Abed Takkoush was in a sunny mood the day he died. “It’s over, Jeremy, the occupation’s over”, he said. “The Israelis have given up. They’re going.” A few minutes later, when we stopped to film across the border into Israel, Abed stayed in the car, to phone Muhammad, his son. Muhammad says his father was telling him not to worry because we were in a quiet place when the phone cut out.
It was noon, on the 23rd of May. At that moment an Israeli tank shell hit Abed’s car and killed him. He was 53, married with three sons. Abed’s business card said “driver/producer”. He was the kind of local fixer that every foreign correspondent relies on. Abed seemed to know everybody in Lebanon. And he was a great driver. That same morning, after a particularly hair-raising maneuver through a line of traffic on some teeming Lebanese road (I closed my eyes at the last, decisive moment) Abed told me that one of his other clients said he was Beirut’s Michael Schumacher.
“Like Schumacher?”, he said. “Better! Schumacher drives on empty roads. Let him try it in Lebanon!”
Tuesday 23rd May was the last full day of the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. Abed Takkoush 
had been working for the BBC in Lebanon since the civil war started in 1975. He seen everything that the Israelis had done to his country since they first invaded in 1978. On May 23rd he wanted to see the end of it. Abed, the BBC’s Beirut cameraman Malek Kanaan and I were moving through south Lebanon, filming villages and towns that had just been liberated. We were traveling on a road that runs along the border with Israel. Abed stopped close to kibbutz Manara, a settlement on the Israeli side. I walked back down the road with Malek to set up the camera.
I waved my arms at the kibbutz, which was about 750 yards away. I thought I could see people on an observation platform. To be honest, I felt a bit stupid standing there in my pink shirt, waving my arms at Israel. It didn’t seem necessary. There was no shooting or shelling going on in the area. The war seemed to have moved elsewhere. We were an experienced team. Malek, the cameraman, like Abed, had 25 years of war in Lebanon. I have covered ten wars and plenty of smaller conflicts in 13 years as a BBC foreign correspondent. We all thought it was calm.
The Israeli tank shell smashed into the back of Abed’s Mercedes on the right side. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, at the front on the left. It was a special shell, designed to cut through armor and then explode inside the target vehicle. From about 50-100 yards away I saw a big ball of fire, then I saw Abed heave himself out of the window. His clothes were on fire. I couldn’t see from where I was where he lay. I am told he must have died very soon afterwards, from massive internal injuries caused by the blast of the shell.
Malek and I took cover behind a low wall outside a petrol station. I thought I should run up to the car to try to help my friend. But the BBC sends us all on combat first aid courses and I kept remembering what the British Army instructor told us.
“Lesson one is simple”, he said. “Don’t become a casualty”. It seemed sensible in a classroom on a gray day in the Home Counties. But I felt like a coward crouching behind my wall in south Lebanon. After ten minutes or so, when I stood up, the Israelis opened fire at me with the tank’s machine gun. Bullets that come too close make a very particular whizzing sound. I felt them go over my head. Later, an Israeli army officer told me that the soldiers who had killed Abed were out to get Malek and me.
Staying put was the right decision. I am sure they would have killed me if I had moved up to the wreck of the car. But I hope nobody reading this has ever to make the same call.
At first, the Israelis blamed their allies, the South Lebanon Army, the militia they paid to do their dirty work. Blaming the SLA for anything bad became standard operating procedure for Israel during the occupation. Then the Israelis promised an enquiry.
The Israeli army published its report last Friday. It said Abed’s death was a tragic mistake. An Israeli tank fired the fatal shot but the crew followed the correct procedures. The report said they had received an intelligence tip-off that Lebanese “terrorists” were going to attack Israeli armor. They saw a suspicious civilian car and asked for permission to destroy it, which was granted.
The BBC has rejected the Israeli report. We believe there is strong evidence that the Israelis were recklessly and willfully targeting civilians on that stretch of road – not just on the day that Abed was killed but the day before as well. The willful targeting of civilians by an army is a war crime. It is a grave breach of international humanitarian law as laid down in the 1977 protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
We have video and eye-witness evidence of what was happening. We even have video, taken from the Israeli side, of Israeli civilians watching Abed’s car being destroyed. Some of them were carrying children. If the local Israeli tank unit, assigned to protect the kibbutz and its stretch of the border, really had believed an attack was coming, would they have allowed their own people to stand out in the open waiting for it to happen? After the tank fired, an Israeli officer went to the observation position in the kibbutz. It’s all on video. Even though the report says he believed an attack was still imminent (don’t forget two alleged “terrorists” – the cameraman and I – had “escaped”) he still didn’t tell the civilians to get to their shelters.
News teams working in dangerous places deserve protection. Our experience reinforces my long-held belief that the only way to cover a war safely is from your armchair at home. It is an inherently dangerous business. But we didn’t blunder into a battle that day. We were targeted on an otherwise peaceful road.
We owe it to Abed and his family to find out exactly how and why it happened. Armies should not be able to get away with killing civilians. And if soldiers have broken the laws of war, then they should be punished.
© Jeremy Bowen
