We Will Never Forget the Victims of Sabra and Shatila!

We Will Never Forget the Victims of Sabra and Shatila!

This was the message conveyed by more than 10,000 refugees and internally displaced Palestinians in five Right-of-Return Marches and Rallies held simultaneously in Palestine, Lebanon, London, and Washington DC between 15 - 17 September 2000.
In Haifa, more than 800 internally displaced Palestinians, representatives of Palestinian political parties, NGOs and Palestinian MKs marched on Friday, 15 September from the city center towards Haifa's historical Palestinian Arab neighborhoods, whose houses - home to many Palestinian refugees - have remained expropriated by Israel until today. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as: "from Haifa to Beirut, we are a living nation that will never die", and other people carried placards with the names of the 530 destroyed Palestinian villages. Palestinian refugees in the 1967 Israeli occupied West Bank followed on Saturday, 16 September when some 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the 1967 Israeli occupied West Bank held Right-of-Return Marches in BalataCamp (Nablus), and in Bethlehem where a new "Memorial for the Victims of the Massacres at Sabra and Shatila and the Palestinian Exile", was established in Aida Camp on a plot provided by the Islamic Waqf. The marches, organized by popular refugee organizations, were joined by Palestinian parliamentarians (PLC), representatives of political parties, public institutions and NGOs.

 In Lebanon a photo exhibition of the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila was opened on 13 September in Shatila camp. On Friday, 15 September, several thousand Palestinian refugees were joined by some 200 Italian human rights activists, parliamentarians, and journalists in 'Ain al-Hilwe camp to call for the right of return. The following day the Italian delegation joined Palestinian refugees in Shatila along with several thousand Lebanese supporters for a march to the site of the massacre. Two days later, the delegation joined in a candle light march to commemorate the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.

In Washington DC Palestinians and supporters of the right of return from around the United States and Canada participated in a Rightof- Return March on 16 September. Some 4,000 participants marched up Pennsylvania Avenue and held a rally at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. The Right-of-Return March, organized by al-Awda, and co-sponsored by more than 100 organizations, was part of a weekend of events which also included a symposium on Palestinian activism and a demonstration at the Israeli Embassy.

In London approximately 2,000 people marched from Westmin-ster Abbey to a Right-of-Return rally organized by al-Awda and some 40 co-sponsors in Trafalgar Square on September 16. Walking behind a banner reading, "5.3 million Palestinians Demand the Right to Return Home", participants chanted: "Washington, London, Deheishe, Balata, we are marching home … Haifa, Shatila, Aida, Fatme, we are marching home." Statements of support included those from several members of the British Parliament. 

"NO PEACE without THE RIGHT OF RETURN!"
Statement issued by Refugee Institutions and Popular Refugee Initiatives Southern West Bank,Palestine Everything has been in motion in the camps of the Palestinian exile, from the early times of the house, the carob, and the beauty of Palestine, through fifty years of massacres and patience, until the moment of the angry decision, when we raise the key of return as the symbol of blood, fire and determination. Our identity will not be diffused by strangers and aggressors who came with their misconceptions, killing and settlements. Our memory will not be buried by normalization and half-solutions that represents nothing but loss and defeat.

The Palestinian refugee camp continues to remember everything; it knows everything; it is moved by its martyrs and its tales. The land talks with the camp, and the skies call out for it. Today the camp is flourishing in the garden of blood, which has grown thorns for the throats of the killers. Here is Sabra, ready to implement the prophecy of the martyrs, who have returned with the stone and the gun; there is Shatila, rising from the darkness to expose the criminals who stole the moon fromits sky - and it will never forgive.  The camp will decide in the battlefield and at the negotiation table, in the United Nations, and in the arena of the New World order.

It is the source of war and peace. The camp says: "The blood of our martyrs is not for sale, neither for compensation funds nor for the charity of donor countries. We will never be deceived by the slogans calling for coexistence and resettlement, and by solutions which, in the name of so-called realism, accept our humiliation by the arrogance of force and war." The camp also says: "We do not know any solution but the return of our children to the homeland of their dreams and their ancestors, to their land and their olive trees. The future is for us," says the camp, "for the generations who have not forgotten the names of their villages and have remained tied to their soil, which is still waiting in historical Palestine."

The camp does not hate a peace that does not surrender the national cause, and a peace that will not tear apart its people by means of restricted family reunification schemes. A fair and comprehensive peace does not plant a settlement on land, which is waiting for its children to return, the keys to their homes in its hand, and homes, graves and songs in its chest. A fair peace does not leave the killers of Sabra and Shatila, Deir Yassin, Kufr Qassem, al-Dawayma and al-Tantoura without judgment by an international tribunal, in which fifty years of alienation, hunger, displacement and death on the wires of the borders will serve as witness.

The camp will decide - and it is warning of the consequences of a final solution of the conflict, which will not guarantee its historical right to return to the original homeland. This right, legitimate and sacred, accompanied by human anger will bring to fall all formulas and calculations that do not respect the human right to live on one's own land, in one's own home, freely and without restrictions and enslavement. The camp knows the future, and it can read the message of the refugees' stones and the dreams of their children.