Sharon’s war crimes in Lebanon: The Record - Part
2
By Jean Shaoul
World Socialist Web Site, 22 February 2002
Below we publish the second article in a three-part series
examining Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s role in the war
crimes committed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982,
culminating in the massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and
Shatilla.
Within weeks of becoming minister of defence, Sharon renewed
military action in Lebanon after two years of peace. He struck at
targets in southern Lebanon, eliciting the retaliation that provided
the excuse for extensive Israeli bombing and ultimately the terror
bombing of Beirut and other civilian targets on July 17-18, 1981
that left hundreds dead. While the US’s special envoy Philip Habib
negotiated a cease-fire, it was clearly only a matter of time before
Israel found a pretext to invade Lebanon.
Sharon began his preparations. In November, he brought military rule
in the West Bank and Gaza to an end. Far from improving conditions,
however, he banned Palestinian political groups and established a
new and more brutal regime under his own direction and that of
Menachem Milson, the new civilian administrator. In effect, the West
Bank and Gaza were being incorporated into a “Greater Israel”. In
December, the Golan Heights were also annexed.
The government’s mission was to settle so many Israeli Jews in the
West Bank and Gaza that the Occupied Territories could not be given
back to the Palestinians. It planned to develop the territories and
create an infrastructure for factories, particularly sophisticated
scientific industries, in the new settlements.
The key to the integration of the Occupied Territories into Greater
Israel was the destruction of the Palestinian leadership, the
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Sharon’s goal, which was
supported by both the Likud and the Labour parties, was to avoid a
political settlement with the PLO at all costs. From Begin and
Sharon’s perspective Arafat’s success in isolating those PLO
factions and states such as Iraq and Libya that advocated Israel’s
destruction was a setback. It meant that the PLO would have to be
included in any negotiations for the settlement of the long-running
Arab-Israeli conflict, leading to the establishment of a Palestinian
state as proposed under the 1981 Fahd Peace Plan.
The 1978 Camp David Accords paved the way for bilateral peace
agreements with Israel’s Arab neighbours. It also provided Israel
with the opportunity to annex the Occupied Territories and prepare
for the invasion of Lebanon. To this end, Israel had already made
peace with Egypt and was in the process of withdrawing from Sinai,
as agreed at Camp David in 1978, thereby ensuring the neutrality of
the most important Arab country should Israel attack any of her
other neighbours.
Between August 1981 and May 1982, the Israel Defence Force (IDF),
with Sharon’s authorisation, violated Lebanese airspace 2,125 times
and its territorial waters 652 times. Arafat, anxious to gain US
support for a deal with Israel, maintained the Habib brokered
cease-fire and did not retaliate.
In December 1981, Sharon warned Philip Habib, President Reagan’s
special envoy, and Morris Draper, the US special ambassador, that
PLO shelling of Israeli settlements was intolerable and that if it
continued, he planned to wipe the PLO out completely. The US was
concerned at the political repercussions of such a development and
Habib made it quite clear that Sharon had no justification for war,
saying, “The PLO isn’t carrying out many raids. There is no need for
such an Israeli reaction. We are living in the twentieth century....
You can’t just invade a country like that”. Nevertheless, the
Pentagon, in the full knowledge of Sharon’s plans to invade, stepped
up its supply of military goods to Israel in the first few months of
1982. Deliveries were 50 percent up on the previous year and
continued throughout June, the first month of the war.
In January 1982, Sharon flew secretly to Beirut to meet Pierre
Gemayel and his son, Bashir, who had murdered all their Christian
opponents in order to secure the leadership of the Christian groups.
Bashir was seeking to become president of Lebanon in the forthcoming
elections. Sharon revealed that Israel intended to invade Lebanon,
up to Beirut. He demanded that the Phalangists join the Israelis in
the battle to drive the PLO out of Beirut and Lebanon and sign a
peace treaty with Israel.
Pierre Gemayel turned down both of these requests. However much he
may have wanted the Israelis’ help he could not be seen to be openly
collaborating with them.
In May 1982 Sharon he flew to Washington to enlist President
Reagan’s support. After Sharon’s meeting with the president,
Secretary of State Alexander Haig took Sharon on one side and, as
one ex-general to another, gave him a friendly word of advice. He
warned him that he needed a casus belli. “Ariel,” he said, “I am
telling you this is unsatisfactory.... Nothing should be done in
Lebanon without an internationally recognised provocation, and the
Israeli reaction should be proportionate to that provocation.” While
Sharon questioned what constituted a clear provocation, this was
good enough as far as he was concerned. He had told his US
paymasters about his plans and they hadn’t objected to their content.
Now all he needed was a suitable pretext.
Later Haig tried to deny that he had given the go-ahead for the
invasion, but he qualified this by explaining: “The Israelis had
made it very clear that their limit of toleration had been exceeded,
and that at the next provocation they were going to react. They told
us that. The president knew that.” The State Department, when
pressed, could not cite a single official statement opposing the
invasion apart from the support, quickly withdrawn, for the first UN
resolution calling on Israel to terminate its aggression.
Two weeks later, there was a botched attempt on the life of the
Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Argov, in London. It was carried out by
the Abu Nidal group, which was hostile to Arafat and the PLO and
operated out of Iraq with no office in Beirut. This was ignored by
Prime Minister Begin, as was the PLO’s insistence that it had
nothing to do with the assassination attempt or Abu Nidal. As far as
Begin was concerned: “They are all PLO”. In other words, Arafat, as
leader of the PLO, was responsible for all the activities of all the
Palestinian groups and all Palestinians should be regarded as
terrorists to be eliminated. The cabinet gave instructions for
Israeli planes to attack PLO positions in and around Beirut. As the
meeting dispersed, Begin said, “We should be prepared for the
maximum. We will strike and see what happens.”
Israel carried out heavy bombardment of PLO targets including the
refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla and a hospital. More than 200
people were killed. With Arafat away from Beirut in Amman, Jordan,
the Palestinians responded by shelling Israeli settlements in
Galilee. Sharon seized on this to announce to the cabinet a few days
later that there would be a short operation lasting one or two days
called “Operation Peace for Galilee”. It was to be limited to
pushing the Palestinians back 40-45 kilometres so that they could
not shell northern Israel. Israel would not attack the Syrians in
Lebanon unless they took action against Israeli forces. When asked
about Beirut, Sharon said, “Beirut is out of the picture. This
operation is not designed to capture Beirut”. Every word was a lie.
While some cabinet members were subsequently to claim that Sharon
had deceived them, this was disingenuous to say the least. Two
months before the war, Begin had told Shimon Peres and the Labour
Party about his plans and the rhetoric with which the invasion was
to be sold to the public. As veteran military correspondent Ze’ev
Schiff, who has close connections with the Israeli military
establishment, wrote in Ha’aretz a few weeks before the invasion,
“It is not true as we tell the Americans that we do not want to
invade Lebanon. There are influential forces, led by the defence
minister, which with intelligence and cunning are taking well
considered steps to reach a situation that will leave Israel with no
choice but to invade Lebanon even if it were to involve a war with
Syria.”
Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982
No sooner had Sharon waived his troops over the border into Lebanon
on June 6 than they headed north towards Beirut demolishing the
Palestinian camps, driving the people north into largely Muslim West
Beirut and incarcerating many of the adult male population along the
way. Israel used its complete air superiority and firepower to blast
everything before it, albeit sometimes dropping leaflets warning
inhabitants to leave before the attacks began. It then sent in its
ground forces to clean up afterwards. As the Jerusalem Post
explained, “With deadly accuracy, the big guns laid waste whole rows
of houses and apartment blocks believed to be PLO positions. The
fields were pitted with craters.... Israel’s strategy at that point
was obvious—to clean away a no-man’s land through which Israeli
tanks could advance and prevent any PLO breakout.”
In keeping with Sharon’s larger plan of driving Syria out of Lebanon,
on June 9 the IDF made an unprovoked attack on the Syrian forces in
the Beka’a valley. After Israel knocked out more than 60 aircraft in
one day, Syria avoided any further military confrontation with
Israel. Thus, Israel had effectively neutralised Syria for the rest
of the campaign.
By the end of June, southern Lebanon was devastated. Ten thousand
people had been killed, 350,000-400,000 Palestinians had been
dispersed, the Israeli army had taken 15,000 prisoners, and little
was left standing. According to one Israeli journalist, “The
shocking scenes of the destroyed camps proves that the destruction
was systematic”. Many people have never been unaccounted for. Those
who remained were left to the tender mercies of the Phalange militia
and Haddad’s forces, Israel’s proxy in southern Lebanon.
The bombing and siege of Beirut
On June 13, the eighth day of the war, Begin told the Knesset that
the fighting would stop once the army reached the 40-kilometre line.
At that very moment, Sharon was with his troops, which had encircled
West Beirut, in Ba’abda, overlooking the city that was now home to
500,000 people. The siege that was to follow would last 70 days.
During that time, the city was bombed extensively using both cluster
and phosphorous bombs. This was an effort not only to destroy the
PLO and its military installations, but also its entire social base
and welfare network: its health and educational services, political
and social organisations and, above all, the squalid shantytowns
that had become the Palestinians’ home in Lebanon.
Not even the hospitals were spared, although they were clearly
marked. By August 6, there were 30 beds available in West Beirut out
of a previous total of 1,400, according to the Red Cross. The
refugee camps were continuously bombarded, causing more than half of
the 125,000 inhabitants of Sabra and Shatilla to flee in the first
few weeks of the war, even though no heavy artillery or
well-fortified positions were found. Palestinians who tried to leave
West Beirut were stopped from doing so by the Israeli forces that
patrolled the city.
The UN estimated that 13,500 homes had been severely damaged in West
Beirut alone and many thousands more elsewhere, excluding the
Palestinian camps. Electricity and water supplies were continually
interrupted and food and medicines cut off. The international relief
agencies were denied access.
The Lebanese police estimated that more than 19,000 people had been
killed and 30,000 wounded between the beginning of June and the end
of December. Some 6,775 of these were killed in Beirut and 84
percent were civilians. “But this excluded those who were buried in
mass graves where the Lebanese authorities were not informed,” they
said. In contrast, 340 IDF soldiers had been killed between June and
early September and a further 146 by late November. Of these, 117
were killed in the fighting for Beirut.
The purpose of the siege of Beirut and the accompanying brutality
was to put maximum pressure on the Lebanese government to force
Arafat and the PLO to leave the country. To this effect, Israel had
seized control of the capital city of another country, broken every
rule in the war crimes book, and was holding half the people of
Beirut (all those in West Beirut) hostage.
The US role in the evacuation of the PLO
The US, far from acting as an honest broker, intervened to organise
the evacuation of the PLO on Israel’s behalf. It offered guarantees
to protect Palestinian civilians that were absolutely crucial to the
PLO’s agreement to leave Beirut. The evidence shows it never
honoured these guarantees.
The US sent Habib back to the Middle East to meet Sharon and
ascertain his terms for ending the fighting. Habib asked, “Who is to
leave Beirut? All the 10,000 [PLO fighters] or just their leaders?”
Sharon replied, “All the terrorists. They must all leave. If they
refuse, they will be destroyed... Tell them to leave.” When Habib
countered, saying, “I think it will be impossible to do what you
ask”, Sharon sent in dozens of fighter jets that unloaded hundreds
of tons of high explosives onto Sabra and Shatilla and anti-tank
cluster bombs on apartment blocks in West Beirut.
With that, Habib pulled out all the stops to get the Lebanese
government to put pressure on Arafat to agree to Sharon’s terms.
Knowing that Sharon would not accept promises, he even got Arafat to
provide a signed guarantee that he would leave with all his
fighters.
Habib now had to find Arab states willing to take the Palestinians,
but there were few takers. The Arab leaders had all stood by while
Lebanon was invaded, even those most verbally vociferous in their
opposition to Israel. Few were willing to accept the PLO fighters
whom they regarded as troublemakers. Jordan’s King Hussein even
demanded that if the armed guerrillas went to Syria, they had to be
placed far from the border with Jordan. He did allow some
Palestinians with Jordanian passports to enter Jordan. Egypt and
Syria refused all PLO fighters, while Tunis, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq and
Algeria agreed to take some.
Even after agreement on the PLO evacuation, bombings continued,
including the carpet-bombing of Bourj al Barajneh refugee camp. On
Saturday, August 21, the first contingent of 12,000 PLO fighters
left Beirut by ship. Arafat himself was the last to go on August 30,
1982. The US had arranged with President Bourguiba that he go to
Tunis. A further 10,000 PLO fighters remained in eastern and
northern Lebanon, in areas under Syrian control.
The protection of Palestinian civilians left behind in Beirut had
been central to the agreement under which the PLO had agreed to
evacuate the city. A multinational force of US, French and Italians
troops in Beirut were to supervise the evacuation and guarantee
their safety. In addition, there were bilateral agreements between
both the US and Lebanese governments and the PLO and an Israeli
promise not to enter Beirut.
According to the text of the agreement, “The US will provide its
guarantees on the basis of assurances received from the Government
of Israel and the leaders of certain Lebanese groups with which it
has been in contact.” Habib later confirmed that he had personally
signed the agreement guaranteeing protection to the Palestinians. “I
got specific guarantees on this from Bashir and from the
Israelis—from Sharon,” he said. Habib personally wrote to the
Lebanese prime minister saying, “My government will do its utmost to
ensure that these assurances [on the part of Israel] are
scrupulously observed”.
Almost immediately, Israel broke its promises. The Lebanese army was
supposed to have participated in the security operation, but was
prevented from doing so by the Israeli armed forces, in clear breach
of their agreement to withdraw from Beirut. This was only the first
of many such breaches that the US was to sanction. The Israeli armed
forces had Arafat within their sights. They could easily have killed
him, but the US had extracted a promise from Sharon that he would
guarantee Arafat’s safe exit and passage to Tunis: a promise he has
recently bitterly and publicly regretted.
As part of the Habib brokered agreement, the Lebanese national
police took control of West Beirut and collected weapons and
ammunition from the PLO depots, although some were also handed over
to the Mourabitoun Muslim militia.
On August 23, in the middle of the evacuation of the PLO, Israel’s
man, Bashir Gemayel, who had the largest private army in Lebanon,
won the presidential elections. Israel’s control of much of the
country gave protection to the key Assembly delegates with the power
to choose the president, and provided helicopters to bring them to
vote in East Beirut. Gemayel became president of Lebanon on
September 23.
Israel had won the war for the Phalange without the latter having
lifted a finger. Indeed, the Phalange had refused to fight, having
earlier lost some soldiers when fighting against the Palestinians.
While the Israeli government rejoiced at the success of its campaign,
the Palestinians and the Lebanese Muslims in Beirut, now left
defenceless, were terrified. They were at the mercy of the Phalange,
Haddad’s armed militia in southern Lebanon and anyone else whom the
Israelis chose to back.
Journalist Robert Fisk commented prophetically in the London Times:
“The civilians of West Beirut will have only the Lebanese army to
protect them. It is not the sort of army upon which people of the
Muslim sector of the city are likely to place much reliance.” In his
book Pity the Nation, which provides an eyewitness account of the
atrocities in Beirut, Fisk admits that even he did not realise the
implications of his own words, or the scale of the carnage that was
to follow.
See Also:
Sharon’s war crimes in
Lebanon: The Record - Part 1
Sharon’s war crimes in
Lebanon: The Record - Part 3
