Summary
Much is known about what led up to the massacres: The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon in June 1982 to drive out the PLO. A U.S.-negotiated deal was conducted by special envoy Philip Habib in which Palestinian fighters would leave Lebanon in exchange for the Israeli pledge not to enter Beirut and the camps, which they broke soon after the PLO left. Under the false pretext that "200 terrorists" remained in the camps, the DDF surrounded the camps and sent in the Phalange in to "disarm" them. The Phalangist militiamen were especially incensed in their belief that their leader, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated by PLO agents two days earlier and wanted revenge. For three days and three nights, the militiamen went on a rampage, using knives, swords and axes, as well as guns and explosives to kill thousands of unarmed civilians as the Israelis provided flares for the Phalangists so they could continue working through the night.
Details are already known about the massacre - from the survivors themselves, first in the 2001 indictment against [Ariel Sharon] and in a 2005 book documenting the massacre, "Sabra and Shatila 1982," by Bayan al-Hout, a professor at the Lebanese University. Al-Hout's book is based on interviews with survivors conducted in November 1982 and published in Arabic in 2003. "It is the most comprehensive and authoritative account of what took place in Sabra and Shatila," according to Electronic lntifada."I don't call out at all to throw Israel into the ocean. I acknowledge their right to live," he said, adding, "But I want them to acknowledge our right to live. This is the most important. Why? Because they're the ones who've got the power."See the full content of this document
Extract
To Hell and Back
To hell and back
It was one of the worst killing sprees of the twentieth century.The actual number is still in dispute, but as many as 3,000 unarmed men, women and children of the Sabra/Shatila refugee camps in west Beirut were systematically slaughtered by Lebanese Christian militiamen with Israeli help for the crime of being Palestinian.The irony of what came to be known as the Sabra ...See the full content of this document
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