Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Sabra and
Shatila Massacres
From September 16-18, 1982, members of the Israeli-backed,
Israeli-trained and Israeli-armed Lebanese Phalangist mercenaries murdered
between 2,000 and 3,000 unarmed civilian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila
Palestinian refugee camps in West Beirut.
This was a well-organized operation, conducted almost entirely in
secret, in an area completely under the control of Israeli soldiers. All evidence confirms that the massacres were
carried out with the full knowledge of senior members of Israel’s political and
military establishment.
Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, allegedly in response to
the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) attempted assassination of the
Israeli Ambassador to London a couple of days earlier. In reality, the invasion had been in the
planning stages for some time, with Israel looking for an excuse to act and
wipe out PLO forces in Lebanon.
Then-Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon said Israeli troops intended
to advance only 40 kilometres into southern Lebanon to “neutralize” bases from
which the PLO was attacking northern Israel.
However, within 12 days of the invasion,
Israeli troops had reached Beirut and launched an intensive shelling operation
which resulted in the death of an estimated 18,000 civilians.
After two months, a U.S.-brokered ceasefire was negotiated. This
specified that the PLO would evacuate Beirut under the supervision of a
multinational force and that the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees
living in camps in Beirut would be protected.
The evacuation of the PLO ended on September 1 and the multinational
forces left Beirut on September 10.
The next day, on September 11, Sharon declared that thousands of
“terrorists” still remained inside the refugee camps around Beirut. As a
result, on September 15 the Israeli army occupied West Beirut, surrounding and
sealing off the Sabra and Shatila
camps. This fact was confirmed by an
Israeli military press release issued on September 16.
Prior to invading Lebanon, Israel had supported the Lebanese
Phalangist mercenaries during Lebanon’s civil war, and their close working
relationship continued after the invasion.
Well-known for committing atrocities against the Muslim Lebanese population,
the Phalangists were, according to Israeli military sources, “ruthless”,
“bloodthirsty” and dedicated to ethnically cleansing all Palestinian refugees
from Lebanon.
Israeli military commanders decided that, while they would
maintain their positions around Sabra and Shatila, they would leave entering
the camps to combat the “terrorists” within to the Phalangists. According to several senior Israeli military leaders, and confirmed by Sharon himself, Israeli command
received the following instructions on September 15: “[Israeli] forces are forbidden to enter the
refugee camps. The mopping-up of the
camps will be carried out by the Phalanges.”
Phalangist forces entered both Sabra and Shatila shortly after 5
p.m. on September 16. According to
testimony he later gave under oath, Israeli General Amir Drori phoned Sharon at
this time and told him: “Our friends are advancing into the camps. We have co-ordinated their entry.” Sharon
replied: “Congratulations. Our friends’ operation is approved.” Over the next
40 hours the militia raped, killed and injured the thousands of unarmed
civilians, mostly children, women and the elderly. Israeli army leaders were in continuous
contact with the militia leaders directing the massacre throughout the entire
“operation”. Not only did they not
intervene to stop it, they stopped those trying to escape the camps and
assisted the Phalangists by providing night flares.
Israeli forces permitted the International Committee of the Red
Cross to enter Sabra and Shatila on September 20 where it found over 1,000 dead
bodies and thousands more injured.
Estimates are that another 1,000 to 2,000 bodies were either bulldozed
by the Phalangists or removed from the camps between September 16 and 20 in
large convoy trucks which were seen leaving and returning to the camps
repeatedly by hundreds of eyewitnesses
On September 19 the United Nations Security Council passed
Resolution 521 condemning the massacre, although, at the insistence of the
U.S., the resolution excluded direct reference to Israel’s role. This
condemnation was followed by a December 16 General Assembly resolution that
declared the massacre to be an "act of genocide". (see
sidebar) This was one of a series of UN resolutions condemning Israeli actions
in Lebanon as well as the occupied Palestinian territories.
To date, not a single individual has been
held criminally responsible for this crime.
The only Israeli investigation into the genocide was a parliamentary
commission headed by a former Supreme Court justice, Yitzhak Kahan, which had no legal authority to back up its
findings. The Kahan Commission held the
majority of its hearings in camera, for what it described as reasons of
national security. Not a single survivor
of the genocide testified before the commission, although several high-ranking
Israeli and Phalangist military officials did.
The Commission’s report concluded that
Ariel Sharon was “personally responsible” for the massacres. Sharon, who was
forced to resign shortly after the commission’s report was delivered, remained
active in political life in Israel and was elected Prime Minister in 2002. While the Kahan Commission’s findings and
recommendations have been made public, along with a first appendix of evidence,
the second appendix has never been and never will be published as Kahan and his fellow commissioners felt that
“non-publication of this material is essential in the interests of protecting
the nation’s security or foreign relations.”
An attempt to bring those responsible for the genocide to
justice was launched in Belgium in 2001 by 23 survivors of the massacres, but
was thwarted by pressure from the Bush administration. Donald Rumsfeld personally raised the issue with Belgian
lawmakers, threatening that if the Belgian law which allowed for the
prosecution of war crimes conducted in foreign countries was not weakened, the U.S. would withhold massive funding for NATO
operations and building projects.
Rumsfeld is also reported to have threatened that the U.S. would move
NATO out of Belgium altogether unless the law was watered down. The Belgian law
was changed in June 2003.
The International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra
and Shatila was trying to have Ariel Sharon tried before the International
Court in The Hague. However, their efforts stalled following Sharon’s massive
stroke in 2006.