40 years on the massacre of Sabra and Shatila
September 16th, 2022, marks the 40th Anniversary of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, one of the bloodiest massacres committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian and Lebanese people. This massacre claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese within three days amid the deadly silence of the international community.
The beginning was on September 13, 1982. The Isareli occupation forces entered the city of Beirut and deployed tens of tanks on the outskirts of Shatila refugee camp and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood to control the area. The next day, the then Israeli War Minister Ariel Sharon cordoned off the camp in preparation to commit one of the ugliest massacres ever.
Continuous crimes were committed within three days by the Israeli forces and their agents in the “Lebanese Forces” Militia and the so-called “South Lebanon army” against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. No one was allowed to enter the camp except after the massacre came to an end on September 18th, leaving behind body parts and mutilated bodies in the streets and inside destroyed houses. More than 3000 people, most of them children, women and elderly, were killed in this horrible crime.
Nihad Srour Al-Mer’i, a witness to the massacre, talked bitterly about losing most of her family members, describing how the brain of her one-year-old sister Shadia was scattered while crying for help.”
The elderly Muneir Al-Haj, 60, recalled another criminal scene during the massacre. He said “we heard heavy gunfire across the camp after an Isareli siege. We get outside to know what is happening and we saw the Israeli forces and their agents attacking the camp and shooting every moving thing. They slaughtered children, killed women and men and destroyed the houses on the heads of their residents.”
Despite the committed brutality, international investigations into this massacre were confined to forming the informal “McBride” commission to investigate Israel’s violations of international law during its invasion of Lebanon. The commission issued its report in 1993 and dedicated only a chapter for the massacre of Sabra and Shatila in which it stressed that the occupation entity is completely responsible for the massacre and that it prepared for the crimes in advance and facilitated the killings.
Sabra and Shatila massacre will continue to be a shameful scar in human history and part of the criminality and terrorism practiced by Israel in the light of the inaction and disability of the international community to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.
Hamda Mustafa