The horror simply does not disappear.
That there are other horrors in the world does not in any way diminish what happened 28 years ago in Sabra + Shatila, where massacres took place in two undefended Palestinian refugee camps in west Beirut. It was, indeed, “one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century” …

A good part of last year’s post relied on the accounts, including eye-witness reports gathered by Leila Shahid with Linda Butler, published here in the Journal of Palestine Studies.

It is a matter of public and historical record that Phalangist forces carried out the massacre in revenge for the assassination of their leader, Bachir Gemayel, on 14 September. Israeli officers consulted with Phalangist forces hours prior to their entry into the camp. The massacres were carried out while Israeli soldiers were stationed on the roof of an adjacent building which had a clear view of what went on in at least part of the area. Israeli forces fired flares to provide illumination through the first night that Phalangist forces were in the camp. An Israeli journalist went personally from Beirut back to Israel to speak directly to Israel’s then-Defense Minister to tell him what was going on in the camps. And, an Israeli commission of inquiry later found that Israel’s then-Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, bore personal responsibility. Sharon was obliged to resign. [[I was one of three journalists who covered the subsequent trial of his lawsuit in NYC against TIME Magazine and CBS Television's 60 Minutes for a report, which Sharon won, based on a dossier filed by David Halevy to Time Magazine that was judged faulty because of a leap of logic or assumption.]] Sharon later became Prime Minister.

The massacres were carried out after Sharon led IDF troops up to and encircled PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Beirut in June 1982. Weeks of heavy bombardment with all kinds of terrible weaponry designed to kill Arafat were used. The UN Security Council was in near-continuous consultations or meetings.

Finally, it was arranged for Arafat and PLO fighters to evacuate Beirut aboard Greek ferryboats under the UN flag. The evacuation began on 23 August.

Because the PLO fighters feared they were leaving their compatriots, friends and families undefended, American guarantees of protection were given, and American and French naval ships were stationed off the Lebanese coast.

Still, the massacre took place, over more than 48 hours, without intervention.

It’s hard to tell without more references, but it looks as though the line drawn as Israel’s “Northern Maritime Border” does not go straight out from the coast at a 90 degree perpendicular to the coast — instead, the line shown here seems to go north…

A report by the German News Agency DPA published in Haaretz reports that “Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansor, in a letter sent Monday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, rejected Israeli claims of the northern part of the waters between the two countries. ‘The Israeli claim infringes on Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic (sea) Zone’, a zone that gives a country the right to explore its maritime resources. ‘This is a clear violation of Lebanon’s rights… over an area of some 860 square kilometers, and puts international peace and security at risk’, it said”. This is published here.

As Haaretz reports, “Over the past two years, Israel has discovered two fields thought to contain about 24 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. The discoveries could be enough to make Israel energy self-sufficient for decades”, while “Norway-based Petroleum Geo-Services this year announced it had explored Lebanese waters which contained “valuable information” on potential offshore gas reserves”. Meanwhile, Lebanon and Israel have not ended the state of war that has existed since 1948, and do not speak directly to each other, or have diplomatic relations.

So, they have each asserted their claims in the media — and now at the UN [through the Secretary-General and his special representative...]

The choice, for our Quote of the Day series, however, will go to his remarks explicitly saying that “several Palestinian terrorists” are responsible — though no one has yet been charged, much less tried or convicted — for the bloody murders, a week ago, of five members of a Israeli settler family in their home in the Itamar settlement in the northern West Bank, not far from Nablus.

It was the first time that Netanyahu — or any Israeli government official, for that matter — had made such a specific accusation, though in the media and among the general population, this was the immediate and enduring assumption.

Netanyahu’s explanation segues into an argument about the settlements, and about who wants peace more…

Here are the exact words, from the CNN transcript, posted :

“MORGAN: Prime Minister, there was a horrific murder of the Fogel family last week. The details of which are chilling to read. What was your reaction to that, and where are you with the investigation into the perpetrators?

NETANYAHU: This was horrific. It was savagery. I mean, several Palestinian terrorists came into the home of this Jewish family in the West Bank. They stabbed a three-month old baby girl in the heart, cut her throat. They stabbed her four-year old brother in the heart, cut him in the throat. They stabbed the father with another child and stabbed the mother and left them dying in their blood. And then I visited the family and I saw the 12-year-old girl, a sister who came home and saw this unbelievable massacre. So obviously the first response is sheer horror. And my second response was to send a message to the settlers to contain their rage and not respond because we’d have a cycle of reprisals so I asked them to – not to take the law in their own hands, not to have vigilante actions because this would – could generate a blood bath. I thought that was important to stop that. But we’re now looking for the killers. We’ll find them.

MORGAN: Are you making progress?

NETANYAHU: Some. Some. I think we’ll find them.

MORGAN: There was – to put it mildly – a raised eyebrow collectively around the world. First, of the horrifying nature of this attack, but secondly at your response. The premise of, they murder, we build. You ordered the building of 500 more building settlements. It’s a strange moral equivalence, Prime Minister. I mean, part of the problem that you face now in Israel is perception around the world. Your PR is not good, as you know. When people heard about what happened, I think the international community completely on
your side and the people of Israel. When they see you immediately ordering more settlements, I’m sure you did it to calm down the people as you say, a lot of that sympathy erode. People think, come on, there’s got to be a better way of responding to this kind of thing than doing that.

NETANYAHU: Well I wanted to send three messages. The first one I told you about, that is a message of restraint to the settlers. The second is a message to the terrorists. I was telling them, I know you think you’re going to uproot us with this savagery, with the violence, with terror. You’re not going to uproot us. So you kill us, you want to drive us into the sea, that’s not going to happen. You only way we’ll have a settlement is through peaceful negotiations. So you kill, we’ll build. But coincidentally I chose to build in the large populated areas that are going to stay in Israel anyway. And not 500 new settlements but 500 apartments, which is very different. And third, I wanted to send a message to the international community. I said to the international community that rushes to condemn Israel for every building that is build. You know, a Jew builds an apartment in the Jewish homeland. What a terrible crime. But they seldom go and condemn this kind of savagery without any ands, ifs and buts and I wanted that condemnation. I was glad to see –
…
MORGAN: But is that true? I mean, does the international community really not just condemn that kind of outrage out of hand? Because I read that they did. And the point about the settlements is surely that you are trying to get a peace process to work. You’re trying to get to some settlement. The Middle East quartet only yesterday said they’ve almost given up hope that peace is achievable at the moment…
…

MORGAN: But doesn’t history need people to be courageous?

NETANYAHU: Yes. Yes, it does. But peace requires two to tango. And what I’m – what I said – suggested the simplest thing is exactly what you’re said. I said to Abu Mazen who was flying around in the world – the Palestinian president – I said, don’t fly around the world. You want to make peace? Ramallah, where you said, is 10 minutes away from Jerusalem where we’re sitting right now. I’m willing to come to you. You can come here. Let’s sit down, shut the room, you know, basically sit down until smoke comes out. That’s the way you make peace. That’s how we made peace with Egypt. That’s how we made peace with Jordan.

MORGAN: Why isn’t it happening?

NETANYAHU: Because I think the Palestinian society is split into two – those who are openly calling for Israel’s destruction like Hamas, and those who are not calling openly for Israel’s destruction but refuse to confront those who do. And that’s the Palestinian Authority. I think they’re timid, I think they’re afraid to actually stand up to these killers. And I think that they’re afraid, maybe for their own sake, for their own political hides (ph), sometimes for their own physical safety. And they don’t take that necessary plunge…
…
NETANYAHU: Well the legacy I want is that I hope secure the life the Jewish state and its future. We did have – we did act precipitously. We walked out of Gaza. We uprooted. Talk about concessions. We uprooted 10,000 Israelis out of Gaza, just eliminated the settlements that were supposed to be the obstacle to peace. We walked out, Iran walked in. We didn’t get peace. We walked out of Lebanon, every last inch. We walked out, Iran walked in. From Lebanon they fired 6,000 rockets at us. This is a country the size of New Jersey. From Gaza, after we walked out, they fired 6,000 rockets at us. Now, they say, ‘Just walk out of the West Bank. Make the concession. Come on, do it again, a third time’. We could be in a position where we can’t live. So my concern is, I want peace for Israel but I want a peace that we can defend and I want a peace that will hold. And I know that that’s peace with security. I know that’s what we have to insist – and I insist – unabashedly so – on peace with strong security arrangements. One of the leading European statesmen told me the other day – I was sitting where you are – well in that couch. He said, you know, three months ago when you said in the context of a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians that you would need to stay along the Jordan River because you never know what would happen on the other side. The Jordan River, mind you, is all of the distance of the Washington beltway, greater Paris from here. Nearby. So we’d have to have some line on the Jordan River to prevent Iran from penetrating into Israel and placing another 100,000 rockets aimed at our cities. He said, people didn’t understand what you’re talking about. He said, now after the convulsions, this earthquake people understand your insistence of security a lot better. So I would say the first condition of peace, we’ll make concessions, obviously. We’ll have to make territorial concessions and that’s hard. This is our ancestral homeland. This is the land of the bible…
…
In the case of the Palestinian society, Hamas openly declares that it wants to wipe out not the heads of the Israeli government, but every Israeli. Wipe away the Jewish state. They openly say so. Their constitution –
…
MORGAN: But isn’t this a good – ironically we’re sitting here now with this part of the region being one of the calmer places. Isn’t that the perfect time to make this happen?

NETANYAHU: If you can be sure of who your partner will be tomorrow. You’re not even sure of that. You want to make sure that you have solid (INAUDIBLE) of security and you also want mutual reconciliation.
…
We recognize the rights of the Palestinians for a state of their own. Even though they’re sitting in part of our ancestral homeland, it’s very painful to do that. But I’ve been doing it. I’ve been saying it. But they refuse to say that they recognize a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people. I’m talking about – I’m not talking about the Hamas, I’m talking about the Palestinian authority that should confront Hamas and confront their own people and say, hey, it’s over. We give up the ghost of dismantling Israel or dissolving Israel or flooding it with refugees. It’s over. No more war, no more bloodshed. Just as Sadat said. I want to hear that clear statement but I’m willing, I’ve already made those statements. And so the problem you have in the international community is that the Palestinians do not want to put a finality to the conflict, do not want to say that a Palestinian state will be an end to a conflict and not a stage in the dissolution of Israel. Now, they speak peace to the outside but not to their own people. To their own people – on the day that these people – this family was savagely brutalized – brutally murdered – babies were stabbed – on that day, the Palestinian authority had a square called al-Bireh, which is a suburb of Ramallah, in name of a terrorist who murdered 37 Israelis on a bus, including 12 children. To the outside world they speak peace. Internally they foster a culture of hate…
…
NETANYAHU: If I sign a peace, people of Israel will follow me. But you’ve got to give us the two elements of peace that are required to
have a real peace, not a fake peace. The real peace requires security and the real peace requires that you actually reconcile yourself to a Jewish state here, permanently. This is what we want…
…
The Palestinian economy has been growing at 10 percent … Gaza is growing now at 17 percent because we lifted all the restrictions…

MORGAN: Yes, but you wouldn’t want your family living there, would you?

NETANYAHU: No, of course not. But certainly I think the people of Gaza would like to be relieved of this Hamas tyranny and this medievalism. But as far as the West Bank, I changed the policy. In fact, (INAUDIBLE) what you say. I thought that it’s important to add, in addition to security and recognition, to have prosperity as a third pillar of peace. So I’ve been – I removed hundreds of road blocks, check points and so on and the result is that the Palestinian economy and the West Bank has grown at 10 percent, which is – which for me is very hopeful because I like to see apartment towers sprout out of the soil of the West Bank of Ramallah and not missiles. And I think this is an important component of peace. But the economic peace is not a substitute for political
negotiations. And on day one of forming my government, I called on President Abbas and Abu Mazen to come here and talk people [should this read, "peace"?]. The second step that I took, it’s a tough decision, I froze construction in the settlement. I know this is not the issue, I know construction in the settlements are not a real issue, they’re an artificial issue. The settlements cover only one or two percent of the territory of the West Bank and a few hundred apartments in this one percent is meaningless. But it’s become an issue. I said, all right. You know, if it makes it easier for you, I’ll freeze construction for 10 months. They didn’t come. And when they finally came, they bolted after two weeks. I recognize the principle of two states for two people. I agreed to another extension, three months. I did all these things. And what do I find? That the Palestinians can walk away from the negotiations, make pre-conditions, call public square in honor of terrorists and now they’re talking about a national unity with Hamas that calls for our destruction. How can you be for peace with Israel and peace with Hamas that calls for our destruction? … It’s one or the other. Not both.
…
NETANYAHU: You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand what I just said. In the 1930s, with Hitler, they failed to recognize that. He said, well, I’m willing to sign this, or that, document. But in reality they could ascertain easily that he was dead set on conquest and annihilation. I think we face, in the Middle East, an ideology that is absolutely-absolutely opposed to peace and coexistence, and that is Hamas …
… if Hamas has a constitution, if it tore it up, and if the constitution calls for the annihilation of Israel, not only that but the expansion of radical Islam throughout the region and the world,if they got rid of that, yes, I could contemplate that. If they stopped firing rockets, or importing now, rockets to launch on our cities. They just intercepted some Iranian rockets yesterday that were intended for Hamas. If they stopped terrorism, if they stopped calling for our eradication, yes, of course, we would be happy to talk with them. But the fact is that Hamas has not stopped being Hamas. Hamas continues to call for our liquidation. So what am I going to negotiate with them? The method of our decapitation? The method of their exterminating us? Of course not. Any country would take a stand against somebody that is completely committed to its obliteration. And that was not the case in Northern Ireland, because the IRA never wanted to exterminate Britain…”

OK.

So, now, after all that, who murdered the five members of the Fogel family in Itamar? And, why?

Netanyahu did specifically mention Egypt in the announcement on Friday, saying: “Most of our [natural gas] supply today is coming from Egypt”, Netanyahu said. But, he added immediately, “It’s important for us to develop additional resources”.

The exact situation on the ground, resulting from the Egyptian-Israeli natural gas deal, is rather unclear.

The announcement – as CNN’s Jerusalem correspondent Kevin Flowers pointed out in a Tweet on Friday afternoon – came on the eve of the first meeting of the Middle East Quartet principles of 2011 on Saturday (February 5) in Germany, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference.

The Quartet meeting will be chaired by Catherine Ashton, European Union High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, and will be attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Quartet Envoy Tony Blair.

In a statement released by the EU on Friday, Ashton said: “This meeting comes at a crucial time when we are witnessing significant events in the Middle East region. It is therefore extremely important that we stay the course in the Middle East Peace Process. We must remain focused on making progress on a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and Palestine — a key component in bringing about peace and stability in the wider region.”

In his announcement in Jerusalem on Friday, Netanyahu didn’t utter a word about Gaza (nor did he mention Hamas, who now control the Gaza Strip) – he mentioned only the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Netanyahu said: “It’s important for us to develop additional resources but it’s also important for the Palestinians. There’s a Palestinian Authority gas field adjacent to an Israeli gas field. We need to develop both simultaneously. This is something that the Palestinian Authority expressed interest in. I think we’re going to begin discussions and negotiations to facilitate both, where the revenues from the Palestinian field go to the Palestinian Authority and the revenues from the Israeli field go to the Israeli government and I think this is good for stability, good for prosperity and good for peace”.

Previous hard-nosed Israeli negotiations with BG (formerly British Gas – whose commercial interests in a long-pending Gaza gas deal were strongly backed by Tony Blair when he served as British Prime Minister) were stuck for some years on an Israeli insistence on negotiating a highly-concessional long-term and below-market price for the gas it would buy from the Palestinians – similar to the deal it had signed with Egypt.

These negotiations were conducted between BG and the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure (then headed by Benjamin “Fouad” Ben Eliezer, who is of Iraqi origin).

However, BG was consulting closely throughout the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – and could not have concluded a deal without PA approval. The PA position was, and still remains, that it will not sell Palestinian natural gas for anything less than the going market rate (apparently, at any given time).

The broad outlines of the deal were that the gas would be piped, underwater, to an Israeli refinery near Israel’s southern port city of Ashkelon, which would process the gas and then re-ship a small quantity back to Gaza for the Palestinians’ own needs (at the time, it was assumed that the Palestinian usage would be small – but this might not be realistic any longer).

The gas could be used to fuel Gaza’s only power plant, and a possible water desalination plant, as well as other domestic needs. A pipeline to the West Bank was not apparently envisaged. The PA in Ramallah would receive about 25% of the profits, which was projected at the time to be about $1 billion dollars.

Somewhat surprisingly, these profits would not go to the PA governmental coffers directly, but would instead go to the extra-governmental Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), originally set up to receive many of the assets in the portfolio of the late Yasser Arafat, when donors demanded greater transparency in PA operations. The PIF itself, led by a group of prominent Palestinian businessmen, has itself adopted a policy that seems rather less than transparent.

Political and legal challenges to the highly-concessional Egyptian-Israeli gas deal were raised by the Egyptian opposition in the wake of the unprecedented Israeli military operation, Cast Lead, ostensibly against Hamas forces in Gaza from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. These challenges were discussed, then dismissed, first in the Egyptian parliament then in the courts.

But, there appear to be significant technical problems that have not been overcome. It had been announced with much fanfare in May 2008 (after an earlier disappointment in March) that gas had started flowing from Egypt to Israel in an underwater pipeline. Since then, not much clear information has been given publicly.

There have been indications of problems with the pipeline itself, then with the particular mix or chemical composition of the Egyptian gas being fed through the undersea pipeline, which apparently was not suitable to the needs of the Israeli refinery (though this is something that is usually clarified at a very early stage in any negotiation).

Before these disappointments – but within weeks of the BG announcement that it was freezing negotiations with Israel – then-Minister Ben Eliezer told participants at the right-wing Jerusalem Conference in Jerusalem in January 2008 that even with the 15-year Egyptian gas deal in place, Israel needed to diversify its sources for security needs – because it lived in a “rough neighborhood” and had relational problems. Ben Eliezer specifically said at that time that Israel should ideally have at least five different sources of supply for natural gas.

Despite the BG statement that negotiations had been frozen, Ben Eliezer said Israel was still interested in concluding a deal with the Palestinians. But, it became clear that the real problem – as much for the PA in Ramallah as for anyone else – was Hamas. Israel had increased its price offer to about half of the going market rate – still not enough to satisfy Ramallah’s requirement – by the time of the Hamas rout of Fatah/Palestinian Preventive Security Services in mid-June 2007. When it became clear, about six months later, that the resulting split between the two parts of the occupied Palestinian territory was not about to change any time soon, BG “froze” its negotiations with Israel, and closed its office in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv (though a small Ramallah office has been maintained).

The unstated reason was that nothing could be done as long as Hamas was in control in Gaza.

Hamas had said in late 2007 that it wanted to have a say in the negotiations, and suggested it would like to see a revision of terms already agreed.

Since then, everything went quiet.

Some thought that Israel would completely lose interest in pursuing any gas deal with the Palestinians following announcements, first in 2009, and then in 2010, of one large natural gas discovery, then a second, possibly huge, gas under the Mediterranean Sea off Haifa on Israel’s northern coast (more or less on the same latitude as the Israeli city of Hadera, a bit inland). If the promise lives up to expectations, and all arrangements put into place, these wells could come online in 2012 or 2014, respectively.

Netanyahu said, in the announcement with Blair on Friday, that “Israel has of course its own gas supplies down the line in the close of the decade, but we have interim gas needs”.

A day before (on Thursday 3 February), the largest-circulation Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, published an article discussing “the day on which Egypt will close the [natural gas] pipe.” The Yediot Ahronot article said, according to an English-language translation provided by the Israeli Government Press Office, that “It has become clear, in the wake of the recent events, that it is difficult to depend on others. Accordingly, what is necessary is to prohibit natural gas exports [from Israel, once these new finds become productive]…That would ensure the supply of gas to Israel for decades.”

But, Netanyahu’s remarks suggested a far more wide-reaching strategy.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s remarks on Friday, with Blair by his side, are yet another of several indications that some kind of multi-sided deal has already been sketched out, and agreed in private, with both Hamas and the PA on board.

The move also sends a signal (the significance of which is not yet totally clear) to Egypt.

This implies a deal on Palestinian reconciliation is in the works, which would be another a major shift in the regional equation – but it is one demanded by most Palestinians.

Egypt had been playing a role in inter-Palestinian reconciliation talks for the last couple of years, without results. These efforts may have been, in part, a stalling tactic.

It also signals that Israel is not quite as dependent on Egypt as some in Egypt may have thought.

For Israelis, it may remove anxieties about Israel’s dependency on Egypt.

For international actors, it suggests a way to defuse the ramifications, in Palestinian territory, of the potentially-destabilizing effects of major changes that are now expected in Egypt.

The discovery of these large – possibly huge – offshore deposits of natural gas in areas of the eastern Mediterranean that Israel in effect must share with neighboring countries, not all of them friends, has been expected to cause a positive change (a “mellowing”, one regional diplomat predicted) in Israel’s regional and international outlook.

Israel will have to clarify its Mediterranean maritime claims by reaching negotiated agreements with its neighbors. So far, Israel has only reached agreement with Cyprus (and this is still subject to parliamentary ratification, but no problem is envisaged).

With Lebanon, it is another story. Israel has asserted that it possesses rights that, in reality, must be negotiated. But, the two countries remain in a state of war, and Lebanon has said several times that it is prepared to defend its own economic interests in Mediterranean waters. Even more, Lebanon is not ready to negotiate with Israel (unless there are big regional changes – including Israel’s acceptance of the Arab Initiative offering recognition and full normalization of relations if Israeli withdraws from territory occupied in the June 1967 war.

This will also require Israeli ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty – a move that Israel had been considering anyway, apparently even before the discovery of the large new undersea gas deposits.

Netanyahu also said on Friday that “We’ve had a series of meetings and we’re concluding with the announcement of several steps that we take to, first of all to enhance stability. I think people understand that stability is important at all times, but it’s especially important now and the first set of steps that we’re taking are to continue the policy we’ve advanced to enable economic growth in the Palestinian areas. I think this has contributed to stability; it’s contributed to a better life for the Palestinians and I think it’s contributing to peace and security in the long term”. Netanyahu added that Israel was also going to take steps which he said were “intended to make Gaza independent of Israeli infrastructure by helping to develop their electricity plants; water, sewerage treatment. I think this is important. There are significant international projects that we want to advance. We talked about the ways to do it in specific concrete terms”.

Netanyahu added: “I don’t delude myself for a second that an economic peace is a substitute for political peace. We need both, and I hope that Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will heed my call and enter direct negotiations with us. And one of the things that I think people can appreciate today is the importance we attach to the security arrangements on the ground because as recent events have shown us, the peace agreement has to take into account not only the situation that is present today, but the situation that could unfold tomorrow. So I look forward to resuming these negotiations with the Palestinians”…

The Palestinians suspended direct negotiations with Israel in December 2008, a few days after the start of Operation Cast Lead. Under pressure from the Obama administration that took office in January 2009 (just hours after two unilateral cease-fires — one by Israel, one by Hamas — that ended the massive Israeli military operation) the Palestinians agreed in March 2010, then again in September, to engage in indirect talks, but only if Israel stopped its settlement building. There are no negotiations at the moment.

This article was first posted on Bikya Masr here.

UPDATE: Haaretz reported the following, in an article by Barak Ravid published here:
“The package of confidence-building measures that Israel will offer the Palestinian Authority is seen as a bid to moderate the Quartet statement at the end of its deliberations, which is expected to criticize Israel for its continued construction in West Bank settlements … In the end, Netanyahu’s offer did not include measure that would enable the PA to take over land required to build the new town Rawabi. Blair added, however, ’5000 Gaza-registered residents of the West Bank will be given West Bank identity cards’. Israel’s forum of seven senior ministers discussed the proposed gestures to the Palestinians last week. Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and minister Dan Meridor supported the gestures, while ministers Benny Begin, Moshe Ya’alon, Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai objected. The gestures will also ease the blockade on Gaza, permitting more items for export and permitting a limited amount of construction materials. Blair also announced the agreement to establish ‘mobile desalination plants to meet Gaza’s needs for clean water and approval in principle for a larger permanent desalination plant’. Netanyahu agreed to the Palestinian Authority’s request to renew discussions on the development of an offshore natural gas field opposite Gaza’s shores, and agreed in principle for the gas to power the new power plant to be built in Gaza, which he also specifically approved. Netanyahu said that although Israel’s natural gas needs will be satisfied by its Leviathan and Tamar gas fields in ten years’ time, it needs other sources of natural gas in the interim, and it is currently dependent upon supply from Egypt. Netanyahu pointed out that the profits from the Palestinian gas field will go to the Palestinian Authority, and not to Hamas, who rules Gaza”…

That there are other horrors in the world does not in any way diminish what happened 28 years ago in Sabra + Shatila, where massacres took place in two undefended Palestinian refugee camps in west Beirut.

It was, indeed, “one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century” …

What happened was incited — and justified — by repetitious gratuitous and baseless accusations that “terrorists”, with possible weapons caches, were holed up in those camps.

One of the first outsiders to arrive at the scene was British journalist Robert Fisk of The Independent, who came to the camp with other journalists on early Saturday morning, the 18th of September, 1982 — 28 years ago today.

Here, in a video made over a year ago, he recounts what he saw that day:
.

Leila Shahid, a former PLO Ambassador in Ireland, Netherlands, and France, and now Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, was born in Beirut and was living there during the 1982 siege masterminded by Israel’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.

She and Linda Butler of the Journal of Palestine Studies published — in 2002, the 20th anniversary of the massacres — an abbrieviated version of Shahid’s longer study and some of the witness testimony she had collected.

Here are some excerpts, including important background information:
“Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon, launched on 6 June 1982. Named Operation Peace in Galilee with the stated intention of remaining within twenty-five miles of the Israeli border, the invasion soon expanded in scope. By 13 June, Israeli forces led by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had pushed all the way to Baabda, seat of the Lebanese presidency, completely encircling West Beirut, where the PLO was headquartered, and trapping thousands of PLO fighters inside the city. The declared goal of the operation also expanded, from protecting the Israeli citizens of northern Galilee into what Sharon called ‘ridding the world of the center of international terrorism’ … The siege of West Beirut continued for seventy days”.

Shahid and Butler report that “the Israelis lost 368 men during the incursion”, while “losses on the Arab side were staggering: During the first three months of the invasion, 17,825 were killed throughout the areas occupied, while in West Beirut alone, 2,461 persons were killed in the systematic air strikes and intensive artillery and naval gunfire directed at the capital”.

Then, “Agreement was finally reached in mid-August, involving the evacuation of more than 11,000 Palestinian fighters and PLO officials and the dismantlement of PLO offices and infrastructure, to be supervised by a multinational force that would leave within thirty days of its arrival. The agreement also involved written guarantees for the security of Palestinians in the camps personally signed by Habib as representing the United States. The evacuation was carried out from 21 August to 1 September 1982. By 10 September, the U.S., French, and Italian troops that had overseen the operation had left the country”.

********************** 14 to 15 September 1982 **********************

Meanwhile, “On 23 August, as the PLO evacuation was in progress, Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon, with the Muslim deputies boycotting the vote … Then, at 4:30 P .M . on Tuesday, 14 September, a week before Gemayel was to assume office, he was killed in a massive explosion at the Phalange party headquarters in East Beirut … Though the PLO had by this time totally evacuated the city, [Ariel] Sharon did not hesitate to blame the Palestinians. In a declaration that same evening reported by Associated Press, he stated that Gemayel’s killing ‘symbolizes the terrorist murderousness threatening all people of peace from the hands of PLO terrorist organizations and their supporters’ … That same night [14 September], preparations began for an operation that according to Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk had been meticulously planned long in advance. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff General Rafael Eitan arrived in Beirut that evening.

Several hours later, at 3:00 A.M. on Wednesday, 15 September, Eitan, Major General Amir Drori, head of Israel’s northern command, and other Israeli officers met with Phalangist military leaders … It was at this meeting, according to Sharon’s testimony to the Knesset on 22 September 1982, that the Phalangist entry into the camps was discussed. Sharon’s instructions regarding entry into West Beirut, recorded by his personal aide on 15 September and presented as testimony to the Kahan Commission of Inquiry Israel set up after the massacre, emphasized that ‘Only one element, and that is the IDF, shall command the forces in the area. For the operation in the camps, the Phalangists should be sent in’…

“Israel’s invasion of West Beirut began at dawn Wednesday morning, scarcely twelve hours after Gemayel’s assassination, with Phantom jets overflying the city at low altitude. Israeli tanks and troops advanced in a six-pronged thrust, with Israeli gunboats taking up position to shell the city. With the PLO gone, resistance from the Lebanese National Movement (the coalition of Islamic and leftist forces) was sporadic and light, and with the mines having been cleared a few weeks earlier by French international forces, Israel lost only seven men during its entire stay in West Beirut”…

********************** Thursday 16 September 1982 **********************

“Sharon arrived at 9:00 A.M. [16 September, apparently] to oversee operations. By noon, while the IDF push into West Beirut continued, the IDF had completely surrounded the camps, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks that controlled all entrances and exits. It also occupied a number of multistoried buildings on the perimeter as observation posts and established its forward command post in a seven-story building at the Kuwait embassy traffic circle…
…
“Fire by IDF snipers and sporadic tank shelling from higher ground around the camp began that afternoon. Most of the camp residents, mainly old people , women, and children, locked themselves into their houses and waited. That day, a succession of official Israeli statements (and a cabinet statement of 16 September) repeated that the [Israeli] army had been obliged to intervene in West Beirut ‘in order to forestall the danger of violence, bloodshed, and chaos’.

“By 11:30 A.M. on Thursday, 16 September, Israel was able to announce that the ‘IDF is in control of all key points in Beirut. Refugee camps harboring terrorist concentrations remain encircled and closed’…

…”Chief of Staff Eitan in his briefing to the Israeli cabinet on the evening of 16 September—when the massacre was just getting underway—explained that while the IDF would not enter the camps, the Phalangists would be sent in ‘with their own methods’ … [H]e noted that ‘we could give them orders whereas it was impossible to give orders to the Lebanese Army’…

“…Meanwhile, throughout the day, meetings were held between Phalangist commanders…and top Israeli military leaders, including Chief of Staff Eitan, Major General Drori, head of military intelligence General Yehoshua Saguy, a high-ranking representative of Mossad, the head of Shin Bet, and the commander of Israeli forces in Beirut, Brigadier General Amos Yaron. During the meetings, General Yaron coordinated details of the Phalangist entry with the help of aerial photos of the camp and instructed the Phalangists as to the location of the ‘terrorist nests’; there was also a warning ‘not to harm civilians’. The last of these meetings took place at 3:00 P.M .

“An hour later, 1,500 Christian militiamen, who had been assembled at the staging area of the Israeli-occupied Beirut International Airport, began moving toward the camps in convoys of IDF-supplied jeeps, following large arrows painted by the Israelis the day before on the sides of buildings to mark the best route to the Shatila camp.  Most of the forces who participated in the operation were Phalangist, though there was also an undetermined number of militiamen from Saad Haddad’s Free Lebanon forces…

“By 8:00 P .M . Thursday, less than three hours after the entry into the camp, a Phalangist liaison officer reported to the Israeli officers at the forward command post, including General Yaron, that 300 persons, including civilians, had been killed so far.  At 8:40 P .M . a briefing was held chaired by Yaron.   According to the taped transcript of the briefing included in the Kahan Report, the IDF divisional intelligence officer stated that the Phalangists within the camp ‘are pondering what to do with the population they are finding inside.  On the one hand, it seems, there are no terrorists there. . . . On the other hand, they have amassed women, children, and apparently also old people , with whom they don’t exactly know what to do’. When he began to cite a conversation with a Phalangist making clear the fate of these people , he was cut off by General Yaron.

At any event, at 11:00 P.M. a report was sent to IDF headquarters in East Beirut that information received from the Phalangist commander in the Shatila camp indicated that ‘thus far we liquidated 300 civilians and terrorists’.   The report was sent to headquarters in Tel Aviv and, according to Jerusalem Post military correspondent Hirsh Goodman, was seen by more than twenty senior officers…

********************** Friday 17 September 1982 **********************

“Reinforcements were sent into the camp the following morning.

“By Friday morning, 17 September, horrific rumors of massacres had begun to filter out via refugees, several thousand of whom had managed to escape to the Gaza and Akka hospitals during the night, as well as via medical personnel and film crews in the vicinity of the camps; with the camp tightly sealed by IDF troops, the rumors could not be verified. Groups of refugees attempting to flee were turned back by IDF soldiers, under orders to block the exits, but a number of IDF soldiers, dismayed by what they had been told or seen (soldiers at an armored unit 100 meters from the camp themselves witnessed batches of civilians being executed), reported to their superiors. (Throughout the massacres, Christian militiamen, who made no secret of their activities, regularly came to the Israeli posts around the camps for food and water and for additional ammunition; IDF soldiers questioned later also noted the absence of the ‘sounds of combat’.)

“At about 11:30 A .M . on Friday, Yaron, on orders from Drori who had arrived at the forward command post, apparently ordered the Phalangist commanders to advance no further, and Chief of Staff Eitan, back in Tel Aviv and informed that the Phalangists had perhaps ‘gone too far’, returned to Beirut, arriving at 3:30 P.M .

“At 4:00 P .M ., Drori, Eitan, Yaron, and a Mossad representative met with Phalangist commanders at the Phalangist headquarters in
East Beirut.  According to the minutes of the Mossad representative quoted in the Kahan Report, the chief of staff  ‘expressed his positive impression received from the statement by the Phalangist forces and their behavior in the field’ and decided that they could continue their ‘mopping up’ action until 5:00 A.M. the following day, ‘at which time they must stop their action due to American pressure’. The Phalangist request for another bulldozer to ‘demolish illegal structures’ was granted.

“Though it was agreed that no reinforcements would be sent into the camp, in fact fresh fighters were permitted to pass through the Israeli lines.  Meanwhile, despite Yaron’s apparent order from the morning, the pace of the killing had hardly slowed.  As executions, knifings, and point-blank shootings continued, bulldozers were at work digging mass graves inside the camps—one of the largest being in full view of the IDF forward command—and, as witnessed by a Norwegian envoy, loading scoops of bodies onto trucks just outside the camp to be hauled away.

“A pattern had moreover emerged of executing groups and then bulldozing houses to bury the bodies under the rubble. At the same time, truckloads of Palestinian men, women, and children were seen leaving the camp—a Danish TV crew on Friday filmed groups being herded into trucks near Shatila.   The bulldozing and dynamiting of houses (the ‘illegal structures’ referred to by the Phalange to the Israelis), often with the inhabitants inside, accelerated…

********************** Saturday 18 September 1982 **********************

“The militiamen did not leave the camps at dawn the next day, Saturday, as had been agreed at the IDF-Phalange meeting the previous afternoon.  Instead, the killings resumed at dawn after a brief respite after midnight.

At 6 A.M., loudspeakers called upon surviving camp residents to come out and surrender.  The hundreds of people—some reported more than a thousand—who emerged were marched at gunpoint toward a camp exit, with some being taken out of line and executed while others were loaded onto trucks parked in front of the abandoned Kuwaiti embassy and taken away, never to be seen again.  Around 7:00 A.M., militiamen had gone to the Gaza hospital north of Sabra, killing the Arab personnel on the spot and removing the foreign staff, eventually taking them to another part of the city.  (A similar, though far more lethal, operation had been carried out the day before at Akka hospital.)

At 8:00 A.M., the remaining men were herded to the southern entrance, where some, fingered by an informer, were taken away, the others being marched to the Sports City stadium, where interrogations had been taking place.  At 10:00 A.M ., the militiamen left the camp.

The IDF decided not to enter so as not to be implicated, but throughout the day interrogations continued at Sports City conducted by Israelis and their Maronite allies…

Meanwhile, foreign journalists and diplomats began entering the camps as of 9:00 A.M. Saturday to find hundreds of bodies, many mutilated, scattered around the camp as well as hastily dug shallow graves and sandpiles, often with body parts protruding. A little past noon, the first news of the massacre was broadcast to the world…

********************** Sunday 19 September 1982 **********************

[This Shahid-Butler report does not speak about a continuing or secondary massacre on 19 September, but they do refer more than once to "the 'missing'—those trucked away during the massacre who never returned".   As reported in our previous post, Franklin Lamb says that some journalists believe that those who went "missing" were killed on 19 September...]

…The Lebanese army took control of the camps on Sunday, 19 September … A unanimous Security Council resolution condemned the ‘criminal’ massacre on 19 September. [[N.B. - This was Resolution 521, in which the SC said it was "appalled" and that it "condemned the criminal massacre of Palestinian civilians in Beirut"; two days earlier, on 17 September, and as the massacre was taking place, the UNSC had adopted Resolution 520, which also passed unanimously, condemning Israeli incursions into Beirut and demanding, as a first step, Israeli withdrawal to positions it occupied before 15 September -- i.e., before the Israeli Army entered west Beirut ...]]  Even U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who unlike Jimmy Carter during the 1978 invasion had steadfastly refrained from ordering Israel to withdraw in June and had not even protested Israel’s entry into West Beirut in violation of its commitments, now proclaimed his ‘outrage and revulsion’ and blamed the killings on the IDF, demanding its immediate withdrawal from West Beirut.  (Israel began pulling out on 20 September.)

**********************  The Victims  **********************

“In terms of casualties, no census of the dead has ever been attempted. In the days following the massacre, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other relief agencies collected the bodies and disinterred the shallow graves, giving survivors the chance to identify relatives. But efforts to establish lists of the dead soon fell victim to the priority of ‘national reconciliation’.  Bashir Gemayel’s brother Amin was elected president of the republic on 21 September (with the Muslim deputies this time participating in the vote), and the Phalange role was soon downplayed or even ignored, exclusive blame being placed on Saad Haddad’s men and Israel.

“After going through the motions in October of appointing a commission of inquiry, whose findings were never released, the subject of the massacre was virtually dropped. Any effort to collect names became virtually taboo, to the point that the ICRC has never published the names it did collect, and those conducting field work on the subject had to do so with extreme discretion. Such was the climate that even death certificates became almost impossible to obtain.

“Nonetheless, there were a number of estimates in the days following the massacre. According to official Lebanese sources published in mid-October 1982, 762 bodies had been recovered in Sabra and Shatila: 212 unidentified bodies reburied in mass graves, 302 bodies identified and cremated by local rescue teams, and 248 identified and buried by the ICRC.  In addition, according to the same sources, about 1,200 bodies were claimed and buried by their families.

“This figure of almost 2,000 does not include those buried in mass graves that were never opened, the bodies remaining under the rubble of more than 200 destroyed homes (above and beyond the some 170 bodies dug out of rubble in the first few days, after which the search was abandoned), and the ‘missing’—those trucked away during the massacre who never returned.

“Based on all these categories, Kapeliouk gives a rough estimate of 3,000 to 3,500 dead.

“Bayan al-Hout, who conducted a field study of the massacre from 1982 to 1984, has identified and documented with certainty
the names, with sources, of 1,390 victims: 906 known dead and 484 ‘missing’.  Her total estimate, however, is also around 3,500, based on information concerning mass graves never opened, estimates of dead bulldozed under the rubble (including various neighborhood shelters known to have been bulldozed), and estimated numbers of bodies removed from the area.

“It should be noted that in addition to Palestinians and Lebanese, there were also workers from Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan among the missing.  Certainly, precise figures will never be known. When asked how many Palestinians had been killed during the massacre, a Phalangist militiaman who took part in it replied, ‘You’ll find out if they ever build a subway in Beirut’.”

This report, by Leila Shahid and Linda Butler, and the witness testimonies, can be read in full here.

Franklin Lamb wrote in an article published in The Daily Star [Lebanon] yesterday that “The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied”.

Lamb writes in that article, and in an earlier one we reported on yesterday here, that the massacre in the refugee camp took place from 16 to 18 September, 1982.

But, he says in both of these pieces that there is evidence of a continuing massacre of camp residents the next day, on 19 September, which took place in the Cite Sportive, where people who had been rounded up from inside the camp had been transported.

According to Lamb, a number of journalists “concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 am Saturday [18 September], the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing”. This Daily Star article is posted here.

The slaughter of unarmed Palestinian (and some Lebanese) residents of the refugee camp is blamed on the Lebanese Forces.

Israeli Army officers were stationed on rooftops overlooking the camp. The Israeli forces are accused of assisting their then-allies, the Lebanese Forces, by cordoning off the camp — and of not intervening to stop what some of them saw — and heard — was happening inside the camp 28 years ago this weekend.

Israel’s then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had raced his troops north to encircle the Lebanese capital in order to end, after a nearly two-month siege, what was called a “Palestinian state-within-a-state” led by the late Yasser Arafat, who had finally agreed to be evacuated with all his fighters by sea, “under a UN umbrella”, some two weeks before the massacre.

The Palestinian refugee camps were left utterly defenseless.

An Israeli commission of inquiry found that Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for inaction during the massacre. He resigned from his post soon afterwards — but his career in Israeli politics was far from finished [Sharon succeeded Ehud Barak as Israel's Prime Minister in early 2001].

There was, however, never any UN commission of inquiry, or special tribunal…

Today’s edition of The Daily Star reports on a seminar on the Sabra + Shatila massacre that was held yesterday in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut: “Representatives of several Lebanese and Palestinian groups along with human rights activists convened in a seminar entitled ‘Where Have the Legal Pursuits in the Sabra and Shatila Massacres Reached?‘, that was held in Le Meridian Commodore hotel in Beirut … [Lebanon's] Information Minister Tarek Mitri, who attended on behalf of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, called for revealing the truth regarding the events during Lebanon’s bloody 1975-90 Civil War ‘but without falling in today’s disputes, a continuation of the past’s wars’. He said the memory could only be cured by ‘emphasizing historical reality through legal tools and values … along with confessions and apologies. We are interested today … to stress historical reality with its facts and documented testimonies and renew demands for examining it justly’, the minister added”. This report is posted here.

There was a long and bloody history of sectarian terror and massacres in Lebanon during the period that the Information Minister mentioned. And Palestinians — who had sought refuge in Lebanon from the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948 until the Black September suppression of Palestinian activists by King Hussein in Jordan in 1970 — were involved in some of those horrors. sometimes as victims, and at other times as victimizers.

In all cases, it was called “taking revenge”…

This is the main reason why, at the Camp David talks in late July 2000 hosted by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton (involving Arafat and Israel’s then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, now Israel’s Defense Minister and in complete charge of the West Bank and its 2.8 million Palestinians and some 500,000 Israeli settlers), Arafat and his delegation said that the situation of some 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should be handled first, as a matter of top priority.

And the UN swallowed all of it … making a continuing contribution, as some warned at the time, to the crisis in the country.

The Al-Jazeera story indicated that Brig-Gen. Sayyed made the remarks on Sunday in a news conference [in Beirut? or in Damascus?]. The story added that “Earlier this year, Sayyed asked the UN tribunal investigating al-Hariri’s assassination to release his secret case file so that he might know who accused him”.

He reportedly “accused Hariri of selling his father’s blood to frame Syria for the killing … Sayyed, who left Lebanon shortly after his remarks, also said Saad Hariri supported ‘false witnesses’ who misled the investigation into the 2005 killing. He warned Saad Hariri that he must be held accountable or I will do it someday with my own hands’. Sayyed later said he meant he would get justice through the courts. ‘The Lebanese people must unite against this [government] and topple it, even if by force’, he said”.

As we have also reported here, Al-Jazeera noted in its report that “last week, in a sweeping reversal, Saad Hariri said it was a mistake to blame Syria”.

Sayyed, who is reportedly now in Paris, apparently also travelled to Damascus where, Rula Amin reported for Al-Jazeera, the extremely angry general “asked the judicial system there to pursue some of these witnesses as some of them are Syrians … Some of the people Sayyed has been naming are very close to Saad Hariri and his attempt here is seen as very dangerous”…

The Al-Jazeera report is published here.

After the evacuation from Beirut [on a Greek ship, under a "UN umbrella"] of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters along with their leader, the late Yasser Arafat, some of those left behind — those in Sabra + Shatila, a crowded Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Beirut — were massacred over a two-day period while a few journalists and international medical workers tried to alert the world.

By the time anyone paid any attention, the killing was all but over, and only the bloated bodies remained.

An Israeli commission of inquiry concluded that Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s Defense Minister, who had led the Israeli Army out of its enclave in southern Lebanon in a rapid advance north to the Beirut, and then surrounded it, demanding — between the terror of massive bombings and announced attempts to assassinate Arafat (who, unaccountably, escaped) — that Arafat must cease hiding “behind the skirts of Lebanese civilians”.

Sharon’s assault on the eastern part of the Lebanese capital was apparently not authorized in advance by the Israeli cabinet [though then-Prime Minister, Menahim Begin, was informed of Sharon's plan].

Israel accused the PLO of being behind a number of cross-border attacks, but it was reportedly an attempted assassination against Israel’s then-Ambassador to London [Shlomo Argov] which became the justification for Sharon’s massive reprisal.

[The Israeli diplomat was shot in the head and seriously wounded.  He needed nursing care for the remainder of his life, and died of his injuries in 2003.    The Abu Nidal organization, headed by a Palestinian mercenary, was reportedly hired for this assignment by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was reportedly furious with the PLO's Arafat at the time for trying to mediate the Iran-Iraq war.  Saddam believed that all Arabs ought to have totally backed Iraq in that war...]

Sharon (who remains on life support in a long-term care facility in Israel following a stroke in 2006) later — successfully — sued CBS Television and Time Magazine [in 1985], in for libel for reporting that he was directly involved in the Sabra + Shatila massacre.

Sharon prevailed.  [I  was one of only three journalists who attended and monitored that libel trial on a regular basis -- and,  for lack of a babysitter, I sometimes had to bring my one-year-old son with me to court...]

Sharon won his libel suit because the court, upon examination, became convinced that Israeli researcher David Halevy had overstated his argument, without sufficient proof, of Sharon’s involvement in the massacre. Halevy’s notes, submitted as a research file to Time Magazine, were later written up by an editor; the subsequent published Time Magazine article was then cited as the source for a report by Mike Wallace on CBS News’ 60 Minutes Program.

Franklin Lamb, an American author of the book The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon, is also as well as Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, as well as Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign He was recently in Lebanon doing research for a new book, and compiled this account recalling what happened in Sabra + Shatila:

THE SHELTERS AND THE “AID WORKERS” – in horrifying detail

“In Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and outside Abu Yassir’s shelter, the bullet marks still cover the lower half of the 11 ‘walls of death’ where some of the dried blood is mixed and feathered in with the thin mortar. An elderly gentleman named Abu Samer still has some souvenirs of the event: three American automatic pistols fitted with silencers, a couple of knives and axes that were strapped to some of the killers belts as they quickly and silently shot, carved and chopped whoever they came upon starting at around 6 pm on Thursday September 16, 1982. Plus a couple of whisky bottles … Locating the 11 ‘walls of death’ requires help from the few older Palestinians who still live in this quarter … Zeina [last name not given, who reportedly lost her husband and two daughters during the massacre] recalls that it was late on a Thursday afternoon, September 16, that the Israeli shelling had grown intense. Designed to drive the camp residents into the shelters, almost all of which Israeli intelligence, arriving the previous day in three white vehicles and posing as ‘concerned NGO staff’ had identified and noted the coordinates on their maps. Some residents, thinking aid workers had come to help the refugees, actually revealed their secret sanctuaries. Other refugees, based on their experience in the crowded shelters during the preceding 75 days of indiscriminate, ‘Peace for Galilee’ Israeli bombing … suggested to the ‘aid workers’ that the shelters needed better ventilation and perhaps the visitors would help provide it. According to Zeina the Israeli agents quickly sketched the shelter locations, marked them with a red circle and returned to their HQ which was located less than 70 meters on the raised terrain at the SE corner of Shatila camp still known as Turf Club Yards. Today, this sandy area still contains three death pits which according to the late American journalist Janet Stevens is where some of the hundreds of still missing bodies of the more than 3,000 slaughtered are likely buried … Journalist Robert Fisk and others who studied these events, concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 a.m. Saturday, the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing. Eyewitness testimony also established that the ‘aid workers’ described by Zeina passed the shelter descriptions and locations to Lebanese Forces operatives Elie Hobeika and Fadi Frem, and their ally, Major Saad Haddad of the Israeli-allied South Lebanese Army. Thursday evening, Hobeika, de facto commander since the assassination the week previously of Phalange leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel, led one of the death squads inside the killing field of the Horst Tabet area near Abu Yassir’s shelter. It was in 8 of the 11 Israeli-located and marked shelters that the first of the massacre victims were quickly and methodically slaughtered. There being few perfect crimes, even in massacres, the killers failed to find 3 of the shelters. One of the overlooked shelters was just 25 meters from Abu Yassir’s shelter. Apart from these three undiscovered hiding places there were practically no Shatila shelter survivors”…

MUNIR’s STORY

“Munir Mohammad was 12 years old on September 16, 1982 …

At around about 8 p.m. on September 18 Munir Mohammad entered the crowded Abu Yassir shelter with his mother Aida and his sisters and brothers Iman, Fadya, Mufid and Mu’in … Munir later recalled events that night: ‘The killers arrived at the door of the shelter and yelled for everyone to come out. Men who they found were lined up against the wall outside. They were immediately machine gunned’. As Munir watched, the killers left to kill other groups and then suddenly returned and opened fire on everyone, and all fell to the ground. Munir lay quietly not knowing if his mother and sisters were dead. Then he heard the killers yelling: ‘If any of you are injured, we’ll take you to the hospital. Don’t worry. Get up and you’ll see’. A few did try to get up or moaned and they were instantly shot in the head.

Munir remembered: ‘Even though it was light out due to the Israeli flares over Shatila, the killers used bright flash lights to search the darkened corners. The killers were looking in the shadows’. Suddenly Munir’s mother’s body seemed to shift in the mound of corpses next to him. Munir thought she might be going to get up since the killers promised to take anyone still alive to the hospital. Munir whispered to her: ‘Don’t get up mother, they’re lying’. And Munir stayed motionless all night barely daring to breath, pretending to be dead. Munir could not block out the killers words. Years later he would repeat to this interviewer as we passed the Shatila Burial ground known as Martyrs Square:

‘After they shot us, we were all down on the ground, and they were going back and forth, and they were saying: “If any of you are still alive, we’ll have mercy and pity and take them to the hospital. Come on, you can tell us”. If anyone moaned, or believed them and said they needed an ambulance, they would be rescued with shots and finished off there and then… What really disturbed me wasn’t just the death all around me. I…didn’t know whether my mother and sisters and brother had died. I knew most of the people around me had died. And it’s true I was afraid of dying myself. But what disturbed me so very much was that they were laughing, getting drunk and enjoying themselves all night long. They threw blankets on us and left us there till morning. All night long [Thursday the 16th) I could hear the voices of the girls crying and screaming, “For god’s sake, leave us alone”. I mean…I can’t remember how many girls they raped. The girl’ voice, with their fear and pain, I can’t ever forget them’ …

Munir’s 15-year-old brother Mufid was among the first to enter Abu Yassir’s shelter, but he left and later appeared at Akka Hoppital with a gunshot wound. After being bandaged he left the hospital to seek safety and his family. No one has seen him since and for a long time Munir could not even mention him. According to camp residents, Munir’s older brother, Nabil, then 19 years old, being of fighting age would have been shot on sight by the killers. Aware of this, Nabil’s cousin and his cousin’s wife fled with him as the Israeli shelling increased and camp residents reported indiscriminate killing. The trio dodged sniper bullets to seek refuge in a nursing home where his aunt worked. Like Munir, Nabil soon learned that his mother and siblings were all dead … During the month following the 1982 Massacre, British Dr. Paul Morris treated Munir at Gaza Hospital approximately one kilometer north of Abu Yassir’s shelter, and kept the youngster under observation. Dr. Morris reported to researcher Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout (Sabra and Shatila: September 1982, Pluto Press, London, 2004) that Munir ‘will smile once in a while, but he doesn’t react spontaneously like others of this age, except just occasionally … Now in America, both Munir and Nabil are leading relatively ‘normal lives’ … Both brothers return to Shatila camp regularly”…

Franklin Lamb’s recounting of the Sabra + Shatila massacre, 28 years ago, on the outskirts of Beirut is published here .  (Thanks to Seham on mondoweiss…)

The France 24 report added that “The United Nations set up the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007 to find and try those behind the Hariri assassination. Preliminary reports by a committee of The Hague-based tribunal concluded there was evidence implicating Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services in Hariri’s murder but there are no suspects currently in custody”.

For several years, four Lebanese Generals were held by the UN Tribunal with no possibility of bail. Two Lebanese and one Syrian civilian were also held; they were released earlier than the four Generals.

The Hariri Tribunal was set up under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

One of our earlier posts on this UN project – now called the Special Tribunal for Lebanon — (“So, it wasn’t Syria” – posted on 29 March 2008 here) noted that the UN reported to the UN Security Council that “Evidence shows that a criminal network was responsible…”

As we noted in another post 16 February 2008, published here <>, a clarification issued by the UN spokesperson following the 14 February daily noon briefing at UNHQ/NY stated that “resolution 1757 (2007) states that the mandate of the Special Tribunal is to prosecute persons responsible for the attack of 14 February 2005 resulting in the death of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and in the death or injury of other persons. According to article 1 of that resolution, if the Tribunal finds that other attacks that occurred in Lebanon between 1 October 2004 and 12 December 2005, or any later date decided by the parties (Lebanese Government and the UN) with the consent of the Security Council, are connected in accordance with the principles of criminal justice and are of a nature and gravity similar to the attack of 14 February 2005, it shall also have jurisdiction over persons responsible for such attacks. This connection includes but is not limited to a combination of the following elements: criminal intent (motive), the purpose behind the attacks, the nature of the victims targeted, the pattern of the attacks (modus operandi), and the perpetrators”…

On 29 April 2007, we tried to summarize part of an excellent article in Le Monde [written by two professors and a lawyer: Geraud de Geouffre de la Pradelle, Antoine Korkmaz (the lawyer) and Rafaelle Maison], in a post entitled “Critique of proposed international tribunal to judge Rafik Hariri’s assassins”, published here. Here are some excerpts:
[UN Truth translation: "It would be pointless to try to hide the political character of the UN Security Council -- that's how the UN Charter designed it. The SC enjoys a very large discretionary power [lawyers say this about judges] and there is no juridical oversight of the UN SC. What is of more concern is that the apparent respect for law hides, in fact, a great attack on freedoms without contributing to calming the internal situation in Lebanon. This is the case of the intiatives taken in the case of the Hariri affair. Before even being established, the special tribunal that is envisaged is aggravating the internal tensions in the country”.]
…
[UN Truth translation: "However, in the Lebanese case, there is no international crime, juridically speaking, and the current investigation has enough questionable qualities to wonder about how international justice is being used. Still very fragile, international justice hardly needs such misuse".]
…
It states that the international independent commission of inquiry that was established by an agreement concluded between Beirut and the UN on 3 June 2005, following the adoption of UN SC Resolution 1595 of 7 April 2005 — and [UN Truth translation: "this 3 June 2005 UN-Lebanon agreement makes the international commission a sort of oversight body to which local (judicial and investigative) authorities are made subservient".]

Then, on 29 March 2006, the UN SC adopted resolution 1664, which asked the UNSG to [UN Truth translation: "conclude, with the government of Lebanon, an agreement for the creation of an international tribunal based on the highest standards of international criminal law".]

The subsequent proposed agreement transmitted by the UN to the Lebanese Government on 10 November 2006 states, according to Le Monde diplomatique, that [UN Truth translation: "this special tribunal would be composed of international judges and a minority of Lebanese judges. The prosecutor's office would be an independent body composed of a prosecutor named by the UNSG, and an assistant prosecutor named by Beirut]“

The article’s second major argument was that:
[UN Truth translation: "The very special or particular competence of the international tribunal poses another very serious preliminary question. By the terms of the first article of the proposed statute, the tribunal will concentrate on the crime of 14 February 2005, which is termed a 'terrorist act' in the preambular paragraphs, and secondarily on other crimes committed between 1st October 2004 and 12 December 2005. However, other subsequent crimes could be added, if the Lebanese government and the UN SC permit. Up until now, these murders were considered a matter of Lebanese criminal law only ... The creation of a criminal tribunal by the UN has so far been only to respond to the need to judge the most serious international crimes... {in the former Yugoslavia, for example, or in Rwanda, for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes} ... whereas the special tribunal for Lebanon would be the first international court that would deal exclusively with crimes which are not of this category, and which are only 'international' because the UN SC so decided".]