Sabra and Shatila massacre

This page is related to the 1982 events only. For the 1985–1987 combats, see war of the camps.

1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre
Part of Lebanese Civil War
File:Massacre of palestinians in shatila.jpg Palestinian refugees massacred, 1982.
Date 16 September 1982 Location Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camp Result Large civilian casualties
Belligerents
Lebanese Phalangist	Palestinian refugees
Commanders and leaders
Elie Hobeika	Unknown
Strength
150 irregulars	2,000(?) mostly disarmed militia, 1,500+ civilians
Casualties and losses
2	700 - 3,500

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias (صبرا وشاتيلا) against refugee camps. The Maronite forces stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister. The number of victims of the massacre is estimated at 700-3500 (see below).

The camps were externally surrounded by Israeli soldiers throughout the incident, although the Israeli military personnel who were there claimed they had no idea of what was going on inside. The Kahan Commission, an Israeli inquiry into the massacre established by the Israeli government, found that while the Phalangists alone, and no Israelis, were directly responsible for the massacre, it was felt that the Israeli military should have foreseen the events, and named then Israeli Defence Minister (and future Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon in particular as bearing "indirect responsibility" for the events.

Background

From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon was involved in a civil war between groups in competing alliances with neighboring countries. The Lebanese Maronite Christians, led by the Phalangist party and militia, were allied initially with Syria then with Israel, which provided them with arms and training to fight against the PLO faction; other factions were allied with Syria, Iran, and other states of the region. In addition, Israel had been training, arming, supplying and uniforming the Christian South Lebanon Army, led by Saad Haddad, since 1978. Infighting and massacres between these groups claimed several thousands of victims; notable massacres in this period included the Karantina Massacre (January 1976) by Phalangists against Palestinian refugees, Damour massacre (January 1976) by the PLO against Maronites and the Tel al-Zaatar Massacre (August 1976) by Phalangists against Palestinian refugees. The total death toll in Lebanon for the whole civil war period was up to 100,000 victims.

Sabra is the name of a poor neighborhood in the southern outskirts of West Beirut, which is adjacent to the Shatila UNRWA refugee camp set up for Palestinian refugees in 1949. Over the years the populations of the two areas became ever more mingled, and the loose terminology "Sabra and Shatila camps" has become usual. Their populations had been swelled by Palestinians and Shiites from the south fleeing the war.

The PLO had been using southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on Israel, and Israel had in turn been bombing PLO positions in southern Lebanon. The attempted assassination of Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London on June 4 provided a casus belli (although it ultimately turned out to be by a different Palestinian organization - Abu Nidal) and turned the mutual hostilities into full-scale war; on June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with 60,000 troops in an act condemned by the UN Security Council. Two months later, under a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire agreement signed in late August, the PLO agreed to leave Lebanon under international supervision, and Israel agreed not to advance further into Beirut.

On August 23, 1982, Bachir Gemayel, who was very popular among Maronites, was elected President of Lebanon by the National Assembly. Israel had relied on Gemayel and his forces as a counterbalance to the PLO.

On September 1, the expulsion of the PLO fighters from Beirut was completed. Two days later, Israel deployed its armed forces around the refugee camps.

The next day Ariel Sharon, Israeli Defense Minister at the time, stated that 2,000 PLO fighters had remained in Beirut. This claim was disputed by Palestinians. The Israeli Premier Menachem Begin met Gemayel in Nahariya and strongly urged him to sign a peace treaty with Israel. According to some sources, he also demanded continuing the presence of South Lebanon Army in southern Lebanon under control of Major Saad Haddad (a supporter of Israel), and action from Gemayel to move on the Palestinian fighters Israel claimed had remained hidden in Lebanon. However, the Phalangists, who were previously united as reliable Israeli allies, were now split because of developing alliances with Syria, which opposed Israel. Gemayel now had to balance interests of many competing factions within Lebanon. In addition, according to several eyewitness accounts, he personally took offense at what he saw as Begin's high-handed attitude towards him. He refused Israel's demands to sign the treaty or to authorize operations to seek out remaining PLO militants.

On September 14, 1982, Gemayel was assassinated in a massive explosion which demolished his headquarters. Eventually, the culprit who confessed to the crime turned out to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and an agent of Syrian intelligence. The Palestinian and Muslim leaders denied any connection. In response, the next day, on September 15, the Israeli army reoccupied West Beirut. Estimates place casualties as high as 88 dead and 254 wounded. This Israeli action breached its agreement with the United States not to occupy West Beirut; the US had also given written guarantees that it would ensure the protection of the Muslims of West Beirut. Israel's occupation also violated its peace agreements with Muslim forces in Beirut and with Syria.

Israel justified its move into West Beirut by a need to maintain order and stability after Gemayel’s assassination. However, several days later, Ariel Sharon told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament: “Our entry into West Beirut was in order to make war against the infrastructure left by the terrorists”.

The Israeli army then disarmed, as far as they were able, anti-Israeli militias in West Beirut, while leaving the Christian Phalangist militias in East Beirut fully armed.

Events

Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan then reportedly invited Lebanese Phalangist militia units to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to clean out the PLO fighters. 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, find the PLO fighters and hand them over to Israeli forces.

However, ultimately no persons were handed over to Israeli forces and there was little fighting. However, Schiff and Ya'ari report that over the next 10 days "huge quantities of ordnance--including twelve cannons, eight heavy mortars, Katyusha-mounted vehicles, and 520 tons of ammunition--were indeed removed from dozens of caches in West Beirut."

Sharon's and Eitan's instructions to the Phalangists emphasized that the Israeli military was in command of all the forces in the area.

The Israeli military had completely surrounded and sealed off the camps and set up observation posts on the roofs of nearby tall buildings on September 15. The next day Israel announced that it controlled all key points in Beirut. The Israeli military met throughout the day with top Phalangist leaders to arrange the details of the operation. For the next two nights, from nightfall until late into the night the Israeli military fired illuminating flares above the camps.

On the evening of September 16, 1982, the Phalangist militia, under the command of Elie Hobeika, entered the camps. For the next 36 to 48 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of the refugee camps, while the Israeli military guarded the exits and continued to provide flares by night.

A unit of 150 Phalangists (including some SLA fighters, according to Saad Haddad as quoted by Robert Fisk, and also other sources) was assembled at 4:00 p.m. These militiamen armed with guns, knives and hatchets entered the camps at 6:00 p.m. A Phalangist officer reported 300 killings, including civilians, to the Israeli command post at 8:00 p.m., and further reports of these killings followed through the night. Some of these reports were forwarded to the Israeli government in Jerusalem and were seen by a number of Israel's senior officials.

At one point, 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, who heard Hobeika reply that "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. The Israeli officer reported this to his superior General Amos Yaron, who warned Hobeika against hurting civilians but took no further action. Lt. Avi Grabowsky was cited by the Kahan Commission as having seen (on that 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 turned back Palestinians fleeing the camps, as filmed by a Visnews cameraman.

Later in the afternoon, a meeting was held between the Israeli Chief of Staff and the Phalangist staff. According to the Kahan Commission's report (based on a Mossad agent's report), the Chief of Staff concluded that the Phalange should "continue action, mopping up the empty camps south of Fakahani until tomorrow at 5:00 a.m., at which time they must stop their action due to American pressure." He claimed that he had "no feeling that something irregular had occurred or was about to occur in the camps." At this meeting, he also agreed to provide the militia with a tractor, supposedly to demolish buildings.

On Friday, September 17, while the camps still were sealed off, a few independent observers managed to enter. Among them were a Norwegian journalist and diplomat Gunnar Flakstad, who observed Phalangists during their cleanup operations, removing dead bodies from destroyed houses in the Shatila camp".

The Phalangists did not exit the camps at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday as ordered. They forced the remaining survivors to march out of the camps, randomly killing individuals, and sending others to the stadium for interrogations; this went on for the entire day. The militia finally left the camps at 8:00 a.m. on September 18. The first foreign journalists allowed into the camps at 9:00 a.m. found hundreds of bodies scattered about the camp, many of them mutilated. The first official news of the massacre was broadcast around noon.

Number of victims

The number of victims of the massacre is disputed. There is general agreement that the exact numbers are very hard to pin down, due to the chaotic conditions during and after the massacre, burials and initial victim-counting, as well as the fact that it has been an extremely politically sensitive issue even to the present day. It is thought that at least a quarter of the victims were Lebanese, the rest Palestinians. Here follow the main claims ordered by number of deaths:

• A letter from the head of the Red Cross delegation to the Lebanese Minister of Defense, cited in the Kahan Commission report as "exhibit 153", stated that Red Cross representatives had counted 328 bodies; but the commission noted that "this figure, however, does not include all the bodies..."
• The Kahan Commission said that, according to "a document which reached us (exhibit 151), the total number of victims whose bodies were found from 18.9.82 to 30.9.82 is 460", claiming that this figure consists 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."
• Israeli figures, based on IDF intelligence, cite a figure of 700–800. In the Kahan Commission's view, "this may well be the number most closely corresponding with reality."
• According to the BBC, "at least 800" Palestinians died
• Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout in her Sabra And Shatila: September 1982 gives a minimum consisting of 1,300 named victims based on detailed comparison of 17 victim lists and other supporting evidence, and estimates an even higher total
• Robert Fisk, one of the first journalists to visit the scene, quotes (without endorsing) unnamed Phalangist officers as saying "that 2,000 terrorists - women as well as men - had been killed in Chatila." The Palestinian Red Crescent put the number killed at over 2,000.
• In his book published soon after the massacre, the Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk of Le Monde Diplomatique, arrived at about 2,000 bodies disposed of after the massacre from official and Red Cross sources and "very roughly" estimated 1,000 - 1,500 other victims disposed of by the Phalangists themselves. His total of 3,000-3,500 is frequently quoted by Palestinians.

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..

No action, national or international, was ever taken against Phalangist commander Elie Hobeika, who was killed by a bomb in Beirut in 2002; some speculated he was preparing to testify in the Belgian war-crimes tribunal investigating the massacre, though others doubted he intended to testify at all.

Israel's role in the massacre

In its initial statements, the Israeli government initially declared that those critics who regarded the IDF as having responsibility for the events at Sabra and Shatila were guilty of "a blood libel against the Jewish state and its Government." However, as the news of the massacre spread around the world, the controversy grew, and on September 25, 300,000 Israelis — roughly one tenth of the country's population — demonstrated in Tel Aviv demanding answers.

On September 28, the Israeli Government resolved to establish a Commission of Inquiry, which was led by former Supreme Court 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 Kahan Commission stated that there was no evidence that Israeli units took direct part in the massacre and that it was the "direct responsibility of Phalangists". However, the Commission recorded that Israeli military personnel were aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it, and that reports of a massacre in progress were made to senior Israeli officers and even to an Israeli cabinet minister; it therefore regarded Israel as bearing part of the "indirect responsibility". Among those it considered to bear a part of this indirect responsibility, the commission found that Ariel Sharon bore "Indirect responsibility" and recommended his dismissal from the post of Defense Minister; it also recommended the dismissal of Director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy, and the effective demotion of Division Commander Amos Yaron for at least three years. These recommendations were carried out. Even though the Kahan Commission concluded that Sharon should not hold public office again, he would later become Prime Minister of Israel.

Some critics of the commission report pointed to the fact that it was set up by political opponents of the government while others accused Israel of investigating itself and argued the report amounted to a whitewash; for instance, Noam Chomsky says:

"The Kahan Commission report was a shameful whitewash; see Fateful Triangle, chapter 6, and Shimon Lehrer, Ha'ikar Hehaser ("The Missing Crucial-Point"; Amit, Jerusalem, 1983). In a close critical analysis of the events and the Kahan Commission report, Lehrer shows that its conclusions were untenable and argues that the Defense Minister and Chief of Staff should have faced 20-year jail sentences for premeditated murder under Israeli law. While sharply criticized in Israel, in the U.S. the Kahan Commission report was depicted, without analysis, as most impressive or even approaching the sublime."

Some commentators, such as Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk, have suggested that Israel could have prevented the massacre. Furthermore, they have doubted that there were any PLO members in the camps, because (1) the Kahan Commission claim that the Israeli army sent only 150 Phalangists to fight what it said was 2,000 PLO members would be an unrealistic and poor military decision and (2) the Phalangists suffered only two casualties, an improbable outcome of a supposedly 36-hour battle of 150 militants with 2,000 experienced PLO soldiers [FT].

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 Israeli army to filter out PLO members from the rest of the Lebanese population. They claim that on those other occasions, the conduct of Phalangists 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 argues that it never issued an order (on this occasion or any other) that would authorize the killing of unarmed civilians.

On February 14, 1983, Der Spiegel (a leading German magazine) carried an interview with one of the Phalangists who participated to the massacre. According to this person, Israeli soldiers fought along the Phalangists and shelled the camp to help them overcome the Palestinian resistance. By contrast, Robert Maroun Hatem, Elie Hobeika's bodyguard, stated in his book From Israel to Damascus that Hobeika ordered the massacre in defiance of Israeli instructions to behave like a "dignified" army.

In its February 21, 1983, issue, Time magazine published a story implying that Sharon was directly responsible for the massacres. Sharon sued Time for libel in American and Israeli courts. Time won the suit in the U.S. court because Sharon could not establish that Time had "acted out of malice," as required under the U.S. libel law, although the jury found the article false and defamatory.

Benny Morris, in Israel's Secret Wars, stated that Israeli forces provided the bulldozers used to bury the massacred Palestinians. Others have claimed that Mossad/Shabak operatives worked with the Phalangists to identify Palestinians of interest who could be taken away for interrogation. Others claim this to be concocted by conspiracy theorists.

In the Swiss-French-German-Lebanese coproduced documentary Massaker [1] (2005) six former Forces Libanaises soldiers who participated personally in the massacre claimed there was direct Israeli participation. One of them claims to have seen Israeli solders driving bulldozers into inhabited houses inside the camp. Another said Israeli soldiers provided the Forces Libanaises soldiers with material to dispose of the corpses lying around in the streets. Several of the six soldiers alleged to previously have gone through a survival-camp-training in Israel. There is no evidence to support these claims.

Sabra and Shatila after the Israeli invasion

Israel began to leave Beirut shortly after the news of the massacre broke. The protection of the camps was entrusted to Italy. Following attacks on the peacekeepers, Italy left Lebanon. The safety of the camps was then entrusted to the Amal militia.

Two subsequent massacres took place at the camps after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

Belgian court proceedings

After Sharon's 2001 election to the post of Prime Minister of Israel, a lawsuit was filed by relatives of the victims of the massacre in Belgium alleging his personal responsibility for the massacres, under a 1993 law first used against people implicated in the Rwandan Genocide. The Belgian Supreme Court ruled on February 12, 2003, that Sharon (and others involved, such as Israeli General Yaron) could be indicted under this accusation. Israel claimed that the lawsuit was initiated for political reasons. Another case was filed in Belgium alleging responsibility of the former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell for war-crimes in the first Iraq War. The U.S. questioned the jurisdiction of Belgian courts to try war crimes committed elsewhere, asked European allies to pressure Belgium and threatened to move NATO headquarters from Belgium. Additionally, a variety of cases against other world leaders, such as Fidel Castro, Augusto Pinochet, and Yasser Arafat, were filed in Belgian courts, causing some diplomatic difficulties. Eventually, 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. The Belgian Parliament also guaranteed diplomatic immunity for world leaders and other government officials visiting the country.

Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist commander at the time of the massacre never stood trial and held a post of a minister in Lebanese government in the 1990s. He was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut on January 24, 2002; some speculated he was preparing to testify in the Belgian war-crimes tribunal investigating the massacre, though others doubted he intended to testify at all.

On September 24 2003, Belgium's highest court dismissed the war crimes complaints against Ariel Sharon, ruling there was no longer a legal basis for the lawsuit.

References

• Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout (2004). Sabra And Shatila : September 1982. Pluto Press. ISBN 0745323022.
• Campagna, Joel (April 2002). The Usual Suspects. World Press Review 49 (4). Web journal article, retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Chomsky, Noam (1989). Necessary Illusions: Thought control in democratic societies. South End Press. ISBN 0-89-608366-7.
• Hamdan, Amal (September 16, 2003). Remembering Sabra and Shatila. Aljazeera. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/37/123(A-F). The situation in the Middle East (December 16, 1982). This version from UNESCO adds some footnotes missing in the General Assembly's original. Both retrieved 14 Feb 2006.
• 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.
• Kapeliouk, Amnon (1982). Enquête sur un massacre: Sabra et Chatila. Seuil. ISBN 2020063913. English translation available online here
• Mason, Barnaby (April 17, 2002). Analysis: 'War crimes' on West Bank. BBC World News. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Benny Morris. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, Grove, 1991, ISBN 0802111599.
• New 'evidence' in Sharon trial (May 8, 2002). BBC World News. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Schiff, Z. & Ya'ari, E. (1984). Israel's Lebanon War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671479911
• Shaoul, Jean (February 25, 2002). Sharon’s war crimes in Lebanon: the record. World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Tamal, Ahmad (no date). Sabra and Shatila. All About Palestine. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Tolworthy, Chris (March 2002). Sabra and Shatila massacres -- why do we ignore them?. Global Issues. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Transcript of "The Accused" (June 17, 2001). BBC World News (BBC-1). Retrieved December 4, 2004.

  Note: the BBC has a disclaimer that says "THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY."

• White, Matthew (update July 2004). Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century. Retrieved December 4, 2004.
• Shashaa, Esam (no date). The massacre of Sabra and Shatila Camps - 16.09.1982. Retrieved December 4, 2004.

See also

• Ariel Sharon
• Atrocities
• List of massacres
• State terrorism
• Laws of war
• International law
• Arab-Israeli conflict

External links

• Lebanese Civil war 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre Pictures
• BBC News archive and video
• "Sabra Shatila Massacre Photographs, 1982". Archived from the original on 2004-10-09.; archive is incomplete.
• "Eyewitness Lebanon". Archived from the original on 2004-10-09.. An on-line book, with eyewitness accounts and photos from 91 international correspondents.
• Ariel Sharon, From Sabra/Shatila to Jenin: Another U.S.-approved “good genocidist” free to kill
• Sabra-Shatila, 22 Years Later: Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon
• Kahan Commission of Inquiry – Israel's official investigation into the massacre.
• Report of the Kahan Commission - hosted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• DOC Lebanese account claiming Sharon's 100% innocence
• Cobra Hobeika & Sabra Shatilah (written by Hobeika's bodyguard)
• Innocent Sharon Documentation
• Witnesses
• Statement by Guardians of the Cedars, a Lebanese-Christian nationalist group, expressing its regret over the unilaterality of the investigation in Belgium.