with Noriega
passed almost unnoticed by the U.S. media. It can therefore be
tentatively presumed that in its encouragement of drug traffic and
traffickers, as in much else, Israel is secure so far as the U.S.
media are concerned. This would at least partly explain why this
policy works.
All this is somewhat distant from the affairs of Lebanon as
described by the U.S. media. I have, however, no doubt that it is
the Israeli economic interest, as represented by an export of goods
without customs and traffic in drugs, that determines the Israeli
insistence on keeping the “Zone” under its rule.
The Israeli wars in Lebanon should be compared to the Opium Wars of
the 19th century. For an effective pursuit of the trade interests
described here, Israeli rule over the “Zone” is necessary, and this,
in turn, guarantees the continuation of the wars in Lebanon.
Israel Shahak was born on April 28, 1933 in Warsaw, Poland. In
1943-5, the Nazis in the Poniatowo and Bergen–Belsen concentration
camps imprisoned Shahak and his parents. The 12–year–old Shahak and
his mother immigrated to Palestine after the liberation of the camps
in 1945. In the 1960s, while working as Professor of Chemistry at
Hebrew University, Shahak became one of Israel´s leading voices of
dissent. In 1970 he was elected chairman of the Israeli Human and
Civil Rights League, and spent the next three decades strongly
advocating equality and civil rights. In the 1990s, Shahak emerged
as one of the strongest critics of the Oslo ‘peace process’, which
he denounced as a fraud and a vehicle for making the Israeli
occupation more efficient.
Shahak gained a wide international audience through his regular
“Translations from the Hebrew Press”, which gave the non-Hebrew
speaking world a unique glimpse into the extreme and racist rhetoric
about Arabs, Palestinians and Jewish supremacy that characterizes
much of ‘mainstream’ discourse in Israel. The translations also
clarified Israeli strategic thinking and policy goals in a manner
that directly contradicted official ‘hasbara‘ (propaganda), which
presented Israel as a besieged state struggling only for peace and
survival. Shahak´s writings continuously exposed and denounced
Israel as an expansionist, chauvinist and racist state bent on the
domination of the surrounding Arab peoples, especially the
Palestinians. His recent books, including Open Secrets: Israeli
Nuclear and Foreign Policies (Pluto Press, 1997), Jewish History,
Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Pluto Press,
1997) and Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Press, 1999),
provide an invaluable insight into Israeli discourse and policy.
Shahak explained, “After 1967, when I ceased being just a scientist
and became a political being, my first reason was that after 1967
the Israeli aim was to dominate is the Middle East, which every
rational human being knows is impossible. My second reason was that
there must be a Palestinian state.” Edward Said observed “As someone
who spoke and wrote about Palestine, I could not have done what I
did without Shahak's papers and of course his example as a seeker
after truth, knowledge, and justice. It is as simple as that, and I
therefore owe him a gigantic debt of gratitude.”
Israel Shahak died on July 2, 2001, aged 68, from complications
caused by diabetes.
