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Sabra and Shatila massacre

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The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by the Lebanese Christian militias in Beirut and Lebanon.

Background

At the time of the massacre Lebanon was involved in a civil war involving a complex series of alliances. Among them was the alliance between Israel and Lebanese Christians, led by the Phalangist party and militia. They were in conflict with a number of militant groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Massacres among different ethnic groups occurred throughout the Lebanese Civil War, which claimed up to 100,000 victims between 1975 and 1990, but Israel claims its experience working with the Phalangists before the massacres did not reveal a history of violence against civilians. The Phalangist political leader of the time, Bachir Gemayel, extremely popular among Maronites, was actually known to be ruthless and to have executed potential rivals. He was elected president of Lebanon on August 23, 1982. Israel had been training, arming, supplying and even uniforming the Christian South Lebanon Army, headed by Major Saad Haddad, since 1978.

The PLO had been using Lebanon as a staging grounds for attacks on Israel's northern border, and in response Israel invaded southern Lebanon on June 6, 1982. Under a US-sponsored cease fire agreement signed in late August, the PLO agreed to leave Lebanon under international supervision and Israel agreed not to advance into Beirut and to guarantee the security of Palestinian civilians left behind in the refugee camps. On September 1, the evacuation of the PLO fighters was completed and by September 10 the international force (US, French, and Italian) overseeing the ceasefire and evacuation had withdrawn. However, on September 14, 1982, Bachir Gemayel was assassinated, resulting in immediate vows of revenge by his supporters. The perpetrator of Bachir Gemayal's assassination was later discovered to be a Syrian agent, but the Israeli Defense Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, blamed the assassination on Palestinians, which served to inflame the Phalangists' notorious hatred of Palestinians. Gemayel's death also left Lebanon in a state of instability, which led the Israeli leadership to secure its position by invading West Beirut. Israeli intelligence claimed that the Sabra and Shatila camps for Palestinian refugees in Beirut still contained up to 2,000 PLO members (who allegedly had not been evacuated, in spite of the terms of the earlier agreement whereby the PLO evacuated Lebanon) and some weapons, a claim that has been disputed (more below).

Events

The Phalangist militia and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reached an understanding that the IDF would control the perimeters of the camps and the Phalangists would filter out the PLO men and hand them over to Israeli forces. Sharon's instructions to the Phalangist militia emphasized that the IDF was to retain command of all the forces in the area. On the evening of September 16, 1982, the IDF encircled the camps and the Phalangists entered, under the command of Elie Hobeika. For the next 36 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of the camps, while the IDF entered West Beirut.

By noon Wednesday, 15 September, the IDF had completely surrounded and sealed off the camps and set up observation posts on the roofs of nearby tall buildings. By midday Thursday, Israel announced that it controlled all key points in Beirut. The IDF met throughout the day with Phalangist leaders, including Hobeika, to arrange the details of their entry in the camps and to instruct them not to harm civilians. At 4:00 pm, 1500 militiamen assembled and started moving towards the camps, and a first unit of 150 men entered the camp at sunset, armed with guns, knives and hatchets. From nightfall till late into the night, on both nights, the IDF fired illuminating flares above the camps. A Phalangist officer reported 300 civilian killings to the Israeli command post as early as 8:00 pm Thursday night, and further reports of the killings followed through the night. Some of these reports were forwarded to Tel Aviv and seen by a number of IDF senior officers.

Reinforcements arrived in the camps on Friday morning as Israeli troops witnessed fragments of the massacre. At one point, a militiaman's radioed question to Elie Hobeika about what to do with the women and children in the refugee camp was intercepted by an Israeli liaison officer who replied "This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that; you know exactly what to do" as Phalangist troops could be heard laughing in the background[1]). In another incident, an Israeli tank crew saw several men, women and children being led to a stadium where they were to be interrogated or executed. Some IDF soldiers posted around the camps followed their orders to turn back refugees trying to flee the massacre. Other Israeli soldiers reported what they were witnessing to their superiors. Phalangist militiamen regularly returned to Israeli units for food, water and ammunition throughout the massacre. At 11:30 am, IDF General Yaron ordered the Phalangists to stop advancing although that order seems to have been largely ignored. Later in the afternoon, a council of Israeli officials decided to give the Phalangists until 5:00 am the following day. American pressure sparked by rumors of the massacre apparently motivated the Israeli decision to stop the Phalangists. The IDF also provided the militia with an additional bulldozer.

On Friday, while the camps still were sealed off, a few independent observers managed to enter. Among them were a Norwegian journalist and a Norwegian diplomat, who observed Phalangists during their cleanup operations, removing dead bodies from destroyed houses in the Shatila camp". [Harbo, 1982]

The Phalangist militiamen did not exit the camps at 5:00 am on Saturday as they had been ordered; instead, they left at 10:00 am, after forcing the remaining survivors to march out of the camps, randomly killing individuals, and sending most of the others to the stadium for interrogations, which went on for the entire day. The IDF did not enter the camps to avoid being implicated in the massacre. The first foreign journalists allowed into the camps at 9:00 am found hundreds of bodies scattered about the camp, many of them mutilated and broadcast the first official news of the massacre around noon.

The number of victims of the massacre is disputed. A letter from the head of the Red Cross delegation to the Lebanese Minister of Defense stated that Red Cross representatives had counted 328 bodies, though Ahmad Al-Tal asserts that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) counted 2,750 victims: 1,500 at the time and a further 1,250 by September 23 as more bodies were uncovered [2]. Israeli figures, based on IDF intelligence, cite a figure of 700-800. The Kahan Commission put the minimum death toll at 460, a total of the dead counted by the Lebanese Red Cross, the International Red Cross, the Lebanese Civil Defense, the medical corps of the Lebanese army, and by relatives of the victims; this agrees with the estimate of the Lebanese police. Palestinians claim between 3,000 and 3,500.

The massacre provoked outrage around the world. On December 16, 1982 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide. [3]

Allegations against Israel

The news of the massacre spread through media around the world. Following the controversy, Israel formed a Commission of Inquiry led by former Supreme Justice Kahan. The report included evidence from Israeli army personnel, as well as political figures and Phalangist officers. In the report, published in the spring of 1983, the Commission stated that there was no evidence that Israeli units took direct part in the massacre and that it was solely the responsibility of Hobeika and his men. However, the Commission recorded that Israeli military personnel had several times become aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it and a report of a massacre in progress was even made to an Israeli cabinet minister. It recommended that Israel's Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resign or be fired and also censured a number of military and intelligence officers.

Others disagree with the report:

"The massacre was not a spontaneous act of vengeance for the murder of Bachir Gemayel, but an operation planned in advance aimed at effecting a mass exodus by the Palestinians from Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. Israel's participation in prior massacres directed against Palestinian people creates a most disturbing pattern of a political struggle carried on by means of mass terror directed at the civilians, including women, children, and the aged."

Some commentators, such as Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk, have alleged that Israel could have prevented the massacre by the Lebanese militia. Furthermore, they have doubted that there were any PLO members in the camps, because (1) the Kahan Commission claim that the IDF sent 150 Phalangists to fight 2,000 PLO members would be an unrealistically poor military decision and (2) the Phalangists suffered only two casualties, an impropable outcome of a 36-hour battle involving 2,000 experienced soldiers [FT].

Critics, however, have numerous objections to the accusations of Israeli complicity levelled by Chomsky, Fisk and others. Defenders of Israel point out that Israel never claimed all of the PLO members (as opposed to Fatah militants) were armed or tried to organize a defense. Also, on several previous occasions, the Phalangists were used by the IDF to filter out PLO members from the rest of the Lebanese population. On those other occasions, the Phalangists' conduct was good. Israel points out that the Phalangist field commander, Elie Hobeika, was at that time already maintaining contacts with Syria (he openly switched allegiance to Syria at a later date), suggesting that he may have orchestrated the massacres as a political provocation against his Israeli allies. Finally, Israel points out that the IDF never issued an order (on this occasion or any other) that would authorize the killing of unarmed civilians.

Nevertheless, Israel had given a written commitment that it would protect Palestinian civilians, as was its duty as an occupying power under international law .

Following Sharon's 2001 election to the post of Prime Minister of Israel, a lawsuit was filed in Belgium regarding his alleged responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres. The Belgian Supreme Court ruled on February 12, 2003, that Sharon (and others, among whom Yaron) could be indicted under this accusation. Critics of this lawsuit claim that it was made for political reasons. Israel and many other countries questioned the jurisdiction of Belgian courts to hear this and a number of other cases which had been brought before the Belgian court. In a possibly related development, Elie Hobeika was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut on January 24, 2004 as he was preparing to testify in the trial [4]. Following widespread international pressure, Belgium amended its law to require that human rights complaints could only be filed if the victim or suspect was a Belgian citizen or long-term resident at the time of the alleged crime. Parliament also guaranteed diplomatic immunity for world leaders and other government officials visiting the country. The changes brought Belgian law in line with the rest of Western Europe, and on September 24 2003, Belgium's highest court dismissed the war crimes complaints against former President George Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ruling the country no longer had a legal basis to charge them.

Reference

  • Harbo, John, (September 20, 1982), Aftenposten. Middle East correspondent Harbo was also quoted with the same information on ABC News "Close up, Beirut Massacres", broadcast January 7, 1983.

See Also

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