LEBANON'S FORGOTTEN HOSTAGE:
Saged is 15 years
old. Like many boys, he wants to be like his father. An architect and Muslim
cleric, Abdulkareem Obaid is also one of dozens of hostages abducted from
South Lebanon by Israel. This month sees the eighth anniversary of his
kidnap, by Israeli commandos from his home in the South Lebanese village
of Jibchit, where he was the preacher.
Sitting in a modest, Beirut flat flooded with orange light from a setting
spring sun, Saged is explaining to a Belgian film crew, in fluent French,
the events of the night of 28th July 1989, which took his father away from
him and his four siblings. He has inherited his father's eloquence, which
some of us vaguely remember from TV documentaries of the late 1980's about
the nightmare that was Lebanon. Obaid was vocal in his opposition to the
so-called Israeli security zone in the South of Lebanon which exists till
today. By the time he was assaulted and removed to Israel, he had become
a well-known and well-liked spokesperson for the Lebanese people. I remembered
Obaid's audacious smile, as Saged told of how he would one day follow in
his father's footsteps.
It was just as Saged had told reporters from the Washington Post eight
years ago, how at 2 o'clock in the morning, his mother was beaten and tied
up, and how he was threatened with a gun, as his father, and two others
were dragged away semi-conscious. Umm Saged, Obaid's wife, recounted to
me in meticulous detail, how the Israeli operation was well-planned, and
executed at a frightening speed. The commandos knew the house's layout
- the operation could have been maybe no more than seven minutes. There
were two entrances to the house, one for men and one for women. The Sheikh,
as she respectfully refers to her husband, was asleep in the section that
led from the women's entrance. Around thirty men entered the house while
others surrounded it. When she heard firing, she thought they had killed
her husband. In fact it was a neighbour, Hussain Abu Zaid, who had come
out of his house to see what the noise was, that had been shot dead as
the commandos retreated. Later, the Israelis in triumph at their capture,
admitted to Western press that Israeli fighter planes had enacted a mock
raid over the area, masking the sound of the helicopters that came for
Obaid. Israeli press report the abduction in those terms.
The guns of Lebanon's civil war have been quiet for several years, but
with threats of being bombed not only in the south, but all the way to
Beirut looming since last year's 'Operation Grapes of Wrath,' what everyone
fears but no-one says outright is that Lebanon is simply sleeping between
carnage. In the meantime, international shopping bonanzas and selective
rebuilding programmes are putting Lebanon back on the map as a cultural
magnet in the region. Old hostilities between communities seem miraculously
buried, or at least well-policed by the Syrian troops stationed to keep
the peace. Obaid's plight and that of other hostages and abductees from
Lebanon remains largely forgotten or unheard of. Jill Morrell's campaign
through The Friends of John Macarthy made sure that the British journalist's
disappearance was commemorated every hundred days. In contrast the convergence
of myself and the film crew on the Obaid's home was exceptional. Few outside
Lebanon and Israel recall Sheikh Obaid. Today Lebanon, and particularly
Beirut is booming economically and culturally: for the former, Obaid has
become another icon of territorial violation in the South, to the Israelis
he is a bargaining chip for information about their missing airforce navigator,
Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986. If you visit the Ron Arad homepage,
you can listen to the song about him, or see a little movie about him,
or sign a petition, or read many articles on the kidnap of Obaid.
I was reminded of Sheikh Obaid by a campaign started last year for his
release. A letter from Umm Saged asking the world to remember her husband
had sparked a letter writing campaign, which led to brief but fruitful
correspondence between the British Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Ministry
of Justice. Armed with the confirmation that the IDF had jurisdiction over
Obaid's detention, four British barristers from Justice International,
went to Tel Aviv in January, to try and find him, and start proceedings
for his release. I spoke to them before they left - they knew it would
be a long process.
Despite increasingly vehement correspondence from the group's leader
John Platts Mills QC with various ministries and departments, no official
response could be gleaned and no conferences arranged. Dismayed at the
callousness of a supposedly democratic government, they tried the Mandela
Institute, a human rights research organisation, and traced the whereabouts
of Obaid and another abductee Mustafa Dirani, to a High Security Detention
Unit in Sarafan Military Compass. Again access was denied, but for the
first time Obaid's whereabouts had become known.
Umm Saged, is a French educated teacher. She doesn't teach now, but
stays in her second floor flat, protecting her young family. She explained
to me that their youngest daughter Mujahidah had been sleeping on their
bed the night the commandos came. She was three months old and had been
poorly. Released by neighbours from her bondage after the commandos had
gone, Umm Saged went to find her child. Eventually she was retrieved from
under their overturned bed. In an Israeli TV interview, two years later,
Obaid spoke of not knowing Mujahidah's fate. In last year's Schmidbauer
brokered negotiations over the fate of South Lebanon, the German Minister
arranged for postcards to be delivered from Obaid and Dirani, to their
families. Obaid's card reads, "I only miss seeing you and I am missing
you all very much. I don't want to mention names because I don't know who
is alive and who is dead. Hopefully I will see you soon."
Mujahidah poses
for a picture for me - she looks like the father she doesn't remember.
He was not incarcerated for criminal activity - something a seven year
old might understand, but for his political conscience. It's hard not to
share Mujahidah's confusion at the fate of her father. In a letter to Moshe
Raviv the Israeli Ambassador, the former Chair of the Parliamentary Human
Rights Group, Lord Avebury asks regarding Obaid and Dirani, whether as
the Israeli Defence Minister says, they are to be held until information
about Ron Arad is revealed, and "whether it is really true that [they]
are detained as a means of bringing pressure to bear on whoever is holding
Ron Arad?" Two previous letters about the imprisoned Israeli physicist
Mordechai Vannunu remain unanswered.
Despite Beirut's bustling commercial centre, and even the jovial if
shell-cratered streets of its Shia sectors, a sense of closure remains
amiss several years down the road of peace in Lebanon. The bloody civil
war may have ended, but an atmosphere of unease remains. Like the letters
to Moshe Raviv, many issues need answers. Obaid was kidnapped during the
civil war. Dirani however was taken from the Beka in May 1994: how can
the post-war Lebanese government claim to be independent when its citizens
are susceptible to abduction and disappearance at the hands of an aggressive
neighbour? The notorious Khiam prison camp in the occupied south, contains
Lebanese arbitrarily picked up by the South Lebanon Army, Israel's agent
in the zone. Syrian troops are everywhere else, supervising a country -
formerly a Syrian province - which they were removed from in 1920. The
same 'international consensus' that removed them, put them back. What will
happen if, as the Christian community wants, the Syrians go? Will there
be an independent Lebanon if they stay?
Obaid's youngest
son, Hassan Al-Mujtabah, was two when his father disappeared. A shadowy
memory of the man's existence remains, but Saged to all extents and purposes,
is his father now. The hope remains with him however, that one day this
chapter will also be closed, and Abdulkareem Obaid will come home. Until
that day, Lebanon's unease remains, and it continues to be a hostage to
its own existence.
Arzu Merali
This article was first published in July
1997. The situation remains mainly the same since that time. International
lawyers will be returning to continue their campaign for Sheikh Obaid.
If you would like more information, please contact: The Campaign to Free
Sheikh Obaid, IHRC, PO Box 598, Wembley, UK, HA0 4XX telephone 0181 931
1919, fax 0181 931 1920, e-mail: ihrc@dial.pipex.com, web: http://members.tripod.com/~Bregava/obaid.
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