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The
massacre went on for 40 continuous hours
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BEIRUT,
September 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the world winds up
commemorating September 11, an international delegation flocked to
Beirut to take part in the somber commemoration of the 20th anniversary
of the Sabra
and Shatila massacre, where more than 1,500 Palestinian refugees
were slaughtered, a Lebanese newspaper reported Sunday, September 15.
The
Daily Star said that part of the delegation, comprising members of the
Italian parliament, journalists and representatives of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) from Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, France, the
United Kingdom and Japan, visited the Bourj al-Barajneh and Shatila
camps Friday, September 13, as part of a week-long series of activities
commemorating the 1982 massacre that also claimed the lives of Lebanese
civilians between September 16-18.
“We
are here to keep the memory alive,” said Giorgio Stern, who came from
Italy where he works with The Children of the Olive Tree NGO, that
strengthens relations between the people of Italy and Palestine,
reported the Star.
As
members of the delegation explained, they are here on a fact-finding
mission, to meet people and collect information otherwise unavailable to
them in the Western media and relay this information, through their
different areas of expertise, to their compatriots, the paper said
adding that they were here to get “ammunition” to fight the many
pro-Israeli forces in the West that work against the “right
information regarding the Palestinian cause” and work for
“eliminating the Palestinian identity.
“We’re
here to reconstruct the historical memory and to carry it back home
because people without memory are condemned to relive the same
history,” Stern told the Daily Star as he walked with the rest of the
group in the cramped and rancid alleyways of Shatila where some 23,000
refugees still live herded in a small area of the capital.
These
are the same narrow alleys that witnessed torture and rape inflicted on
civilians by Israeli-allied Christian militias 20 years ago.
“I
still remember all the details very vividly as if it all occurred
yesterday,” said Shatila resident Siham Balkis, who lost her father
during the ordeal.
“When
we were told that a massacre had taken place, we didn’t believe it,”
she said. “But as we went out of our homes, we saw disfigured bodies
lying around. I saw a girl who was only days old that had been squashed
by an Israeli tank and her flesh was still sticking to the tank’s
caterpillar tracks,” the Star quoted her saying.
Balkis,
who now works with Al-Awda Organization (The Return), said that the
whole camp still suffers from the psychological impact of the massacre.
“If
you test all the people who survived the massacres, you will find that
they have psychiatric and psychosomatic problems as a result of the
massacre,” she said.
The
victims’ blood, which then ran through these alleyways, has now been
replaced with dirt and wastewater, which constitutes only a small
portion of the misery with which the camp’s inhabitants have to deal,
said the paper.
Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was Israel’s defense minister when the
massacre in Sabra and Shatila occurred in September 1982.
At
the time, the Israeli army also invaded southern Lebanon, under the
pretext of halting cross-border attacks on Israeli settlements.
Sharon
was forced to resign as defense minister in 1983 after an Israeli
tribunal found him indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila
massacre.
He
went on to hold several other senior government posts, before he led his
right-wing Likud party to election victory in 1999 and became prime
minister.
Twenty-three
Palestinians filed a suit against Sharon to have him tried in Belgium
for his role in the September 1982 massacres of up to 2,000 Palestinians
at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, perpetrated by Israel with the
help of the Israeli-allied Christian phalangist militia during
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
They
based their case on a “universal competence” law that enables
Belgian courts to try cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and
genocide, regardless of where the outrages took place.
But
the hopes of the families of the victims of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila
massacres in Lebanon, to have Sharon tried in Belgium for war crimes
were dashed on June 26, 2002, when judges declared the case
inadmissible.
The
indictment chamber of the Brussels appeals court ruled that the case -
lodged a year ago - could not proceed because Sharon was not in Belgium,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Court
spokesman Guy Delvoie said: “The Belgian courts have competence with
regards to cases that concern serious violations of human rights.”
“But
for cases based on universal competence ... it is necessary that the
alleged perpetrators be in the territory of the kingdom [of Belgium].
Otherwise they are inadmissible," he said.
A
Sabra and Shatila survivor who lost her father and six brothers in the
massacre told reporters: “My disappointment with Belgian justice is
complete.”
“I
would have preferred to have died than to hear this,” said the
37-year-old survivor, Souad Srour El Marai, who was herself left
handicapped after she was raped and injured during the massacre. Human
rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International deplored
the ruling.
Shortly
after on July 18 a team of U.S. lawyers filed a lawsuit against Israeli
and U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, on behalf of
Palestinian-Americans who suffered atrocities at the hands of Israel and
her U.S. supporters, from the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres to war
crimes in the most recent intifada, or uprising.
“The
world has stood silent, and that is why we will not be silent,” said
Stanley Cohen, the lead attorney for the team filing the lawsuit
Tuesday, July 16, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., at a press
conference Wednesday, July 17.
“These
Palestinian-Americans seek nothing more of this court than that which
they have been denied for more than five decades,” Cohen said, pausing
to subdue emotion choking his voice.
Speaking
to a packed room at the National Press Club, Cohen summarized the
backgrounds of the central defendants named in the lawsuit - Israel’s
current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for his actions as Prime Minister
and as defense minister in 1982, and other Israeli officials, as well as
Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Cohen
told IslamOnline that this was the first lawsuit of its kind - bringing
together so many issues - that demanded direct action on the Arms Export
Control Act, although challenges have been raised before, without much
success.
Although
hundreds of requests from Palestinian victims were received by the team
when they began their research about a year ago, along with Solidarity
International - a Washington-based group formed after September 11 to
help Muslim Americans - the team selected 21 plaintiffs, all of whom
remain anonymous in the suit.
Eighteen
of the plaintiffs are U.S. citizens; two are resident aliens, and one is
a survivor of the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in
Lebanon.
