MENA WATCH : ALL UNDER BEGIN’S EYES – Sabra &Shatila: memories of a massacre by Steve Sweeney

17.9.2021 – Speaking to survivors on the ground in Lebanon, STEVE SWEENEY documents the events and legacy of the 1982 genocide of Palestinians carried out by Christian Phalangists with the support of Israel

 “This is not history for us,” Zeinab al-Hajj says as she grabs my arm. “We need journalists like you to tell our story, to keep the memory alive and make sure this never happens again.”

Zeinab is responsible for media relations in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, built in 1949 as a temporary site but now home to up to 22,000 people in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Nearly 40 years ago today, it was the scene of a massacre in which thousands of men, women and children were brutally murdered in a depraved three-day killing spree by Christian Phalangist militias, with the co-operation of Israeli forces.

“Five generations are still living the war,” Zeinab continues, repeating: “It is not history for us: this is the same war every day. Every story has an end, but our story has no end.”

We are in a building belonging to Fatah, the governing party of the Palestinian Authority. Photos of the late Yasser Arafat adorn the walls, along with other fallen leaders of the liberation struggle.

It is not only Fatah that is present in the camp. All the Palestinian factions are represented, their posters pasted on the same walls where men, women and children were lined up and shot in September 1982.

Estimates vary as to the number killed by the right-wing Christian militia, who claimed to have entered the camp to flush out the remaining “terrorists” of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), accused of creating “a state within a state” in Lebanon.

The late Robert Fisk, one of the first journalists to enter the camp after the killings, reported: “After three days of rape, fighting and brutal executions, militias finally leave the camps with 1,700 dead.” Others, including the Lebanese Red Cross, numbered the dead at 3,500.

The exact total may never be known as Israeli-supplied bulldozers moved swiftly into the camp, dumping decaying corpses into mass graves that were later hit by bombs.

Read the full article here: https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/sabra-and-shatila-memories-of-a-massacre-by-steve-sweeney/