Some names are engraved in Arabs' collective memory with fire letters…
"Sabra and Chatila" is one of them.
Often described as living witnesses of the numerous atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli Army during decades of occupation, they have become - along with Deir Yassin (1948), Khan Yunis (1956), Abbasieh (1978), Fakhani (1981),Al Aqsa Mosque (1990), Hebron (1994), Qana (1996 and 2006), Jenin (2002) (those are the most famous only, the list is obviously not exhaustive) - the symbol of our own version of Jewish people sadly famous device “We shall remember”.
But the case of Sabra and Shatila is different, because the responsibility - massively devolved upon Israel by the public opinion - is in reality shared (not to say mainly born) by Christian Phalangists, who were almost totally spared the brunt of the condemnations…
So what happened that day of September 1982?
After a thorough research through Lebanese, English and Israeli resources, I have put together the following summary, hoping you won’t get lost (as I did so many times!). I would also love to hear different perspectives and opinions
Sabra is a poor Shiite neighborhood in the southern outskirts of West Beirut, which is adjacent to Shatila UNRWA refugee camp set up for Palestinian refugees in 1949. Over the years, the populations of the two areas have mingled, and the name "Sabra and Shatila camps" has become usual.
1982.
The Lebanese civil war is at its height, opposing Palestinian refugees and Muslim Lebanese factions (allied with Syria) to Christian Phalangists (supported by Israel), in various shifting alliances, and killing each other in an endless whirl of massacres competing in cruelty.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, had been using southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel, and Israel had been bombing PLO positions back. A failed attempt to assassinate the Israeli Ambassador in London on June 4 by Abu Nidal’s organization (a Palestinian left-wing front that has always refused to negotiate with Israel and that had split from the PLO in 1974) gave the Hebrew State the perfect excuse to invade Lebanon.
Obviously, the UN condemned this violation. But obviously nobody cared..
After 2 months of US-mediation, the PLO agreed to leave Lebanon under international supervision and Israel committed not to advance further into the country, but its military troops remained stationed in the southern region.
On September 14, Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel (part of the Israel-friendly Christian Phalangist party) was assassinated by Syrian Intelligence agent Habeeb Shartuni, who confessed the crime. Though Palestinian and Muslim leaders had no responsibility in the murder, Israel’s Defense Minister at the time; Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister; Menachem Begin decided to violate the US-agreement and re-occupy West Beirut, surrounding the Sabra and Shatila camps and setting hermetic check-points in all entrances and exists. In fact, the President’s assassination gave Israel the so-expected opportunity to re-enter Beirut and get rid of the few remaining PLO activists. It didn’t do it itself though, it invited Phalangist allies to “cleanse” the area under their control. We all know the rest of the story…
1500 Phalangists armed with guns, knives and hatchets entered the camps late in the afternoon and began raping, slitting throats and shooting blindly…
Women, children, old people, youth…No one was spared…
3 days later - 3 endless days of massacres later - the Phalangist militias left the camp, leaving behind thousands of mutilated bodies (3000-3500 according to Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk), from newborns to elders, scattered all around the camp…
As the news of the massacre spread around the world, accusations started pouring down on Israel mainly, the role of the Christian Phalangists being kept under hat and seldom mentioned. Today, if you google “Sabra and Shatila”, you will find that most sources point at Israel as “THE” responsible of the genocide, but to my opinion, though the Hebrew State had definitely a responsibility in this tragedy as they sealed off the camp and “invited” the Phalangists in, making it an exclusively “Israeli crime” is hiding part of the truth and leaving many murderers unpunished. Until now, 26 years after the massacre, no concrete action at the national or international levels has ever been taken against any Phalangist leader or member of Saad Haddad’s “Free Lebanon Forces”, who also took part to the genocide…
Menachem Begin’s first response to the accusations was the everlasting discourse of “Anti-Semitic blood libel against the Jewish State”. But as the controversy grew, voices from inside Israel rose to demand explanations and a few weeks after the massacres, 300 000 Israeli citizens (literally 1/10 of the Israeli population at the time!) gathered in Tel Aviv, in one of the biggest protests of the country’s history, to ask for clarifications.
A Commission of Inquiry was established, led by Supreme Court Judge Kahan and known as the “Kahan Commission” and investigations concluded that “Israeli military personnel were aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it”, for which Israel bears part of the “indirect responsibility”.
Furthermore, The Kahan commission found that Ariel Sharon "bears personal responsibility" and recommended his dismissal from the post of Defense Minister, stating that:
“It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for having disregarded the prospect of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps and for having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the chances of a massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps”
With as much hindsight as an Arab could have in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I think that this commission was a great tribute to Israeli democracy,as highlighted by Henry Kissinger, who claimed that "a few governments in the world would have undertaken such a public investigation of such a difficult and shameful episode."
However, even though the Kahan Commission concluded that Sharon "should not hold public office again", he was elected Prime Minister in February 2001…
What kind of Prime Minister could a mass-killings' aficionado become?
The response has an other fire letters name: Jenin...2002...
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