Not only did Ariel Sharon meet with the Phalangists and send them into the camps to slaughter the refugees, and then shine spotlights on the slaughter to make sure things were going well, but then HIS OWN TROOPS took care of some of the leftovers:
observer.co.uk
Vanished Victims of Israelis Return to Accuse Sharon
The men who 'disappeared' in the aftermath of the
1982 massacres in Lebanon's Sabra and Chatila
refugee camps could get revenge against Tel Aviv's
defiant strongman.
Julie Flint in Beirut
Sunday November 25, 2001
The Observer
Early on 18 September 1982, in the closing moments of the
Sabra and Chatila massacre in which Israel's Lebanese
Christian militia allies slaughtered up to 1,500 Palestinian
refugees, Sana Mahmoud Sersawi thought she was finally about
to die.
The militiamen withdrawing from the Palestinian camps in Beirut
had marched her, together with several hundred other unarmed
civilians, to the edge of the Shatila camp. There they levelled
their guns.
On that desolate corner, in the fourth month of Israel's invasion
of Lebanon, Sana believes that Israeli soldiers saved her life. It
was 36 hours since the Israeli commanders who sent the
Lebanese Forces militia into the camps had received the first
reports of atrocities.
But now, as the reports began to circulate more widely, Israeli
soldiers shouted to their allies: 'Give us the people and leave the
camps!'
The Lebanese obeyed and handed their prisoners to the Israelis,
who then marched them along the main road towards Beirut's
sports stadium. Sana looked over her shoulder as she went into
the stadium and saw her husband, Hassan Hashim, and her
sister's husband, Farraj Ali Sayyed, behind her.
Inside the stadium, a sprawling complex fully controlled by the
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), women were led in one direction
and men in another. Sana, her sister, mother and their eight
children were released an hour later. Hassan and Farraj
vanished.
The people who disappeared - during and after the massacre -
are the forgotten victims of Sabra and Chatila. Almost every
family in the camps has a relative or friend among the
disappeared.
What is crucial is that they disappeared while in the hands of
the Israeli army, during an operation under the direct control of
Israel's then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, now Prime Minister.
The fate of the disappeared of Sabra and Chatila will come back
to haunt Sharon when a Belgian court hears a suit brought by
their relatives alleging his involvement in the massacres.
But while Sharon has always denied responsibility for a
massacre carried out by Israel's Lebanese Christian allies, he
has never had to answer for the fate of those who disappeared
while in the hands of his Israeli soldiers.
Bahija Zrein lost her brother; Imad Ali his great-uncle and
cousin; Fadi Abdel Qader his father and uncle.
'We went into the stadium and then never saw them again,' says
Sana. 'We asked about them and they said: "There's no one
here!" No one talks about them. No one knows about them. No
one knows whether they are alive or dead.'
Overlooked for almost two decades, the disappeared now seem
likely to emerge as a key element in the efforts of 40 Lebanese
and Palestinians who lost relatives in the massacre to bring
Sharon to trial for war crimes committed when, as Defence
Minister, he had overall responsibility for the IDF.
A suit filed in a Belgian court in June - under legislation that
allows Belgium to prosecute foreigners for war crimes regardless
of where they were committed - charges that Sharon had
command responsibility in the massacre.
'In international law, command responsibility - also known as
indirect responsibility - is more severe than the direct
responsibility of those who actually do the killing,' says Chibli
Mallat, one of three lawyers representing the plaintiffs. 'Whether
in the Yugoslav massacres or in Germany or Japan in World
War II, those who sat at the top, often miles away from the
death camps, are more responsible than those who pulled the
trigger.'
In February 1983, Israel's Kahan Commission of Inquiry found
that no Israeli was 'directly responsible' for the massacre, but
determined that Sharon bore 'personal responsibility'. Sharon
resigned his portfolio, but stayed in the Cabinet.
The massacre began during the evening of 16 September, two
weeks after PLO fighters completed their evacuation from Beirut
and two days after the assassination of the Lebanese Forces'
leader, President-elect Bashir Gemayel. On the eve of the
massacre, Sharon blamed Palestinians - incorrectly - for the
assassination.
As the Lebanese entered the camps to 'mop up' 2,000 'terrorists'
Sharon claimed were concealed there, Israeli soldiers
surrounded and closed them off and lit the sky with flares. Three
days later, at least 900 civilians were dead.
In a Belgian appeals court on Wednesday, Sharon's lawyers will
argue that the suit should be dismissed on procedural grounds.
They will say that Sharon has immunity as a head of
government; that the Belgian law, first enacted in 1993, cannot
be used retroactively; and that Sharon has already been judged
by Kahan.
Mallat and his colleagues say their case is 'very orthodox' under
Belgian international law. There is no immunity for war crimes,
no 'legal acrobatics'. They will argue that Kahan was not a court:
it had no criminal dimension. And it ignored a lot of elements -
particularly the disappearances.
'Hundreds of people were rounded up under the supervision and
control and with the involvement of the Israeli forces,' says
Mallat. 'They were interrogated, then put on trucks and a lot of
them did not come back. The sports stadium is probably one of
the places that carries one of the largest elements of horror. The
Israelis were in force there, interrogations took place there and
people were trucked away from there never to appear again.' In
the Kahan report, the stadium is mentioned only once - as a
place where survivors were given food and water.
A cameraman who filmed there on 19 September says Israeli
soldiers were doing more than giving food and water: they were
identifying Palestinians from a list they carried and taking them
inside the stadium for interrogation.
Siham Balqees still lives in Shatila and offers one clue as to
what may have happened to the men who disappeared. She
says she ran inside the stadium and saw her brother standing
on a truck. An Israeli soldier threatened to kill her unless she left
immediately, but she refused. Instead, she pulled her brother off
the truck and walked out with him.
He told her he had been beaten and quoted his interrogators as
saying: 'Tell us where the terrorists and the weapons are! Tell us
or we will give you to the Lebanese Forces!' He was refused food
and water.
Asked whether Palestinians did indeed disappear from the
stadium, an Israeli government spokesman refused to comment.
'We are arguing that this is politically motivated manipulation of
Belgium's legal system.'
Almost 20 years after the fact, it seems unlikely that Belgium's
investigating judge will be able to establish where the
disappeared went and what then happened to them. But one
thing is certain.
'Israel was in full control from the border to Beirut,' says Mallat.
'Sharon's allies will fight tooth and nail to stop this case from
getting to trial because they know that, once it comes to trial,
Ariel Sharon has no chance of escaping justice.' |
