A NEW INTERNATIONAL STANDARD OF JUSTICE

Recent events have revolutionized international humanitarian law. Heads of state are now being held accountable for their crimes. In 1998, Britain arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on charges of genocide and terrorism. More recently, Serbia arrested former President Slobodan Milosevic and deported him to the international tribunal in The Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And in June 2001, Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the 1982 massacre in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila filed suit in a Belgian court against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The suit charges him with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

WHY INDICT ARIEL SHARON?

In a blood-drenched career spanning more than five decades, Sharon has committed massive human rights crimes. In 1953, he led a raid on the village of Qibya in the West Bank, which resulted in the massacre of sixty-nine villagers, mostly women and children. In 1971, Sharon commanded a brutal campaign in Gaza, leaving about a hundred dead. The following year he ordered the expulsion of some 10,000 Bedouins from the Israeli-occupied Sinai. And in 1982, as Defense Minister, Sharon masterminded Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, in which about 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians.

THE MASSACRE OF PALESTINIANS IN SABRA AND SHATILA

In the culmination of the invasion of Lebanon, Sharon ordered the Israeli army to seal off the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and then sent Israel’s murderous Phalangist allies into the camps. Over a two-day period, the Phalangists massacred some 2,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, almost all of them old men, women and children. As the slaughter unfolded, Israeli soldiers fired illumination flares throughout the night and supplied bulldozers to bury the dead and destroy dwellings. After an international outcry and massive protests within Israel, an official Israeli Commission of Inquiry issued a report stating that Sharon "bears personal responsibility" for the massacre. Yet it merely recommended his resignation.

 

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