MURDER IN BEIRUT and Sharon's war crimes?
MURDER INC IN BEIRUT
By
Eric S. Margolis 27 January 2002
Lebanese Christian warlord Elie Hobeika decided to go skin diving off Beirut last Thursday morning. As Hobeika and three bodyguards were driving away from apartment his villa in their Land Rover, a parked car packed with high explosives was detonated by remote control, instantly killing all four men, wounding six bystanders, and setting nearby buildings ablaze.
The flawlessly executed murder bore all the signs of a `wet operation by a professional intelligence organization.
Two days earlier, Hobeika told visiting Belgian politicians he might soon be murdered. The reason: Hobeika was about to reveal new evidence at a Belgian trial about the massacres of Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Shatilla camps during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Hobeika, who had long been accused of a primary role in the slaughter, denied guilt and announced he would present dramatic new evidence that would prove his innocence and further implicate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and others in the crime. Sharon is currently under investigation in a Belgian superior court for alleged crimes against humanity for the Lebanese massacres.
This mysterious affaire began in 1982, when Lebanon was locked in civil war between Maronite Christians, Muslims, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, who had set up a mini-state in southern Lebanon. Israels defense minister, Ariel Sharon, seized the excuse of the shooting of Israels ambassador to London in September, 1982, by the Abu Nidal terror group, to invade Lebanon.
Sharon assured Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the US he only intended to stage a limited incursion into Lebanon to wipe out PLO `terrorists. In fact, Sharon launched a full-scale invasion whose aim was to eradicate PLO, cement Israeli rule over the West Bank and Gaza, drive out Syrian forces, and turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. Israeli troops besieged Beirut. Sharons heavy artillery and warplanes pounded the capital for 40 days. An estimated 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli invasion.
Israel sent its Lebanese Maronite Christian allies the Phalangists and Lebanese Forces to `cleanse the Palestinian refugee camps at Shatilla and Sabra. The Phalangists were founded in the 1930s by Pierre Gemayel as a Lebanese version of Mussolinis fascist blackshirts and had long dominated the nations Muslim majority. Many of the anti-Muslim Lebanese Christians denied they were even Arabs, styling themselves `Phoenicians. Israeli intelligence, Mossad, had armed and financed the Phalangists during much of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. Elie Hobeika was a senior Phalangist commander and Mossad agent with a deserved reputation for savagery and murder.
The US arranged a cease-fire between Israel and the PLO, and promised to protect Palestinian civilians after the withdrawal of PLO fighters to Tunisia. Soon after, Israels principal Lebanese ally, Phalangist warlord Bashir Gemayel, was blown to bits by a bomb, likely planted by Syrian intelligence.
On the evening of 16 September, Israeli troops surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Shatilla and Sabra. The Israeli command ordered or at least allowed Phalangist fighters to enter the undefended camps
For the next 38 hours, the Phalangists, under the command of Hobeika, set about murdering Palestinian civilians mostly women and children with knives and grenades. Many women were gang raped before being killed; childrens heads were smashed against walls; pregnant women were eviscerated. Israeli forces illuminated the scene with flares.
Senior Israeli officers watched and did nothing, or even encouraged the killing. According to the Red Cross, at least 2,700 Palestinians were slaughtered. A week later, 400,000 outraged Israelis demonstrated, demanding a full investigation of the mass murder in Beirut.
An Israeli government commission found Ariel Sharon `indirectly but `personally responsible for the massacre. Critics in Israel accused the government of a whitewash and called Sharon the `butcher of Beirut. Sharon maintained his innocence, blaming Phalangists for the Beirut crimes, but was forced to resign.
In 1993, Belgium empowered its courts to try citizens or foreigners for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed anywhere. Twenty-three Palestinians and Lebanese charged Sharon with crimes against humanity for the 1982 Beirut massacres. The respected rights organization Amnesty International joined in, urging Sharon face a trial.
The case has been winding its way through the Belgian legal system in spite of Israeli contentions that Belgium has no authority to try Sharon. In the next dramatic phase, due to begin in March, Elie Hobeika was to testify as the star witness.
Hobeika promised to reveal new evidence implicating Sharon and unnamed `others. Shortly before his death, Hobeika told a visiting Belgian parliamentary delegation that he would produce proof that the Beirut massacres had been conducted by a secret Israeli army unit made up of southern Lebanese Christian mercenaries who had been dressed in Lebanese Forces uniforms.
This threat sealed likely his fate. Hobeika had many enemies inside Lebanon. He organized numerous assassination attempts against other Lebanese warlords, though in recent years, he became an important Syrian ally and kept a low profile.
Old Lebanese foes may have killed Hobeika. But Israeli hit teams have frequently used remote-controlled car bombs, identical to the one that killed Hobeika, to assassinate Palestinian leaders and militants, both in Beirut and, recently, in the West Bank and Gaza. Hobeikas murder certainly looks like an Israeli operation.
A dangerous star witness in an explosive case has been rubbed out. Hobeika was a loathsome criminal, but the world needed to hear what he planned to say. His death shows how quickly the Levant is sinking into rampant gangsterism worthy of Murder Inc. |
