Lebanese workers anxious about future

By Richard Engel

TURMOS CROSSING, Lebanon (AFP): For many years thousands of Lebanese workers have walked through this checkpoint to Israel, but today their mood is ominous, with many fearing that the Jewish state's plan to unilaterally pull out of south Lebanon could cost them both their jobs and their lives.

"Even if I am injecting cows in Lebanon with vaccines I got by working with the Israelis, I am considered to be a traitor because I have been collaborating with the enemy," said Mahmud, one of the some 3,000 Lebanese who cross into Israel each day to work.

He said he supports the pullout, which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has pledged will take place by July, if it will bring peace and stability for the 120,000 or so people who live in what is now Israeli-occupied south Lebanon.

Mahmud, who like all of the Lebanese working in Israel asked not to be identified or photographed, said he is against the withdrawal if it puts his life in danger.

He estimated that some 90 percent of the Lebanese living in the so-called "security zone" have worked with Israelis at some point during the 22-year occupation and that most of them dread that guerrilla fighters from the Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement will kill them for having done so after Israel quits the zone.

"I am afraid of what will happen. Everyone is afraid," he said.

Hisham, who lives in a small village near the border with Israel, said the presence of UN peacekeepers in the zone after the pullout is of little comfort.

"There were UN monitors in Kosovo and the violence there continued. The Lebanese who work in Israel are considered enemies and collaborators and would be put in jail if they went to Beirut," he said.

"After the withdrawal they will be treated just as if they were soldiers fighting along with Israel, even though they were just farmers or workers," he added.

The almost 3,000 officers and soldiers from the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the militia allied with Israel, are generally considered to run the greatest risk of revenge attacks.

The Jewish state has promised to protect them after the withdrawal, without committing itself to any specific plans.

The workers, however, have no such assurances and even the relatively small amount of community services provided to them face an uncertain future, according to an Israel army official.

Beni Gabai, who heads the Israeli side of a project to help farmers and local businessmen in south Lebanon, said he doesn't know if the US$100,000 a year Israeli army program will continue after the withdrawal.

"We hope that the Lebanese who have worked with us will continue the work. But if Israel is going to stop taking care of it, I think it is going to collapse," he said from his office on the Lebanese side of the Turmos checkpoint.

The office will be out of bounds to him once Israel pulls back to the international borders in accordance with 1978 UN resolution 425.

Christian, Druze and Muslim workers from south Lebanon at another checkpoint known as "The Good Fence" on the Israeli side of the border that snakes over the tops of the hills in this area were divided over Israel's departure.

"We don't want the withdrawal. It will change the situation and Hezbollah will say we have been traitors," said a Lebanese woman who earns nearly $25 a day by working in Israel.

But a Lebanese man, also crossing into Israel near the frontier town of Metulla, said he supports the withdrawal because it will bring peace in the long run, which will help the economy in south Lebanon.

"The withdrawal will be good if it brings peace, and if it doesn't it is still good. People will have to understand that we were just working and not giving information to the Mossad or to the army. Plus there is the international monitoring force," he said.

"That is all empty talk, empty promises from politicians," scoffed another worker.

"What guarantees can there be? Israel will withdraw and we will be inside. The international monitors will just watch helplessly. They can't put a monitor in each house," he said before boarding an Israeli bus to take him to work.