An Israeli raid into southern Lebanon, in which commandos kidnapped three Lebanese security suspects Friday, has been criticized in defense establishment circles here for its faulty execution and poor timing.
But the Israel Defense Force, rejecting such conclusions, hailed the operation as a deterrent to future guerrilla attacks on the IDF and its allies in the region.
Nevertheless, the three suspects, who were seized by an IDF elite unit in southern Lebanon early Friday morning and transported to Israel for questioning, were returned unharmed to Lebanon on Saturday through the International Red Cross.
The Israeli interrogation apparently failed to link the three to Hezbollah or any other radical group harassing the IDF and its allied South Lebanon Army.
Two of the prisoners were identified as working journalists and the third is a butcher.
The Israeli raid was denounced by Lebanese authorities as an aggressive act and a massive intelligence failure that led to snatching the “wrong men” from Lebanon.
But an official statement issued by the IDF said, “The chief of staff rejects outright the claim that there might have been an intelligence error in the context of the IDF’s activity in Lebanon last Friday.”
The statement said the commando raid was one of varied tactics employed by the IDF “to thwart and disrupt terrorist activity from Lebanon and makes clear to the terrorists that the IDF operates in the areas outside the security zone where they organize.”
But defense establishment officials, expressing fear of an intelligence foul-up, questioned the wisdom of kidnapping Lebanese from their own soil at a time when Israel is engaged in bilateral peace negotiations with Lebanon.
The talks, which opened in Washington on Dec. 10, recessed last week until next month.
Israel is also engaged in a delicate search for information about the fate and whereabouts of seven IDF servicemen long held captive in Lebanon. At least one of them, air force navigator Ron Arad, is presumed to be alive.
The IDF denied any connection between the abductions and negotiations for the release of Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon in 1986.
THREE YOUTHS KILLED
According to media reports, a crack commando unit was helicoptered to the northern edge of the security zone.
The unit proceeded on foot to Jibchit village, 7.5 miles north of the zone, where it set up a roadblock to intercept passersby heading toward Nabatiya, where Hezbollah is known to have a headquarters.
The road was said to be frequented by Hezbollah officials.
It was in Jibchit that Israeli command###s abducted Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader of Hezbollah, from his home in July 1989. Obeid has been held prisoner in Israel ever since. Until recently, he was considered Israel’s trump card to exchange for Arad.
On Friday, the commandos reportedly stopped about 12 men at the roadblock, releasing all but three after brief questioning.
The three were questioned intensively in Israel but apparently could not be connected to guerrilla activity.
According to reports from Lebanon, two of the men worked for a cable television station in Nabatiya and one of them, Shawki Fahs, was also a part-time reporter for the Reuters news agency.
The third man was a local Jibchit butcher, Kamal Abed Nahal. He collapsed on returning home to learn that his two young sons had been killed, along with a third boy, when one of them picked up a booby-trapped flashlight they found in Nahal’s car after he was kidnapped.
Lebanese security officials charged the device had been planted by the Israelis. The IDF denied any connection, saying it was not its practice to leave booby-traps in the reach of children.
The Israeli daily Ha’aretz, quoting a senior military officials Sunday, said the debriefing of the commando unit confirmed that the IDF special forces operated according to the high standards governing such activities and no mishap resulted from their operation.
An IDF spokesman described the operation as routine within the context of preventing terrorist acts against the IDF in southern Lebanon.
But Ha’aretz also quoted military sources as saying unofficially that there must have been an intelligence failure because the people detained were of no importance to security.
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