[Nettime-bold] Remember what Sharon did

["Dimitri Devyatkin" <devyatkin@earthlink.net>]

Subject: Fisk remembers Sabra and Shatila
The Independent (London) February 6, 2001, Tuesday
HEADLINE: THIS IS A PLACE OF FILTH AND BLOOD WHICH WILL FOREVER BE
ASSOCIATED WITH ARIEL SHARON.

 BYLINE: Robert Fisk

In Israel today, he may well be elected prime minister Then he will be
master of the most powerful nation in the Middle East+ADs- he will travel to
America, he will visit the White House and shake hands with President George
W Bush. But for everyone who stood in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in
Beirut on 18 September 1982, his name is synonymous with butchery+ADs- with
bloated corpses and disemboweled women and dead babies, with rape and
pillage and murder... Even when I walk these fetid streets today, more than
18 years after what was - by Israel's own definition of that much misused
phrase - the worst single act of terrorism in modern Middle East history,
the ghosts haunt me still.

Over there, on the side of the road leading to the Sabra mosque, lay Mr.
Nouri, 90 years old, gray-bearded, in pajamas with a small woolen hat still
on his head and a stick by his side. I found him on a pile of garbage, on
his back, fly-encrusted eyes staring at the blazing sun. Just up the lane, I
came across two women sitting upright with their brains blown out, next to a
cooking pot and a dead horse. One of the women appeared to have had her
stomach slit open. A few metres away, I discovered the first babies, already
black with decomposition, scattered across the road like rubbish. Yes, those
of us who got into Sabra and Chatila before the murderers left have our
memories. The flies racing between the reeking bodies and our faces, between
dried blood and reporter's notebook, the hands of watches still ticking on
dead wrists. I clambered up a rampart of earth - an abandoned bulldozer
stood guiltily nearby - only to find, once I was atop the mound, that it
swayed beneath me. And I looked down to find faces, elbows, mouths, a
woman's legs protruding through the soil. I had to hold on to these body
parts to climb down the other side. Then there was the pretty girl, her head
surrounded by a halo of clothes pegs, her blood still running from a hole in
her back. We had burst into the yard of her home, desperate to avoid the
Israeli-uniformed militiamen who still roamed the camp+ADs- coming in by back
door, we had found her body as the murderers left by the front door.

 And as I walked through the carnage on 18 September - the last day of the
three -day massacre - with Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post, a fierce,
tough, Colorado reporter, I remember how he stopped in shock and disgust.
And then, with as much energy as his lungs could summon in the sweet, foul
air, he shouted, +ACI-SHARON+ACEAIg- so loudly that the name echoed off the crumpled
walls above the bodies. +ACI-He's responsible for this fucking mess,+ACI- Jenkins
roared. And that, just over four months later - in more diplomatic words and
in a report in which the murderers were called +ACI-soldiers+ACI- - was what the
Israeli commission of enquiry decided. Sharon, who was minister of defence,
bore +ACI-personal responsibility+ACI-, the Kahan commission stated, and recommended
his removal from office. Sharon resigned.

 And so today, in this fetid, awful place, where Lebanese Muslim militiamen
were - three years later - to kill hundreds more Palestinians in a war which
produced no official inquiries, where scarcely 20 per cent of the survivors
still live, where brown mud and rubbish now covers the mass grave of 600 of
the 1982 victims, the Palestinians wait to see if their tormentor will hold
the highest office in the state of Israel. +ACI-Ariel Sharon was responsible,+ACI- a
well-dressed young man shouted at us from an apartment balcony yesterday
morning. And who could disagree? Israel had invaded Lebanon on 6 June 1982
with a plan - known to Sharon but not vouchsafed to his Likud prime
minister, Menachem Begin - to advance all the way to Beirut and surround
Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation guerrillas in the Lebanese
capital. Officially named +ACI-Operation Peace for Galilee+ACI- (the real Israeli
military codename was +ACI-Snowball+ACI-), the invasion was supposedly a response to
PLO rocket attacks across the Israeli border.

But the rocket attacks had followed a series of Israeli air-raids on Lebanon
which had ended a UN-brokered ceasefire and which were supposedly in
+ACI-retaliation+ACI- for the attempted murder of the Israeli ambassador to London -
though his would-be killers came from the Abu Nidal group which had nothing
to do with the PLO and hated Arafat. But Sharon had anyway received an
earlier American +ACI-green light+ACI- for his operation from Alexander Haig in the
spring of 1982. After two months and almost 17,000 deaths, most of them
civilians - the majority killed by Israeli gunfire and air attack - the PLO
withdrew from Beirut under international protection, leaving their unarmed
families behind. At which point Sharon announced that 2,000 +ACI-terrorists+ACI-
remained in the Sabra and Chatila camps. These mythical +ACI-terrorists+ACI-
prompted a small advance by Israeli tanks - contrary to an agreement with
Washington - towards the Palestinian camps. A French UN officer who tried to
photograph the advance was shot dead by an +ACI-unknown+ACI- sniper. Sharon repeated
his extraordinary claim that +ACI-terrorists+ACI- remained in the camps. And it was
then that the Christian Lebanese president -elect, Bashir Gemayel - the
leader of the Phalange militia which had already murdered thousands of
surrendering Palestinians in the Tel el-Zaatar camp in 1976 - was
assassinated.

 Sharon paid his condolences to Gemayel's father, Pierre. He must have known
the old man's history. Pierre Gemayel had founded his party after being
inspired by the Olympics in Nazi Germany in 1936 (+ACI-I liked their idea of
order,+ACI- he once confided to me). Not for nothing did Israel's militia allies
use the fascist +ACI-Phalange+ACI- as their name. As the Christians prepared to bury
their hero, Sharon - again contrary to assurances he had given the
Americans - ordered the Israeli army into west Beirut to +ACI-restore order+ACI-.
The Israelis then asked the Christian Phalange - armed and uniformed by
Israel and allied to Israel since 1976 - to enter the Israeli-surrounded
camps to +ACI-liquidate+ACI- the +ACI-terrorists+ACI-. Which is why, on Thursday 16
September, guided by signposts which the Israelis had laid across a Beirut
airport runway, the Christian gunmen walked through the southern entrance of
Chatila, some of them drunk, a number on drugs - all under the eyes of the
Israelis - and embarked on a war crime. Today, much scarred by later wars,
the lanes of Chatila still follow the  same paths I walked down 18 years
ago. There are always survivors who have never told their stories to us
before. Yesterday I wandered up an alleyway - rippling with water pipes and
running with rain and sewage - to find a middle-aged woman buying tomatoes
from a stall. I was 30 metres from the road where I discovered Mr Nouri's
body almost two decades ago. She took me to her family home and introduced
me to her daughter, Nadia Salameh. Nadia was only 12 when Ariel Sharon's
soldiers watched the Phalangist militia slaughter their way through the
camps.

 +ACI-At the end of this alleyway outside our home, we were all shocked by what
we saw,+ACI- she told me, her voice slowly rising with the memory of horror. +ACI-I
saw corpses there, seven deep, some decapitated, others with their throats
slit. One of our neighbours was lying there, Um Ahmed Saad, and her body had
grown big with the heat. Her hands had been chopped off at the wrists. She
used to wear a lot of bracelets, a lot of gold. The Phalange obviously
wanted the gold.+ACI- Each house I enter contains the faded photographs of young
men killed in the war, some by Israel's allies, others by Shia Muslim gunmen
in the later 1985 camps war. But their memories have not faded. Old
Abdullah - he is 78 and pleaded with us not to use his family name - talks
without looking at me, eyes staring at the wall. The ghosts are returning
again.

 +ACI-The Phalange were led by Elie Hobeika,+ACI- he said, +ACI-but who sent them into
the camps? The Israelis. And who was the defence minister? Sharon. They but
their tanks round the camp. I was part of a delegation that tried to
negotiate with them. We carried a white flag. When we got near, there was a
man's voice on a loudspeaker telling us to have our identity cards ready.
But I didn't have my ID. So I went back home. And it turned out the
loudspeaker was being used by a Phalangist. And they murdered all the men in
the delegation. I was the only one to survive.+ACI-

 There was no doubt that the Israelis could see what the Lebanese Christian
Phalange were doing. The Kahan commission was later to quote Lieutenant Avi
Grabovski, deputy commander of an Israeli tank unit that was helping to
encircle the camp: he watched the murder of five women and children and
wanted to protest, but his battalion commander had replied to another
soldier who complained that +ACI-we know, it's not to our liking, and don't
interfere+ACI-. Up to 2,000 Palestinians were murdered - two mass graves remain
unexhumed in Beirut - and Sharon's reputation, already besmirched by the
much earlier slaughter of more than 50 Palestinian civilians by his Commando
Unit 101, seemed as buried as the Palestinian victims.

 But like the garbage that has collected over the only known mass grave, the
historical narrative - save for that of the survivors - has become
overgrown. History moves on. Arafat recognised Israel and found himself
trapped by an agreement that would give him neither a real +ACI-Palestine+ACI- nor
secure the return of the refugees - including those in Sabra and Chatila -
to what is now Israel. And the new leader of Israel is, within hours, likely
to be the man who allowed the killers into the Beirut camps more than 18
years ago.

 With power, of course, comes respect. CNN now calls Sharon +ACI-a barrel-
framed veteran general who has built a reputation for flattening obstacles
and reshaping Israel's landscape+ACI-, while the BBC World Service on Sunday
managed to avoid the fateful words Sabra and Chatila by referring only to
his +ACI-chequered military career+ACI-. As for Nadia Salameh, +ACI-Sharon's role here
shows what he is capable of. If Sharon is elected, the whole peace process
falls by the wayside because he doesn't want peace.+ACI- It's a relief to recall
that up to a million Israelis demonstrated their moral integrity in 1982 by
protesting in Tel Aviv against the massacre. And equally chilling to reflect
that some of those one million - if the polls are accurate - may well be
voting for Mr Sharon today.



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