Four Years Later

By Donald Neff

The facts are by now as clear as they are ever going to be about the slaughter of the innocents at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut just four years ago. Phalangist leader Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon's president-elect, violently anti-Palestinian and a secret collaborator with Israel for several years, had been killed in a bomb explosion the afternoon of September 14, 1982. Israeli forces had encircled Muslim West Beirut three months earlier, shortly after beginning their invasion of Lebanon. Fighting had ended when Palestine Liberation Organization militiamen agreed to leave Beirut voluntarily under the protection of U.S., French and Italian forces, which also had left after the PLO evacuation was completed.

The morning after Bashir Gemayel's death, however, the Israelis violated the U.S.-brokered standstill agreement and, instead of letting the Lebanese Army assume control of West Beirut as agreed, themselves moved into the Muslim half of the city. On September 16, an official Israeli spokesman declared: "The Israeli Defense Force is in control of all key points in Beirut. Refugee camps harboring terrorist concentrations remain encircled and closed." Israeli troops were now the occupying power and as such responsible for the security of the city's civilian inhabitants under the articles of the Geneva Convention.

At 6 p.m. that same day, 150 "special" Phalangist troops under the command of the feared Phalange intelligence chief Elias Hobeika moved into the twisting streets of the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp from the south and the west. Darkness was falling and Israeli mortar units and airplanes dropped flares to aid the Phalangists' progress. About an hour after the Phalangists entered Shatila and the adjacent Sabra camp, an Israeli officer stationed at the forward Israeli command post heard Hobeika, who had gone to the roof after his troops moved out, receive a radio report. The caller said there were 50 women and children and he asked what he should do. "This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that. You know exactly what to do," replied Hobeika. Other Phalangists on the roof broke out into loud laughter at Hobeika's remark, according to the report of the Israeli government's Kahan Commission that later investigated the massacres.

A short time later, at about 8 p.m., the Phalange liaison officer stationed with the Israelis on the forward command post roof was heard to receive a report that 45 people were being held and asked what should be done. "Do the will of God," was the reply, According to the Kahan Commission report, the Israeli officer who overheard this exchange "understood that what was involved was the murder of the women and children." The officer notified Brigadier General Amos Yaron, local commander, about the exchange. Yaron reportedly warned Hobeika that civilians should not be harmed but he made no effort to interfere in the bloody events in the camps.

Hobeika's "special" forces killed civilians indiscriminately inside the camps throughout the night of September 16/17. Despite the fact that reports about a massacre were widespread among the Israeli forces, government officials and some journalists by the morning of September 17, the Israeli command allowed the Phalangists to remain in the camps. It was not until 8 a.m. Saturday, September 18, that the Phalange finally quit the camps.

Behind, the Phalangists left a charnel house. Although the exact toll will never be known, the Kahan Commission concluded that 700 to 800 persons had probably been killed in the two camps between September 16 and 18. Non-Israeli estimates were considerably higher. The Palestine Red Crescent put the number at over 2,000 while Lebanese authorities reported 762 bodies recovered and 1,200 death certificates issued.

Where Are They Now?

The Kahan Commission found "direct responsibility" for the massacres attaching to the Phalangists. But it assigned "indirect responsibility" to eight Israelis, including Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, and Brigadier General Amos Yaron, the division commander directly in charge around the camps. (The others are comparatively unknown outside Israel.) How have these "guilty" officials fared? Not badly at all.

Sharon, though stripped of his defense ministry, as recommended by the commission, remained in the cabinet as a minister-without-portfolio, a position he still holds today. Shamir went on to become prime minister, currently is foreign minister and next month is scheduled to become prime minister again. Begin remained in office until he finally retired of his own volition and went into seclusion, still a revered figure among many Israelis.

Eitan was accused by the commission of both breach and dereliction of duty. But, the commission decided, since his retirement was approaching, it would not recommend his replacement. Since then, Eitan has become an active ultranationalist member of the parliament.

Yaron received some of the commission's harshest criticism. It accused him of merely issuing warnings that civilians should not be injured but, observed the commission, "beyond that he did nothing to stop the killing." The commission found Yaron guilty of a "breach of the duties incumbent upon him" and recommended that he be denied a field command for three years. This the army did. But it then promoted him to major general and put him in command of the important manpower branch of the army.

Now even better things are in store. Yaron has been named as Israel's military attache in the United States, one of the most coveted of Israel's foreign posts and a traditional springboard to higher positions.

Donald Neff is the author of histories of the 1956 and 1967 wars in the Middle East and most recently finished a history of the 1973 war.