Thirty years ago this week, up to 3,500 Palestinian civilians were systematically slaughtered in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp in south Beirut.
The brutal atrocity was carried out by Lebanese Christian Phalange militiamen under supervision of the occupying Israeli army.
The full Israeli/Phalange horror took some days to emerge into the international media.
Robert Fisk a well known British journalist was one of the first into the camp after the massacre. He reported: ‘There were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall.
‘There were babies — blackened because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition — tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey’.
The Israeli army with the tacit agreement of the United States and the UN, had allowed the killing to continue, over three days, refusing access to anyone other than the Phalange while it was going on.
On September 11, 1982, just before the massacre the international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees left Beirut.
PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, asked for the return of international forces, from Italy, France and the United States – who had just supervised the departure of Arafat and his PLO fighters from Beirut – to Beirut to protect civilians.
Arafat said at his news conference: ‘I ask Italy, France and the United States: What of your promise to protect the inhabitants of Beirut?’
Italy expressed ‘deep concerns’ about ‘the new Israeli advance’, but no action was taken to return the forces to Beirut.
The US had given written guarantees it would ensure the protection of the Muslims of West Beirut.
Then on September 14, Lebanese Premiere Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. A massive explosion demolished his headquarters. The Palestinian and Muslim leaders denied any connection. Eventually, the culprit, Habib Tanious Shartouni, a Lebanese Christian, confessed to the crime.
Within hours of the assassination, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, supported by Begin, occupied West Beirut.
By noon of September 15, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had completely surrounded the Sabra-Shatila refugee camps, controlling all entrances and exits by checkpoints – a reoccupation breaching the agreement with the US not to occupy West Beirut.
Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan met the Lebanese Phalangist militia units, inviting them to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, with the lies that PLO fighters were responsible for the assassination of Gemayel.
Under the Israeli plan, Israeli soldiers would control the perimeters of the refugee camps and provide logistical support while the Phalangists would enter the camps. An hour later, 1,500 militiamen assembled at Beirut International Airport, then occupied by Israel.
Under the command of Elie Hobeika, they began moving towards the camps in IDF supplied Jeeps, following Israeli guidance on how to enter the camps.
It was known the Phalangists presented a security risk for Palestinians. Bamahane, the IDF newspaper, had written two weeks before the massacre, that, in a conversation with an Israeli official, a Phalangist said: ‘the question we are putting to ourselves is — how to begin, by raping or killing?’
The Phalangists had told the Israelis that only by means of violence could they bring about a Palestinian exodus from Lebanon. General Amos Yaron is on record saying it was known the Phalangists meant to destroy the camps.
The first unit of 150 Phalangists entered the camps at 6pm. A battle ensued that at times Palestinians claim involved lining up Palestinians for execution.
That night Israeli forces fired flares which illuminated the camps ‘as bright as a sports stadium during a football game’, a Dutch nurse said.
At 11pm a report saying 300 people had been killed, including civilians was sent to IDF headquarters in East Beirut, and forwarded to headquarters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was seen by over 20 senior Israeli officers. Further reports of killings followed.
For the next 36 to 48 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila, while Israeli troops guarded the exits and allegedly continued to fire flares at night.
A militiaman’s radioed question to his commander Hobeika about what to do with the women and children in the refugee camp was overheard by an Israeli officer. Hobeika’s reply: ‘This is the last time you’re going to ask me a question like that; you know exactly what to do.’ Phalangist troops could be heard laughing in the background.
Lt. Avi Grabowsky was cited by the Kahan Commission as having seen on Friday the murder of five women and children, and gave a hearsay report of a battalion commander saying of this: ‘We know, it’s not to our liking, and don’t interfere.’ Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps and turning back Palestinians fleeing the camps, were filmed by a Visnew camerawoman.
An Israeli bulldozer was given to the phalangists, Later in the afternoon, a meeting was held between the Israeli Chief of Staff and the Phalangist staff. The Chief of Staff concluded that the Phalange should ‘continue action, mopping up the empty camps south of Fakahani until tomorrow at 5am, at which time they must stop their action due to American pressure. (Kahan Commission’s report based on a Mossad agent’s report).
At this meeting he also agreed to provide the militia with a tractor, supposedly to demolish buildings. He stated he had ‘no feeling that something irregular had occurred or was about to occur in the camps.’
On Friday, September 17, while the camps were still were sealed off, a few independent observers managed to enter. Norwegian journalist Gunnar Flakstad observed Phalangists in cleanup operations, removing dead bodies from destroyed houses in the Shatila camp.
The Phalangists did not exit the camps at 5am on Saturday as ordered. They forced the remaining survivors to march out of the camps, to the stadium for interrogations; this went on for the entire day.
The militia finally left the camps at 8am on September 18.
The first foreign journalists allowed into the camps at 9am found hundreds of bodies scattered about the camp. The first official news of the massacre was broadcast around noon.
Many of the bodies found had been severely mutilated. Many boys had been castrated, some were scalped, and some had the Christian cross carved into their bodies.
Janet Lee Stevens, an American journalist wrote to her husband, Dr. Franklin Lamb
‘I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.
