Remembering Sabra and Shatila,Deir Yassin, Dawayma …
Remembering Sabra and Shatila,Deir Yassin, Dawayma …
Massacres, War Crimes, CrimesAgainst Humanity
Between September 16-18, 1982, several thousand Palestinian
refugees - men, women, and children - were brutally slaughtered by
Lebanese Christian Phalangist forces allied with Israel, while
Israeli forces looked and prevented refugees from fleeing the
camps.1 The massacre happened within weeks of the US brokered
withdrawal of PLO fighters from Lebanon in the late summer of 1982.
Left without protection, Israeli-allied Lebanese forces were able
to enter the camps of West Beirut without opposition. On September
16, the day the massacre began,General Amos Yaron, commander of
Israeli forces in Lebanon - and now Director General of the
Israeli Defense Ministry - provided Lebanese Forces Intelligence
with aerial photographs to arrange entry into the camps.
Researcher Rosemary Sayigh describes the scene as the
massacre unfolded:
"The targeted area was crammed with people recently returned from
the places where they had taken refuge during the war, now
supposedly over. Schools would soon open,everyone needed to repair
their homes, clear the streets and get ready for the winter.
There was fear of what the regime of Bashir Gemayel would bring, but there was also determination to rebuild. People felt some security from the fact that they were unarmed, and that all who remained were legal residents. Many of the massacre victims were found clutching their identity cards, as if trying to prove their legitimacy.
One contingent of the [Lebanese] Special Units commanded by
Hobeiqa entered the area through the sand-hills overlooking Hayy
Orsan, just opposite the IDF headquarters. At this stage they were
almost certainly accompanied by Israeli soldiers, since the dunes
had been fortified by the Resistance. Another contingent entered
through the southeastern edge of the Hursh, between Akka Hospital
and Abu Hassan Salameh Street. Apart from co-planning the operation
and introducing the Special Forces into the area, the IDF provided
several kinds of backup:
they controlled the perimeters and prevented escape through light
shelling and sniping, as well as by blocking the main exits; they
also used flares to light up the narrow alleys at night."When
Israel finally ordered the withdrawal of the Lebanese Special
Forces two days later on 18 September 1982, the camps had been
destroyed and several thousand refugees had either been slaughtered
or had disappeared. Today one of the mass graves is used for
dumping garbage and another has been paved over for a golf
course.
An Israeli Commission subsequently found then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon who now heads the Likud party indirectly responsible for the massacre .
| Sabra and Shatila, An
Eye-Witness Account Speech to Right-of-Return Rally, Washington DC
by Musa al-Hindi As I entered Shatila on the morning of September 19, 1982 I recalled how, as a Palestinian, I have always feared September. After all, it was during September that thousands of my people were killed in Irbid, Ajloun and Jarash. It was also during September, five years later, that our people finished burying the hundreds who were murdered in Tel al-Za'tar. And here we were again, this time in Shatila, having to massbury more Palestinians and Lebanese whose American and European protec-tors had abandoned to the wrath of Israel and its allies, by withdrawing before the date set by the Americans and the Palestinian leadership. The first body I saw belonged to a man, perhaps in his seventies, lying in a pool of dried up blood, his artificial leg detached from the rest of his body. From one sideof the street to the other, many of the black corpses that I encountered were those of women and children whose husbands and fathers had been assured by the US administration that no harm would befall their loved ones if they agreed to leave Beirut. Some, especially those involved in the charade known as the peace process, accuse us of refusing to forget. How can we forget when every day the violence of poverty andpowerlessness denies adequate nutrition and health care to the children of Sabra and Shatila to the extent that they are visibly stunted and scarred. How can we forget when systematic discrimination against Palestinian exiles and the trauma it generates has led to a sharp rise in domestic violence, debilitating depres-sion, drug abuse and suicide? You see, the massacre of Sabra and Shatila may have been extreme, but it was not an exception. It was part of a premeditated pattern that will continue so long as our people are refugees whose lives depend on the whims of indifferent others. Yet, we must not be paralyzed by pain and grief. The balm for our pain is not self pity and withdrawal; not prayers; not self-consuming anger. Rather, the end to our collective grief lies in a future of action. […] |
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Groups Start Work on a Memorial to the Victims of
Sabra and Shatila |