Remembering the 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre

 

“Sabra and Shatila Massacre” (1982-83), by pioneering Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi

A date that I try not to forget,is the time that over three bloody days from September 16 through  to 18, 1982, up to 3,500 Palestinian unarmed defenceless refugees in Shatila camp and Sabra neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon who were horrifically slaughtered at the hands of Phalangist militiamen, encircled, trained and supported by Israeli occupation forces who had besieged West Beirut for 88 days before launching a full-scale occupation-day period, members of the Lebanese Christian militias, with the support of Israeli troops, killed mostly women, children and the elderly living in the camp complex. Exactly how many were actually killed  remains unknown as the real number is hard to determine because bodies were buried quickly in mass graves or never found and many men were marched out of the camp and “disappeared.” Israel actually supplied the bulldozers to bury the dead and later  tanks entered the camps and ran over the whole area, destroying houses and clearing any signs of crime.

Shortly before the massacres, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was evacuated from Lebanon as a result of an agreement reached after the Israeli invasion of the country. That meant the residents of Sabra and Shatila no longer had protection, despite promises made to them by Philip Habib, an envoy for then US President Ronald Reagan, that their security would be guaranteed.

The massacre was presented as retaliation for the assassination of newly elected Lebanese president Bachir Germavel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. It was wrongly assumed that Palestinians militants had carried out the assassination.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF)  had  invaded Lebanon in June 1982 with the goal of pushing out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). After newly-elected President Bashir Gemayel was assassinated on September 14th, the IDF invaded West Beirut, which included the Sabra neighborhood and the Shatila refugee camp, which predominately housed Muslim refugees. The IDF ordered their allies in Lebanon, the Kataeb Party (also called the Phalange), a right-wing Maronite Christian party, to clear the area of PLO militants to facilitate the IDF advance.

During the massacre, the Israeli army prevented civilians from escaping the camps and arranged for the camps to be illuminated throughout the night by flares launched into the sky from helicopters and mortars.On the 18th of September, after about forty hours of killing, the first images of the massacre showing civilian victims appeared on TV. They provoked worldwide indignation and compassion. Foreign journalists and diplomats entered the camps in the aftermath of the massacre after the IDF had withdrawn from the entrances. Their reports and photographs all expressed despair and brutality. Loren Jenkins, from the Washington Post, wrote on September the 23th: “The scene at the Shatila camp when foreign observers entered Saturday morning was like a nightmare. Women wailed over the deaths of loved ones, bodies began to swell under the hot sun, and the streets were littered with thousand of spent cartridges. Houses had been dynamited and bulldozed into rubble, many with the inhabitants still inside. Groups of bodies lay before bullet-pocked walls where they appeared to have been executed. Others were strewn in alleys and streets, apparently shot as they tried to escape”. Israel for a while denied it had conspired in the massacre, yet as a result of international condemnation it launched an inquiry in 1983, known as the Kahan Commission  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/kahan.html  set up in 1983 in response to widespread international pressure, concluded that that Israeli leaders were “indirectly responsible” for the killings and that Ariel Sharon, then the defense minister and later prime minister, bore “personal responsibility” for failing to prevent the massacre Ariel Sharon, bore personally responsible, among others, for the massacre. Elie Hobeika later became a long-serving Member of the Lebanese Parliament as well as serving in many minsterial roles. Despite the findings of the Kahan Commission, Ariel Sharon held many influential ministerial roles in the Israeli government, serving in fact as Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. Thus were the engineers of one of the bloodiest and most appalling massacres in contemporary history rewarded.
It is quite simply one of the greatest human tragedies that we should never simply forget.Israel continues to abuse Palestinian rights without consequence. Settler attacks on Palestinian property, lands, and persons have terrorised thousands and killed almost entire families.Palestinian complaints filed against settlers go unindicted by Israel. In fact, the Israeli military serves the settlers by allowing the attackers to simply walk away". When they do take action, Israeli soldiers are more likely to support the settlers, often allowing them to continue attacking Palestinians rather than shielding innocent civilians.
The dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel continues and the Israeli military itself continues to commit war crimes with impunity, as evidenced by Israel's repeated attacks on the tiny besieged Gaza Strip over the past decade, which have killed thousands of innocent Palestinians with disproportionate and indiscriminate force. Today there are more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, most barred from owning property and earing decent wages. They make up part of the nearly 5 million Palestinians refugees living in the West Bank, Gaza and throughout the Middle East, descendants of the 750,000 displaced after the establishment of the Israeli State.
Israel's years of dispossession and half-century of military rule still ongoing and is supported by unconditional American military aid and diplomatic backing. International bodies like the UN Security Council have repeatedly made note of Israel's human rights violations. Injustices continue to this day  through land confiscations, home demolitions, mass imprisonment, collective displacement, racist discrimination, assassination and killing.

One of the reasons why people still talk about Sabra and Shatila, is that despite evidence of what the UN Security Council described as a “criminal massacre,” and the ranking of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in humankind’s collective memory as among the most heinous crimes of the 20th century, the man found “personally responsible” for this crime, as well as his associates and the people who carried out the massacres, have never been pursued or punished. no one has ever stood trial or been  held account for this crime. A massacre so awful that the people of the world should not be allowed to forget it, as we should not forget any crime against humanity, all are of equal importance. It is unfortunately part of us all, a  history and legacy that is  both shameful and bitter.On all accounts this was not an isolated incident, and to this day Israels oppressive policies towards the Palestinians continue.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the massacre with Resolution 521 (19 September 1982). This condemnation was followed by a 16 December 1982 General Assembly resolution calling the massacre as an “act of genocide.”

 Every September since Palestinians and friends from around the world gather now in Shatila at the Martyr's Square  to remember  and mourn, and mark the events that had previously occurred. Even contemplating this dark anniversary, I never give up feeling that there is still much hope in the future for the Palestinian people. I recognise their ongoing plight and make sure that they are not forgotten.

The conscience of the world was terribly wounded on this  day and we cannot, should not and will not ever forget or forgive.With sorrow and with struggle,we must remember Sabra and Shatila  and pledge to continue to work for justice.But as we commemorate the thousands who died at Sabra and Shatila try also to think of all Palestinians who continue to suffer from human rights abuses. 

The international community is obliged to remedy its moral responsibility to the victims of the  massacre by working to end Israel's occupation and other abuses of Palestinian rights.This tragic anniversary is a reminder that the international community also continues to fail to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and to defend the basic human rights of the Palestinian people.

The dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel continues.It was this very same dehumanisation that led Israel to allow vengeful militiamen to enter the Sabra and Shatila camps and that permits Israelis to occupy another people for fifty years and inflict humiliation and injury.

The situation in the West Bank and Gaza and for the Palestinians living in refugee camps in countries neighboring Israel could not be more dark and grim. The constant arrests, house demolitions and killing of unarmed Palestinians in the West Bank and the regular bombing of blockaded Gaza are rarely reported in the mainstream media anymore. Funding for Palestinian refugees is also in jeopardy. The Gulf’s normalization with Israel resulted in severe funding cuts to UNRWA.

The six million refugees living outside historic Palestine (now called Israel) are all but forgotten. Many of us have allowed them to fade in our consciousness. Yet every Palestinian killed—be they the recent 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, killed by Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2021; or the 2,022 killed, including 526 children, in Operation Protective Edge in 2014; the 1,400 deaths, including 300 children, in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9; or in the Great March of Return cannot be forgotten.

These deaths wrench out the hearts of their family and those who love them, leaving large gaping wounds which have not healed. There is no healing as the violence against the Palestinians is ongoing. There is no post-traumatic stress syndrome; there is only ongoing traumatic onslaughts and wounding of their bodies and souls. Every child born in Gaza after 2008 has experienced four major military assaults with intensive bombardment, deaths and injuries. Two million Palestinians are held under blockade in Gaza since 2007 converting Gaza into a large prison whose “inmates” are bombed and not allowed to escape.

This year also marks the 74th anniversary of the Nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic), where at least 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from and fled their homes at the hands of militias during the creation of the state of Israel,and the 105th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when  Britain was on its ascent in colonial power, thus paving the way for the giving away of the homes of the Palestinians and wiping Palestine off the world map.

Remember too that remember Palestinian refugees in Lebanon continue to live in a state of permanent exile and humanitarian crisis.Discrimination and marginalisation frustrate Palestinians’ access to health, education, employment and social protection, leaving them perpetually dependent on assistance from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). But UNRWA’s chronic funding deficit and Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis are increasing health and humanitarian needs, particularly for women and children.

“On this important commemoration of those who were brutally murdered in Shatila refugee camp, we take inspiration from the strength of the victims and survivors,” said Dr Ali Dakwar,Medical Aid for Palestinians Lebanon Director.

“Decades on, Palestinian refugees still remain unjustly displaced from their homes, and are among those worse affected by Lebanon’s economic collapse. We therefore commit to continue our joint efforts towards a better future where all Palestinians can realise their full rights to health and dignity.”

I happen to believe its a  moral responsibility to the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre to keep on working to end Israel's occupation and other abuses of Palestinian rights,so that  the lives of many families and the others we  remember will not have been lost in vain. If you agree that every Palestinian has the right to live free from occupation, blockade and forced exile,please consider signing this pledge, https://www.map.org.uk/campaigns/stand-with-map-to-say-everypalestinian-has-an-equal-right-to-health-and-dignity
I conclude this post with the following powerful, moving poem from the pen of the late great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Sabra and Shatila  by Mahmoud Darwish

Sabra — a sleeping girl
The men left
War slept for two short nights,
Beirut obeyed and became the capital…
A long night
Observing the dreams in Sabra,
Sabra is sleeping.
Sabra — the remains of a dead body
She bid farewell to her horsemen and time
And surrendered to sleep out of tiredness.. and the Arabs who threw her behind them.
Sabra — and what the soldiers Departing from Galilee forgot
She doesn’t buy and sell anything but her silence
To buy flowers to put on her braided hair.
Sabra — sings her lost half, between the sea and the last war:
Why do you go?
And leave your wives in the middle of a hard night?
Why do you go?
And hang your night
Over the camp and the national anthem?
Sabra — covering her naked breasts with a farewell song
Counts her palms and gets it wrong
While she can’t find the arm:
How many times will you travel?
And for how long?
And for what dream?
If you return one day
for which exile shall you return,
which exile brought you back?
Sabra — tearing open her chest:
How many times
does the flower bloom?
How many times
will the revolution travel?
Sabra — afraid of the night. Puts it on her knees
covers it with her eyes’ mascara. Cries to distract it:
They left without saying
anything about their return
Withered and tended
from the rose’s flame!
Returned without returning
to the beginning of their journey
Age is like children
running away from a kiss.
No, I do not have an exile
To say: I have a home
God, oh time ..!
Sabra — sleeps. And the fascist’s knife wakes up
Sabra calls who she calls
All of this night is for me, and night is salt
the fascist cuts her breasts — the night reduced — 
he then dances around his knife and licks it. Singing an ode to a victory of the cedars,
And erases
Quietly .. Her flesh from her bones
and spreads her organs over the table
and the fascist continues dancing and laughs for the tilted eyes
and goes crazy for joy, Sabra is no longer a body:
He rides her as his instincts suggest, and his will manifests.
And steals a ring from her flesh and blood and goes back to his mirror
And be — Sea
And be — Land
And be — Clouds
And be — Blood
And be — Night
And be — Killing
And be — Saturday
and she be — Sabra.
Sabra — the intersection of two streets on a body
Sabra, the descent of a Spirit down a Stone
And Sabra — is no one
Sabra — is the identity of our time, forever.

(translation by Saad El Kurdi)