26 Years After the Massacre
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila
By Franklin Lamb
Martyr's Square, Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp.
On September 16, 2008, at precisely 10:30 am, Fairouz Husseini and a
gathering of survivors, relatives and friends of the Sabra-Shatila
massacre victims, some foreign delegations, students, NGO
representatives, a few government officials, dignitaries, and
members of the Camp community gathered outside the Kuwaiti Embassy
roundabout, on the edge of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in
Beirut, Lebanon.
Their assembly point was less than 100 yards from where on September
16, 1982, Ariel Sharon, Gen. Raphael Eitan, Gen. Amos Yalon and
their henchmen, Lebanese Phalange Intelligence operatives Elie
Hobeika and Fadi Frem, had encouraged, organized, monitored,
supplied, assisted directed and finally, when the world learned of
the carnage, after 43 hours of carnage, initially denied knowing
anything about it.
Hobeika, who former US Ambassador Robert Dillon, at his 8th floor
desk at the Beirut Embassy when it was bombed on April 18, 1983,
refers to as "a pathological killer" was providing a running
commentary to his friends at his East Beirut Phalange Headquarters
from atop the the Kuwaiti Embassy. His Israeli sponsors were also
present during one of the most barbaric massacres in history,
gawking down into the Camp with binoculars and also perched atop the
seven storied former Kuwaiti Embassy, as they all monitored the
killing, between sunset on Thursday 16 through midday on Saturday
the 18th.
"I was in Austria at the time. I first heard about it as you did
from the news bulletins", Hobeika claimed for years during media
interviews, until he contemplated turning 'states evidence' against
Sharon in the Belgium case filed on June 18, 200l. Belgium scrapped
the case after US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, told
Belgium: "It's your goddamned Sharon Trial or NATO Headquarters, you
choose!"
Once the word was out in Beirut bout that Hobeika was considering
turning on Sharon, he was assassinated en route to his lawyers
office on January 24, 2002, by a method very similar to that used
against Hezbollah military commander Hajj Radwan (Imad Mughienh)
last February Interestingly, Forensic evidence of the Mughneih
assassination, including his shoes, signature green cap, clothes and
personal affects found in his pockets when he was killed, and now on
display by Hezbollah in Nabetiyeh, near Sidon, Lebanon, establish
that the bomb used to kill him was filled with unique BB sized
pellets that sprayed throughout his body. The same with Hobeika.
As the mid September 1982 chopping of camp residents with axes,
disemboweling with knives, shootings with Israeli supplied
silencers, hangings, burnings, live burials, and rapes entered its
second day, the Beirut media started to hear 'rumors'. Among the
first heard from frantic women was that the Israeli forces were
sealing the camps. It was learned three days later that this action
was coordinated with the Phalange militia and the Israeli created
army in South Lebanon named the "South Lebanon Army" (SLA), under
the Command of Saad Haddad, and kept hundreds of women and children
from fleeing for their lives. By the second morning (Saturday
September 18), following several media and diplomatic inquiries,
panic seized the Israeli command post and the organizers tried to
cover up their project and flee the area.
The world was horrified at the spreading images and even US Envoy
Richard Draper, who like many American officials in the current
period of history grovel to the Israel lobby, until after leaving
office when he became more 'nuanced', blamed Israel. "You sons of
bitches! You were in control and you gave us your word" Draper
roared to Sharon on Sunday September 19, 1982 according to Israeli
military affairs writers, Ze'ef Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari.
It was journalist David Lamb who first wrote about the 'walls of
death':
"Entire families were slain. Groups consisting of 10-20 people were
lined up against wall and sprayed with bullets. Mothers died while
clutching their babies. All men appeared to be shot in the back.
Five youths of fighting age were tied to a pickup truck and dragged
through the street before being shot" (LA Times, Sept. 20, 1982).
"False accusations like these" Israeli PM Menachem Begin, lectured
reporters called into his office, "constitute a blood libel against
every Jew, everywhere", as he tried to dampen the international
ground swell of accusations. Begin then added, "Goyim kill Goyim and
they want to hang the Jews. We are the real victims".
Fairouz, who did not know what either 'blood libel' or 'Goyim'
meant, until this observer explained, joined the others assembled,
on the short Memorial Walk to Martyr's Square off Rue Sabra inside
the 1982 killing field to pay her respects to the perished and
receive a student laptop in a US citizen initiated project to raise
the level of education in Palestinian classrooms.
According to one of the American organizers of the Sabra-Shatila
Laptop Initiative which plans to distribute more than 200,000
laptops in Lebanon's Palestinian Camps, to be used in a special
Internet based teaching paradigm developed at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology:
"While it is true that this time the American Embassy rejected our
request to sponsor even one laptop, citing budget shortfalls,
hundreds will be distributed during the launching event at
Sabra-Shatila on September 16th. Perhaps American taxpayers will
encourage their government to assist later. Imagine the enormous
educational benefit to disadvantaged Lebanese and Palestinian
children here if the US government provided just one student laptop
to Lebanon in 2008 for every cluster bomb dropped 2006".
Fairouz, a sweet and charming child, whose grandparents were forced
from their homes and into Refugee Camps in Lebanon in April of 1948,
jined international delegates including nearly 50 from Italy alone,
and American nurses who were witnesses to the barbarity and who
worked in Camp hospitals at the time, and helped release more than
1000 helium filled balloons, each meant to represent one person who
was murdered or who disappeared during the carnage.
"I really hope the wind blows all the balloons into Palestine so
maybe their souls can rest in Peace in their real homeland", Fairouz
says, while explaining how just three months ago, when new 30 inch
diameter concrete sewage lines were laid six feet deep along Rue
Sabra, the 'main street' ( or swamp, depending on the weather) of
Shatila Camp, the workers uncovered yet more decomposed bodies and
skeletons that no one but the killers, who nearly 20 years ago were
given amnesty, knew were there.
"We think there are very likely still bodies all over this section
of the camp", Ahmad, the sewer project crew chief explains, as he
gestures toward the entrance to the camp diagonal from AKKA
hospital. "The killers were directed first into this area from
across Kuwaiti Embassy road, the Bir Hasan neighborhood, and most of
the first hours of killing took place in this area and then they
fanned out from the main road here and from alleys along the Horst
Tabet area, toward the East, West and North in the direction of Gaza
Hospital and Shatila Mosque".
Since being forced from their homes in Palestine starting in
1947-48, more than 120,000 Palestinians arrived in Lebanon and as of
1951, 106,800 had registered with the newly created International
Institution, the UN Relief and Words Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA). Many Palestinians did not register with UNWRA because they
supposed their emigration to be temporary or, being a proud people;
they were too embarrassed to be seen accepting welfare.
Palestinians forced into Lebanon: 1948-1969
Following initial post-Nakba humanitarian aid and solidarity
extended by the Lebanese people, the refugees soon became thought of
as a burden, and at 94% Sunni, a threat to Lebanon's delicately
balanced National Pact. Starting in 1951, severe security
restrictions were imposed to keep the Palestinians inside the camps
including not being able to build housing, work or settle into new
areas.
A pointed finger and the taunting words, "Those are refugees!" were
images burned into the memories of the new arrivals and they remain,
among many, to this day. Lebanese hatred toward the Palestinians
increased and had it not been for the Gulf states during the 1950's
and 1960's absorbing into their economies and workforce thousands of
Palestinians who remitted cash to the Camps, many of the Palestinian
families in Lebanon may not have survived.
Due to increased Israeli shelling and internal pressure 4 of the
original 16 camps were destroyed including Nabatiyeh, Jisr al-basha,
and Tel al Za'tar, with Dbayyeh Camp being partially destroyed.
Today, some Palestinians inside Shatila explain that their families
moved from Nabatiyeh to Tal al Za'tar to Shatila or Damour and
finally from Damour to Shatila.
Pressure on the refugees increased monthly with detentions without
trial, and preventing movements between camps, even for family
weddings or funerals, was becoming the norm in this period. Torture,
collective punishments, random beatings on spurious grounds by the
notorious Deuxieme Bureau, increased.
The Palestinian Refugee File was transferred from humanitarian
agencies to the Ministry of the Interior on March 30, 1959 and in
conjunction with Presidential decree, No. 927, on the same date, the
Lebanese government targeted Palestinians with military cadres who
brutally enforced the sprit and the letter of the scheme which was
aimed at surveillance, control of refugees' movements, political
association, and complete neglect of the Refugees socio-economic
needs.
One Shatila Massacre survivor summarized for this observer the
period of the 1950's and 1960's:
"The Deuxieme Bureau came more than once and arrested my father,
beat him in front of our eyes and took him away. To say the truth,
we Palestinian Refugees suffered a lot…until the Revolution came".
1970-1982 Lebanon: 'A garden without a fence for Palestinian
refugees'
The second period, from 1970-1982 saw the rise of Palestinian
resistance organizations and the Cairo Agreement which gave the
Palestinians some dignity until the latter Treaty was abrogated by
the Lebanese Parliament in 1989.
The growth of the Palestine Liberation Organization following Black
September in 1970 provided a relative economic boon and increased
security for the refugees in Lebanon. Given the power of the PLO,
the social, health, education, housing (for the first time Refugees
could 'legally' build more than one level to their homes), and the
employment situation increased dramatically.A general prosperity
began in Shatila and the other camps which included asphalting of
Rue Sabra, sewer lines added in 1975 and a doubling the number of
schools. Norway and Denmark, as well as other countries and
Palestinian popular committees such as women's and labor unions,
encouraged the growth of cottage industries and 'solidarity'
projects.
Also alleviating pressure were some wealthy 'Gulf Palestinians' who
invested in the Camps and Palestinians working abroad who remitted
cash to their families. With the PLO covering their backs,
Palestinians were able to realize many more civil rights. 1970-1982
was arguably the 'best' period for many Refugees during their 60
years in Lebanon.
1982-2008
Still controversial 26 years later, the fateful PLO decision to
depart Lebanon came in late August 1982.
Israel's occupation of nearly half of Lebanon, some 801 villages,
the siege of Beirut, the departure of the PLO fighters and the
collapse of PLO funded institutions left the Palestinians completely
unprotected and marked the beginning of their most precipitous
decline since their arrival in Lebanon.
This observer witnessed on August 8, 1982 one intense exchange on
the subject of whether the PLO should leave, between the late Janet
Lee Stevens, an American journalist, researcher, and Burj al Barjneh
Camp volunteer, and Yassir Arafat (Abu Ammar). The confrontation
took place in one of Arafat's bunkers in the Fakahani District near
Arab University. It was around 8:30 am on what later became known as
Black Thursday, that Janet insisted on going to see 'the old man'
about something that had been bothering her for days.
As Makmoud Labidi, in 1982 the Press Relations Director for the
PLO,( Makmoud, later broke with Arafat partly over the departure
which he strongly opposed and 15 years later he and Arafat finally
reconciled) ushered us down three rubble strewn floors below street
level, no one knew that the unusually heavy shelling that morning
would turn into 14 hours of Israeli frenzy bombing and shelling
becoming known as 'Black Thursday' and killing 250 and quite nearly
Janet herself. Following the meeting, Janet walked thru the bombing
south to 'her people' in 'the Burj' while her companion, sought
shelter. "You will just slow me down, Janet said, "Meet me at AUB at
3 o'clock! ",she ordered."
Janet had slept little the night before, was not happy and got
directly to the point with the PLO leader. She demanded to know the
truth about the rumors that the PLO was going to 'abandon the camp
residents to the Israelis and cut and run'.
Before Arafat recovered from his shock of Janet's strong language,
and wrapped Janet in his arms, she intoned the reasons leaving
Beirut would be a huge mistake. "You must launch a 'Stalingrad
defense'; the international public will support it, Sharon is just
using psychological warfare with Israeli threats to burn Beirut, yes
the people have suffered in West Beirut, but we can take more, and
the Soviets will not allow this to continue and will intervene, and
you cannot believe the Reagan Administration Abu Ammar! Women and
children are terrified of what might happen if their husbands and
brothers leave them alone!! And you know the fayadeen don't want to
leave. You know that! They are not afraid of the Israelis and they
want to fight them and drive them away from Beirut!"
Tears flowed down Janet's face and welled up in Arafat's eyes as
well as Labadi's, this observers and those of Arafat's bodyguards
including, quite possibly, Imad Mughneyeh. Imad was one of Arafat's
most trusted and skilled members of Force 17, who had joined Fateh
eight years earlier at age 16 and was to leave Fatah the following
year switching to Lebanon's nascent Islamic Resistance.
Some have argued that had the PLO not left Beirut, some of their
best people would not have left the PLO. Would Hezbollah have even
been organized had it not been for the vacuum created by Arafat's
decision to depart?
As the very distraught Janet Stevens beat Arafat's shoulder with her
clinched fist, in front of his wide-eyed Kalashnikov toting security
and cried, Abu Ammar patted her long brown hair and tried to console
her: "Miss Janet, please Miss Janet" the military commander softly
whispered. "Our Lebanese hosts have sacrificed enough for us. We are
no longer welcomed here and we must leave."
Regrets?
Arafat knew better, he later admitted to this observer, than to tell
Janet Stevens that the Camp residents would be protected by American
guarantees, a written copy of which he carried in his shirt pocket
and an argument he used on others to reassure the Popular Committees
in the Camps and well as some of his colleagues. "Janet would have
beaten me more", Arafat later admitted, as he smiled, "but perhaps
she was right".
Another doubter of the wisdom of the catastrophic evacuation that
left Shatila and the other Camps unprotected, was the PLO's number
two, Khalil al- Wazir, (Abu Jihad), Arafat's most trusted Deputy.
The model of discretion, Abu Jihad remained tight lipped before the
International media during the period under review but he spoke
frankly and with sadness with fighters who came to ask, within hours
of sailing, what he thought they should do, for many were undecided.
Janet, like many, urged them to stay. Abu Jihad told them:
"I can't tell anyone to stay or leave…Our people are here, our
children, in Shatila, in our camps, our hospitals and our schools;
but I say to the one who stays that the Lebanese state isn't about
to come and build him a house and offer him a salary. The state may
imprison him, just like all the Arab regimes, we have to face that
fact."
Then Abu Jihad became angry, an emotion he did not often exhibit,
"For myself, I don't want to leave you alone, I'd like to stay with
you, but this is what's happened, and those are our circumstances" (Sabra
Shatila 1982, Bayan Al Hout, Pluto Press 2004).
The Camp residents' protection gone, the massacre followed within
days and the steep slope into abject poverty and despair for today's
Palestinians resulted.
Coming in Part II: 26 years after the Sabra-Shatila massacre and the
founding of Hezbollah: Can the Party of God deliver the Palestinians
from exile?
Franklin Lamb can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com. The
SabraShatila website is
http://www.sabrashatila.org/. He is finishing a book on
Hezbollah.
