32 years ago today, the first media reports began to emerge of an atrocity carried out in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians had been slaughtered under the supervision of the Israeli armed forces. Over three decades later, with Gaza lying in ruins and 2,140 Palestinians killed, Israel’s continues to perpetrate war crimes with impunity. On 6 June 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, on the pretext of an assassination attempt that the PLO was uninvolved with and condemned. For seven weeks, Israeli bombarded and besieged Beirut, where the PLO was housed, with thousands of fatalities amongst Palestinians and Lebanese. The US brokered a ceasefire agreement stipulating the safe evacuation of Palestinian troops and the security Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. If by 1 September the last Palestinian troops left Beirut, two weeks later Ariel Sharon violated the ceasefire agreement in invading West Beirut. At this stage Sharon claimed that “2,000 PLO fighters” remained in Sabra and Shatila camps in West Beirut. There can be no doubt that this was a lie. Bodies found were overwhelmingly of women, children and elderly men. Furthermore the initial sending in of 150 lightly armed Phalangists is wholly inconsistent with this alleged Palestinian resistance presence. By midday on 15 September, the Israeli Army had surrounded Sabra and Shatila, controlling all exits and entrances. Rather than honour its responsibility to protect the occupied population, Israel trapped civilians in the camps as the killing began. Samiha found her sons and daughter beheaded. “They had dug a big hole here. They killed people and threw them in it. I saw more than 24 bodies; they were children, women and men.” Israel had manipulated the Lebanese Phalangists’ desire to avenge the assassination of Lebanese Christian President, Bachir Gemayel, to have them carry out the massacre. At 6pm on 16 September the first militiamen entered Sabra and Shatila, raping and murdering the thousands of Palestinians inside. Israel fired illumination flares through the night to facilitate the Phalangist’s killing of civilians. From the Israeli forward command post high above the camps in the five storey Kuwaiti embassy, one military official compared the view to being in the front row at the theatre. By 11pm a report had been forwarded to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv relating the killing in Sabra and Shatila. Israel would later claim to have no knowledge of the atrocity. Very few people survived the massacre; Mohammad Srour was one of them. In the massacre, he lost his father and brother and sister. “My mom signalled to us to pretend to be dead. Ismail and Maher were hiding in the bathroom and saw everything. Shadia, our sister, 18 months, was crawling to Ismail, who was silently telling her to go to him. Shadia then started crying ‘Mama, Mama’, and the soldier shot her in the head, her brains landed over my mother’s body.” The killing was barbarous and unstoppable. Maher, Mohammad’s brother, tells what he saw while hiding in the bathroom. “My little brother was hiding behind a mattress pile. He got shot the most. He tried to hide from the shots, and every time he hid, the soldier shot again, until he finally stopped moving and fell. The blood was pouring like a cascade. It was just like a movie, I couldn’t believe it.” Maher continues; “After they left, I went and held Shadia, she was my special, pampered baby. Her head was damaged and her brain falling out, especially the left side of her head. I was holding her, hysterical. I went insane.” Maher tells how he recalls the soldiers and militia taking young girls, and gladly raping them. Su’ad, Maher’s sister told her story, when on the third day of the massacre, she was raped by three militants. “I was shot and could not move, and so I could not defend myself apart from using my left hand. There was a tray of breakfast next to me, I wanted to grab it and stab either myself or them… I only regained consciousness the next day. I lost the ability to speak after the scenes I had witnessed.” Su’ad adds “I stayed like that for 3 months, until I got the chance to travel. I travelled with a driver and an escort from Tripoli. On the Berbarra barricade in Jounieh, I was surprised to find the same three soldiers there. They recognised me from my mole. They took us out of the car, and killed my escort. His brains were scattered and I was shouting hysterically. They started their journey of torture that lasted until 1 am. Then they took us to the sea, where they raped me for the second time. They left me naked on a rock in front of the driver. They told me that “you will see death with your bare eyes, and your driver too.” Miraculously, I did not die. Because of that, they let me go in the morning, with the driver. We went straight back to the hospital.” By 17 September, Israeli command had ordered the Phalangists to halt their operation and the first independent observers managed to enter the camps. The militiamen had begun to use Israeli bulldozers to demolish structures and pile rubble over corpses. Whilst a precise number of victims cannot be established, Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk used official and Red Cross sources to conclude that a total of 3,000-3,500 Palestinians were massacred in Sabra and Shatila themselves and over a thousand being killed elsewhere subsequently. Robert Fisk denounces Israel’s culpability stating that “The guilty were certainly Christian militiamen [...] but the Israelis were also guilty. If the Israelis had not taken part in the killings, they had certainly sent militia into the camp. They had trained them, given them uniforms, handed them US army rations and Israeli medical equipment. Then they had watched the murderers in the camps, they had given them military assistance - the Israeli airforce had dropped all those flares to help the men who were murdering the inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila - and they had established military liason with the murderers in the camps.” In December, the UN declared Sabra and Shatila an act of genocide. Five non-judicial commissions of enquiry, one Israeli, implicated Israeli officials at the highest levels. To date not one of the perpetrators has been brought to justice. This summer, Israeli munitions bombarded the Gaza strip in a 50 day offensive that claimed Hamas tunnels to be a significant security threat. 2,140 Palestinians lost their lives in the assault, over 70% of whom were innocent civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. With 17,000 housing units destroyed by Israeli fire, 108,000 Palestinians have been left homeless. Compounding the already desperate situation in Gaza, Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement reached on the16th of August by firing on fishermen off the coast of Gaza. Furthermore their control of entry points into the enclave has allowed the restriction and slowing of materials from entering, ultimately jeopardizing Gaza’s recovery. In 1982 Israel broke its agreement not to enter West Beirut; this month Israel violates Gazan’s right to fish in their waters. In 1982 the USA stood by as Israel breached international law; in 2014 the international community issued meek words and watched the assault on civilians go on. In 1982 no justice for the thousands of victims in Sabra and Shatila was brought against Israel; today Israel continues to perpetrate heinous war crimes with impunity. Worse still, numerous world powers profit from arms sales, trade and cooperation agreements. Israeli crimes go on unchanged and unchecked since the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. The slaughter, murder, cruelty, torture, theft and imprisonment still go on today. The resemblance between Sabra and Shatila camps and the recent massacre in Gaza is significant. How many more innocent Palestinians will have to be killed before Israel’s brutality is halted? english.pnn.ps/index.php/human-rights/8174-remembering-sabra-and-shatila-32-years-on-how-much-has-changed
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 17:08:28 +0000
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