âThey would follow the suspects on motorcycles from the Israeli headquarters and then put on a hood and shoot them in the head, often in public, in a café in Tyre in front of everybody. Then they would drop leaflets saying âThis is the fate of all collaborators,â â recalls Hassan Siklawi, at the time a UNIFIL liaison officer with local Lebanese groups.
Cut off initially from a regular supply of weapons, ammunition, and funds in Beirut, the Amal fighters were forced to improvise. They constructed homemade bombs by mixing fertilizer, sugar, and sawdust in kitchen sinks and packing the explosive with nails into empty powdered milk tins. Gas cylinders were also turned into crude incendiary bombs.The IEDs were usually planted along the coastal road near Tyre, the main route used by the IDF traveling between Israel and the front lines farther north. Initially, traditional lit fuses were used to detonate the charges. The resistance fighters learned through trial and error when to light the fuse so that the bomb would explode just as the IDF target passed by. Later they acquired electrical fuses and detonated the bombs using command wires that they would disguise by stringing them along telegraph pylons beside real telephone cables.
Israeli casualties began to increase in tandem with the rising rate of attacks. IDF bulldozers destroyed stone or cinder block walls along the coastal road and uprooted orange and lemon trees and banana groves to deprive the resistance men of cover to launch attacks. The Israelis attempted without success to revive anti-Palestinian feeling among the Shias by spreading rumors that Musa Sadr had been discovered as a prisoner of the PLO in the Rashidiyah Palestinian refugee camp south of Tyre. Israeli-allied militiamen or plainclothes Israeli security personnel were sent into villages to smash down front doors, search homes, and arrest âsuspects,â who could face interrogation in the IDF intelligence headquarters in Tyre or incarceration in the Ansar prison camp.
Looking for Mohammed Saad
To evade capture, the Amal men dug small chambers and tunnels beneath their homes with disguised entrances. Other hiding places included fake water tanks that were only half filled with water, the other half providing space for a man to hide. They made use of the natural caves that riddled the limestone valleys around the villages, employing children to cover the entrances with bushes and twigs. Resistance became a community effort. When the Israelis approached a village, the warning would be relayed from the loudspeaker attached to the minaret of the mosque or
husseiniyah
, alerting the residents. Women and children would gather in the street or clamber on the roofs of buildings to hurl stones and pans of boiling oil at the Israeli soldiers while the men in the village hurried to their hideouts.
On one occasion, the IDF learned that Mohammed Saad was in Kfar Sir and surrounded the village with troops. Saad ran into a house and without saying a word to the startled family climbed into a pair of pajamas he saw lying on a bed. When Israeli soldiers banged at the front door, Saad himself opened it. The soldiers said they were looking for Mohammed Saad. Saad turned to the family inside and said, âMother, theyâre looking for someone called Mohammed Saad.â
âNever heard of him,â the mother replied, and the soldiers left.
The Amal resistance lived by secrecy and caution. Messages were sent between separate cells in simple yet inventive ways. One method was to write a message or press statement on cigarette papers, which the courier would crumple and leave in the ashtray of his car until he reached his destination. Sometimes two resistance men would identify themselves to each other by matching the two halves of a torn Lebanese one-lira note.
They developed ingenious methods of smuggling weapons and ammunition into the occupied area. One morning, Sheikh Najib Sweidan,
Cut off initially from a regular supply of weapons, ammunition, and funds in Beirut, the Amal fighters were forced to improvise. They constructed homemade bombs by mixing fertilizer, sugar, and sawdust in kitchen sinks and packing the explosive with nails into empty powdered milk tins. Gas cylinders were also turned into crude incendiary bombs.The IEDs were usually planted along the coastal road near Tyre, the main route used by the IDF traveling between Israel and the front lines farther north. Initially, traditional lit fuses were used to detonate the charges. The resistance fighters learned through trial and error when to light the fuse so that the bomb would explode just as the IDF target passed by. Later they acquired electrical fuses and detonated the bombs using command wires that they would disguise by stringing them along telegraph pylons beside real telephone cables.
Israeli casualties began to increase in tandem with the rising rate of attacks. IDF bulldozers destroyed stone or cinder block walls along the coastal road and uprooted orange and lemon trees and banana groves to deprive the resistance men of cover to launch attacks. The Israelis attempted without success to revive anti-Palestinian feeling among the Shias by spreading rumors that Musa Sadr had been discovered as a prisoner of the PLO in the Rashidiyah Palestinian refugee camp south of Tyre. Israeli-allied militiamen or plainclothes Israeli security personnel were sent into villages to smash down front doors, search homes, and arrest âsuspects,â who could face interrogation in the IDF intelligence headquarters in Tyre or incarceration in the Ansar prison camp.
Looking for Mohammed Saad
To evade capture, the Amal men dug small chambers and tunnels beneath their homes with disguised entrances. Other hiding places included fake water tanks that were only half filled with water, the other half providing space for a man to hide. They made use of the natural caves that riddled the limestone valleys around the villages, employing children to cover the entrances with bushes and twigs. Resistance became a community effort. When the Israelis approached a village, the warning would be relayed from the loudspeaker attached to the minaret of the mosque or
husseiniyah
, alerting the residents. Women and children would gather in the street or clamber on the roofs of buildings to hurl stones and pans of boiling oil at the Israeli soldiers while the men in the village hurried to their hideouts.
On one occasion, the IDF learned that Mohammed Saad was in Kfar Sir and surrounded the village with troops. Saad ran into a house and without saying a word to the startled family climbed into a pair of pajamas he saw lying on a bed. When Israeli soldiers banged at the front door, Saad himself opened it. The soldiers said they were looking for Mohammed Saad. Saad turned to the family inside and said, âMother, theyâre looking for someone called Mohammed Saad.â
âNever heard of him,â the mother replied, and the soldiers left.
The Amal resistance lived by secrecy and caution. Messages were sent between separate cells in simple yet inventive ways. One method was to write a message or press statement on cigarette papers, which the courier would crumple and leave in the ashtray of his car until he reached his destination. Sometimes two resistance men would identify themselves to each other by matching the two halves of a torn Lebanese one-lira note.
They developed ingenious methods of smuggling weapons and ammunition into the occupied area. One morning, Sheikh Najib Sweidan,
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