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Former Israeli Collaborators In Lebanon Remain
additional reporting by Amna El Qora
& Yehya Abu Zakareya
BEIRUT, May 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The house of a Lebanese man sentenced for collaborating with Israel was torched Sunday in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun, police said.
The house of Sami al-Zaybak, who was a member of the now-defunct pro-Israeli militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), was set on fire as he was to be released from Rumieh prison, where he served a one-year prison term for "collaboration with the Israeli enemy" during the occupation of South Lebanon.
The dawn arson, the 12th incident of its kind in three months in the former Israeli-occupied border zone of southern Lebanon, has further heightened fears among residents of more revenge attacks.
The bishop of the Christian town of Marjayoun, Antoine Hayek, rushed to the site of the arson attack, expressing anger at the Lebanese authorities' failure to prevent such acts.
"What is the Lebanese state doing? Why is it failing to stop this private justice against people who have already served their sentences?" he said before dozens of onlookers, including the town's police chief.
"These acts risk setting southern Lebanon on fire in the next few days when more than 1,000 former collaborators will get out of prison after completing their sentences," he warned.
However, Hayek helped pave the way for those who want to use those incidents to inflame the situation in the ethnically-divided country when he announced that the Hezbollah resistance was the first to denounce such actions.
Israel tried to use the SLA as a weapon to turn the Lebanese people against the Palestinians and destabilize security in Lebanon, the host of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Israeli television reported on Sunday that the Palestinian Jihad resistance group claimed responsibility for burning the house of a SLA member in Marjayoun in leaflets distributed in Beirut.
But the Secretary General of the movement, Ramadan Abdullah dismissed the report and warned that such lies aim at inflaming the situation in Lebanon and placing a wedge between the Lebanese people and the Palestinians, according to the IslamOnline reporter in Beirut.
Abdullah added that punishing former collaborators is the job of the Lebanese authorities and that the movement respects Lebanese sovereignty.
Defendants in similar attacks had in the past denied any link to political parties or resistance groups.
When the Israeli army pulled out of Lebanon last May 24th, about 6,000 Lebanese "collaborators" left the country, in fear of retaliation from the local population.
But several hundred of them have now returned to Lebanon and more than 3,000 have been put on trial in Beirut for "collaborating with the Israeli enemy."
A year after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon, former collaborators who left for Israel became a burden for their ally.
Israeli officials announced the Jewish state asked certain Scandinavian countries to grant asylum to some former SLA members.
These countries, in turn, are now looking at how the Lebanese government would react if former SLA members were granted asylum.
France has already created a precedent by accepting many of former SLA members, without triggering an official Lebanese objection.
The SLA was formed in the late 1970s by the deceased Major Saad Haddad, and became allied with Israel in the 1980s. Israel equipped and bankrolled the group during its occupation of Israel's self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon.
When it disbanded, Gen. Antoine Lahd, a former Lebanese army general who lives partly in France, was leading the SLA. Lahd has been sentenced to death in absentia by a Lebanese military court.
Some SLA members were volunteers, but others reportedly were coerced into service.
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