Sabra and Shatila: A wound that won’t heal

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is one of the many massacres carried out by Israel with the help of Lebanese right-wing parties, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people on a continuous slaughter for three days.

The blood of the martyrs and innocent children who died in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon will not be washed away after 40 years and the passage of time. 

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Premeditatedly, determinedly, and prepared, since the establishment of the temporary occupation entity in 1948, one of the largest, greatest, and most heinous massacres in Arab-Israeli conflict history has taken place.

 There was no specific target for this massacre, but rather it was committed against all human beings. There were also thousands of Lebanese martyrs and martyrs of Arab nationalities.

Sabra and Shatila: The fateful day

On September 16, the occupation army fired flares over the two camps. Three teams of Phalange Party militias, each composed of fifty armed men, stormed the alleyways of the two camps spread over one square kilometer.

 To begin the process of extermination and indiscriminate killing, they used white flags and firearms to deceive the residents and ask them to leave the houses with white flags.

The Lebanese Phalange militia killed everyone present in the two camps and mutilated the corpses, slaughtered children and infants, and extracted fetuses from the mother’s wombs. 

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They raped many women, robbed them of their jewellery, and killed entire families.

While the occupation army prevented anyone from leaving the two camps, it also prevented the media from entering the area and reporting what was happening.

The massacre took the lives of close to 3,500 Palestinian martyrs over three days and roughly 1900 Lebanese martyrs, in addition to 300 to 500 missing people whose whereabouts are still unknown.

 Days passed with the dead still there, and nobody was able to enter the two camps or the nearby communities.

To disassociate itself from the murder, the occupation claimed in a Hebrew book titled “Lebanon 1982 – The Road to War” that the Lebanese Phalange Party carried out the slaughter on its own in retaliation for the assassination of its leader Bashir Gemayel.

Acquittal of Israeli officials

On September 28, 1982, under pressure from the Israeli street, the government of the enemy of Israel was forced to form a committee to investigate “the atrocities committed by a unit of the Lebanese forces against the civilian population in the Sabra and Shatila camps.” It was called the “Kahan Committee,” after the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Judge Yitzhak. Kahane who chaired the committee.

Kahan’s report, which was issued in February 1983, absolved senior Israeli officials, especially the prime minister, the minister of war, and the army chief of staff, of direct responsibility for the massacre, claiming that they were not aware of what was happening, and denying any role of the Israeli army in the massacre.

The report was satisfied with placing personal responsibility on the then Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, for ignoring the “possibility of bloodshed and revenge,” which forced him, with mounting pressures, to resign from his position as defense minister only, but he remained a minister without a portfolio.

The occupying power tries from time to time to evade its historical and criminal responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and to hold the Maronites alone responsible for its implementation, despite the approval in the last lines of the decision to allow them to storm the two camps from the highest levels of Israel. Menachem Begin, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Affairs Yitzhak Shamir, Mossad commander Nahum Admoni, the army Raphael Eitan, the Northern Command Amir Drori, and Military Intelligence Yehoshah Saguh. These decisions could not be overridden, or skipped, which confirms their responsibility for the massacre.

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