FRFI 169 October / November 2002
20 years ago, between 15 and 18 September 1982, Lebanese fascist militias massacred at least 1,500 Palestinian refugees in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilah refugee camps under the direct supervision of the Israeli army and the then Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon.
The slaughter followed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Sharon had ordered in June 1982 to destroy the PLO. 2,000 Israeli tanks and 80,000 troops swept north destroying everything in their path and laying siege to Beirut. The Israeli airforce pounded civilian targets, dropping thousands of tons of cluster-bombs and phosphorous bombs whose powder ignited inside the lungs of those who inhaled it – chemical warfare. Within two months, the Israeli blitzkrieg had slaughtered 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, reducing cities and towns such as Tyre and Sidon (where two out of every three buildings were destroyed) to ruins. Captured PLO fighters were summarily executed; refugee convoys were strafed, thousands herded into concentration camps. The purpose was the genocide of the Palestinian people.
With British support, the US vetoed a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops; the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher decided that sanctions would be ‘ineffective’. Instead, whilst 6,000 PLO fighters held 8 Israeli divisions off from entering Beirut, both imperialist nations used their diplomatic efforts to secure the PLO’s expulsion. Faced with an alliance of Zionism, imperialism and Arab reaction, the odds against the PLO were overwhelming. On 21 August, it was forced to evacuate Beirut under UN supervision.
This left the field open to Israel’s fascist allies within Lebanon, the Falangists, named in tribute to Franco’s fascist movement. Israel had supplied the movement with $100m in arms. Ariel Sharon spoke provocatively of Palestinian ‘terrorists’ taking refuge in Sabra and Shatilah refugee camps. The assassination of the Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, son of the founder of the Falangists, gave him the excuse. On 15 September, Israeli troops sealed off the camps, allowing passage only to the Falangist militias to whom they provided guides. Over three days, drunk and drug-crazed murderers raped, tortured and slaughtered at least 1,500 men, women and children whilst Sharon’s troops prevented any escaping, and even fired flares to light up the camps at night for the killers. Babies were carved up, children hacked to death, women and girls raped and then shot. ‘The marauding killers spared no one who crossed their path – old men and women, doctors and nurses – all were slain. Their bodies were tipped into mass graves and houses bulldozed over them.’ (FRFI No 23, October 1982)
Later, the Israeli Kahane commission said that Sharon bore ‘personal responsibility’ for the slaughter. There was, however, no punishment for Israel: no sanctions, no UN resolutions, no talk of ‘regime change’. As ever, imperialism protected its Zionist ally.
