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| The Massacre | ||||||||
| During the PLO withdrawal from Beirut under international pressure, 14,000 PLO guerillas left Lebanon along with Yasir Arafat and the main men of the organization. After this evacuation, Lebanese Muslims were left exposed to the dictates of the Phalangist militia, as they could not count on the presence of the Palestinians for support in their aims for better political representation. Reports indicate that shortly after Arafat's organization left Beirut for Tunisia, Israel organized, through bribery and intimidation of Muslim members of the Lebanese Parliament, the election of Bashir Gemayel, an ally in the Israeli cause to clear Lebanon of Muslim insurgency and terrorism, on August 23, 1982. Israel had hoped that Bashir, as president of its northern neighbor, would not only create stability in southern Lebanon so that Israel could withdraw its troops without fear of further guerilla attacks in its northern territory, but also to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Accounts diverge at this point, as Bashir's assassination on September 14th by Damascus National Syrian Socialist Party member Habib Tanious Shartouni is both said to have been orchestrated by Syria (hoping to reestablish its influence in Lebanon) and by the Israelis themselves (who, for whatever reason, encountered resistance from Bashir in their aim to clear Beirut of insurgent elements). These theories, though incompatible with one another, both appear to be reasonable explanations of the events surrounding the killing. Fact remains, however, that Bashir was assassinated in a meeting with Phalange party officials in an apartment building in East Beirut early on Wednesday morning, and that this event most likely served as the catalyst for the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. The death of Bashir Gemayel played both into the hands of Israel, as they now had complete control as an occupying force in Lebanon, and the Phalange, who saw themselves free to operate as they pleased without the constraints of a leader who, as president of Lebanon, also had the responsibility of maintaining order and international accountability for his actions regarding the Palestinians left behind by the PLO in the refugee camps. In addition, the Phalange now also had a personal motive for revenge on the Muslims, as their leader had been killed by Muslim Shartouni (who was arrested a short time later and confessed to the crime). | ||||||||
| Shortly after the assassination, Israeli Defense minister Ariel Sharon and Israeli General Eytan decide to send the Phalangists into the camps three hours before Gemayel's death was officially confirmed, according to the Israeli commission of inquiry. Later, Eytan testified that the reasons for sending in the Phalange were "because we could give them orders whereas it was impossible to give the Lebanese army orders." In addition, Israel was also interested in avoiding the kind of heavy losses they encountered during similar entrances into Palestinian refugee camps earlier in the summer in southern Lebanon. | ||||||||
| On the morning of Thursday, September 15th, roughly 24 hours after Gemayel's assassination, Israel invaded Muslim West Beirut, in clear violation of Israel's oral agreement with the United States not to do so after the PLO's withdrawal. Sharon later claimed he had intelligence (probably from Phalange sources) that the PLO had left 2,000 to 3,000 guerillas behind in the camps, ostensibly to secure an eventual return of the PLO and to maintain terrorist cells in Lebanon. During the invasion of West Beirut, Sharon's army ransacked the PLO research center, seizing volumes of old maps, land deeds, photographs, and historical archives of the Palestinian nation. Israeli troops proceeded to surround Sabra and Shatila refugee camps later that day without entering either of them. From their superiors, the forces around the camps received the so-called Order Six stating that "[Sabra and Shatila] are not to be entered. Searching and mopping up the camps will be done by the Phalangists and the Lebanese army." This is presumably exactly what occurred during the next few days, as over a thousand Phalangist militiamen arrived at the airport, their staging ground, that day, and were trucked in small units of 150 men each into Sabra and Shatila. Their "search", however, resulted in slaughter, and the "mopping up" was indeed done by the Lebanese army when it arrived after the Israelis and the Phalange had withdrawn from the sites early on Saturday. Survivors, reporters, aid workers, foreign diplomats and Lebanese soldiers entered the camps on Saturday to discover countless bodies of men, women, and children, strewn at random in the streets, hastily buried in mass graves and beneath the rubble of bulldozed buildings. If the pictures and accounts of those who were on site that weekend are any indication, there had been no resistance from the people living in the camps. Several thousand PLO guerillas would not have died this way. Many of the people whose bodies were found were shot at point-blank range, often with their hands tied behind their backs. Even horses had been shot during the three-day rampage in which most of the camps inhabitants at the time had been massacred. | ||||||||
| The exact events of the time the Phalange spent in these camps cannot be confirmed, as the Christian militiamen had been ordered to silence, and eye-witness accounts of the survivors differ. However, the pictures speak for themselves and it is without a shadow of a doubt that what took place in Sabra and Shatila was a massacre in defiance not only of accepted rules of warfare, but also in defiance of humanity. | ||||||||
| TIMELINE OF THE MASSACRE | ||||||||
| PICTURES OF SABRA AND SHATILA ON THE DAY AFTER THE MASSACRE (extremely graphic) | ||||||||
| MAIN | ||||||||