Memorial sign at the mass burial ground of Sabra and Shatila. Photo by Samir Salem of Cinemonger, Nakba Tour field co-ordinator

September 16, 2017 marks the 35th anniversary of the infamous massacre at Sabra and Shatila. As we begin the North America Nakba Tour, we also take time to remember this massacre and the continuing Nakba that it represents.

During three bloody days, from September 16 through 18, 1982, 3,500 Palestinian refugees in Shatila camp and Sabra neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon were slaughtered at the hands of Phalangist militiamen, encircled, trained and supported by Israeli occupation forces who had besieged West Beirut for 88 days before launching a full-scale occupation.

Mural at the mass burial ground of Sabra and Shatila. Photo by Samir Salem of Cinemonger, Nakba Tour field co-ordinator

The occupying army in Beirut was led by Ariel Sharon, who ordered that the Phalangist militias be given access to the camps as Israeli forces provided lighting on the night of September 16 to guide their onslaught of rape, murder and destruction through the camp. The massacre at Sabra and Shatila was not only a human nightmare; it was yet another massacre and displacement being enacted against Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes and lands in the Nakba of 1948.

The victims of Sabra and Shatila were disproportionately children, women and elders as the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization had been removed from Beirut, themselves displaced once again in the continuing Nakba. The PLO fighters left the city on September 1, acceding to United States officials’ promises that the refugees in the camps would be protected from ultra-right militias and the occupying Israeli forces. On the contrary, however, far from being protected, the Palestinian refugee population was subject to a coordinated and bloody massacre under the auspices of the Israeli occupation forces, only five days after Sharon’s announcement that “2000 terrorists” remained in Sabra and Shatila.

The horrors of the massacre have been described repeatedly by its survivors and those who interviewed and supported them in the following days: the brutal killing of children, the rape of women, the slaughter of Palestinians when their ID cards were shown, the ransacking and murder of hospital staff and patients, the mass execution of men, the tossing of the bodies of slain women, children and elders into piles for mass burial or for demolishing their homes atop them, the bodies left strewn in the streets of the camp.

The mass burial ground of Sabra and Shatila. Photo by Samir Salem of Cinemonger, Nakba Tour field co-ordinator

The Israeli invasion alongside the militias’ attack reflected a goal of clearing Beirut of Palestinians – and, in particular, the presence of the Palestinian Revolution. For the previous decade, Lebanon had been the home of the Palestinian resistance, its unions, armed forces and political organizations. And the Palestinian revolutionary movement, in the form of the PLO, protected, supported and sustained the Palestinian people in the refugee camps, who remained the bulwark of the Palestinian people’s struggle for return and liberation, one people with their sisters and brothers inside their occupied homeland and in refugee camps, exile and diaspora around the world. Friends of the Palestinian people flocked to Lebanon and to the camps to volunteer, support and learn about the Palestinian people’s liberation struggle, an example to the world of a people who refused to die in the face of over 35 years of dispossession.

Forcing the PLO and the Palestinian Resistance from the city under false promises of protection for the Palestinian people was a necessary precursor to the murderous rampage that followed only days later. It also meant that in the aftermath of the massacre, international supporters, journalists and volunteers were those working with Palestinians to restore the camp and remember the dead, as the institutions of the PLO were functioning at a severe reduction of strength, amid the tremendous leadership and resilience of the Palestinian women of Sabra and Shatila. The victims themselves were often buried in mass graves. Bulldozers were seen in the camp with Hebrew marking, demolishing housing over bodies.

Poster by Engyel. Via Palestine Poster Project

Elsewhere, Palestinian men had been taken, interrogated, shot and buried in mass graves. The victims of the massacres were not Palestinians alone, but also Lebanese as well as Egyptians, Syrians, Bangladeshis, Iranians and Turks, often impoverished workers who lived alongside Palestinians in the camps. Hospitals, including the Gaza Hospital and the Akka Hospital, were attacked by the invading forces who killed doctors and raped and murdered nurses.

35 years later, there has been no real accountability for the perpetrators. Ariel Sharon, despite his culpability confirmed even by an Israeli commission of inquiry, despite multiple efforts by lawyers and survivors around the world to bring him to account before international courts, became prime minister over the Israeli state, overseeing more bloody attacks on the Palestinian people inside occupied Palestine. The Lebanese perpetrators – militia leaders and collaborators with the Israeli occupation like Elie Hobeika and Saad Haddad – were never held accountable for their crimes. The fact that all of this took place in the context of explicit U.S. guarantees and amid massive U.S. support for Israel and increasing U.S. military involvement in Lebanon remains largely unremarked and certainly unaccounted for. And hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are denied their right to return to Palestine and even their basic civil and human rights inside Lebanon today – the right to work and to live with dignity.

Poster by Yousef al-Nasser. Via Palestine Poster Project

While the forces of the PLO were pushed from Lebanon in 1982, a decade later marked yet another catastrophe for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and their struggle for return – the Oslo Accords. While ostensibly promoting a path to Palestinian statehood, once again, under U.S. guarantees, the agreement was in fact a road to disaster. As the Palestine Liberation Organization was increasingly pushed aside, defunded and its institutions vacated in order to promote the new Palestinian Authority, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were left with little support and necessary attention – and today, Palestinians in Lebanon face large-scale discrimination, the securitization of the camps and strong pressure to migrate abroad amid 70 years of denial of the right to return to their homeland.

Of course, Sabra and Shatila did not mark only massacre and devastation, but like every massacre and displacement visited upon the Palestinian people, it has also sparked resistance. The Lebanese National Resistance (Jammoul) marked its official founding to push out the occupation on the day the massacres began. In 2000, the Lebanese Resistance, led by the Islamic resistance, would achieve victory in the liberation of the South, an inspiration to all. Palestinian women patched together their camps and began the arduous work of documenting the thousands of deaths in the camps, creating new institutions to support the children of return. The outrage of the photos of Sabra and Shatila around the world brought thousands to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, including many, for the first time, in the United States.

Poster by Marc Rudin. Via Palestine Poster Project

The 35th anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, a devastating event of the ongoing Nakba, coincides this year with the launch of the North America Nakba Tour, in which two Palestinian refugee women from the camps in Lebanon are touring the United States and Canada to tell their stories of dispossession, displacement, resistance and the ongoing struggle to return to Palestine. Khawla Hammad (Umm Mousa), a survivor of the Nakba, and young translator and journalist Amena El-Ashkar, represent the living, vibrant, continuing resistance, steadfastness and resilience of the Palestinian people that has not been erased or suppressed through 70 years of Nakba.

We invite you to join us for the events of the Tour and amplify the voices of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and of the Palestinian people. We invite you to join us in challenging the false promises of U.S. guarantees that have led to massacres and displacement for decades. We invite you to join us – and them – as we remember the victims of Sabra and Shatila, the martyrs, wounded, and prisoners of Palestine, and demand accountability and prosecution for the Israeli officials and state entities, and, in this case, their Lebanese partners, responsible for their killings.

Poster by Marc Rudin. Via Palestine Poster Project

From Deir Yassin to Tantoura to Kufr Qassem to Sabra and Shatila to Jenin to Gaza, the Nakba is continuing through land confiscations, home demolitions, mass imprisonment, collective displacement, racist discrimination, assassination and killing. The massacres are not forgiven nor forgotten, and the clear Palestinian voice that calls for return and liberation has never been silenced.

With sorrow and with struggle, we remember Sabra and Shatila and pledge to continue to work for justice until return is achieved – for Amena, for Umm Mousa, and for the millions of Palestinians everywhere denied their homes and their homeland.

The North America Nakba Tour

Videos:

Resources:

The Sabra and Shatila Massacres: Eye-Witness Reports, by Leila Shahid, from the Journal of Palestine Studies: http://palestinalibre.org/upload/Sabra-Chatila-Eye-Witness-Reports.pdf

The Sabra and Shatila Massacre, Institute for Middle East Understanding: https://imeu.org/article/the-sabra-shatila-massacre

Survivor Nidal Hamad: “It is not permissible to forget…Sabra and Shatila,” Middle East Monitor: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140125-survivor-nidal-hamad-it-is-not-permissible-to-forget-sabra-and-shatila/

Survivors recount Sabra-Shatila massacre, Nour Samaha, Al-Jazeera English: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/09/2012915163152213255.html

“They shot my father in the head”: interview with survivor of Sabra and Shatila massacre, Moe Ali Nayel, Electronic Intifada: https://electronicintifada.net/content/they-shot-my-father-head-interview-survivor-sabra-and-shatila-massacre/11688

Lest We Forget: Sabra and Shatila Massacre 16-17 September 1982, Reham Alhelsi: https://avoicefrompalestine.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/lest-we-forget-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-16-17-september-1982/

The Seven Day Horror, Rosemary Sayigh, BADIL: http://www.badil.org/en/component/k2/item/1121-seven-day-horror.html

From Beirut to Jerusalem, Dr. Ang Swee Chai: http://www.inminds.com/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html

Why have the killers of Sabra and Shatila escaped justice? Ellen Siegel and Zeina Azzam: http://imemc.org/article/73040/

Public Art: Mourning and Resilience, Art Forces: http://artforces.org/projects/murals/mourning-public-art-and-resiliencesabra-shatila-commemorative-murals/

The United States Was Responsible for the 1982 Massacre of Palestinians in Beirut, Dr. Rashid Khalidi, The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-united-states-was-responsible-for-the-1982-massacre-of-palestinians-in-beirut/

Poster by Marc Rudin. Via Palestine Poster Project