Sabra and Shatila: New Revelations

Surviving Palestinian civilians returning to the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila after the massacre carried out by Phalange-linked militiamen, Beirut, Lebanon, September 21, 1982. | Alain MINGAM/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

By Seth Anziska

Historians try not to audibly gasp in the reading rooms of official archives, but there are times when the written record retains a capacity to shock. In 2012, while working at the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem, I came across highly classified material from Israel’s 1982 War in Lebanon that had just been opened to researchers. This access was in line with the thirty-year rule of declassification governing the release of documents in Israel. Sifting through Foreign Ministry files, I stumbled upon the minutes of a September 17 meeting between Israeli and American officials that took place in the midst of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

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Sabra & Shatila, 1982 – never again

The world watched in horror as the story of the inhuman massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon first emerged in September, 1982 | An entire generation of the Palestinian people has grown up in their shadow | The general at the centre of this butchery is today the prime minister of Israel – Ariel Sharon | The scale of the infamy has changed, but not the methods, the perpetrators or their allies | The past is always present

Sabra and Chatila – two undefended refugee camps in Beirut where hundreds of unarmed Palestinian refugees, including babies, were massacred 16-18 September 1982. (Click to enlarge)

From the Dossier on Palestine (2002)

By PIERRE PÉAN*

TWENTY years have passed, but reread the accounts or speak to survivors in what remains of the Sabra and Shatila camps, and the words still drip red. Time has not washed away the blood. All through my investigation I was horrified as I listened to story after story about children with their throats slit, or pregnant women with their bellies slashed open, or heads and limbs hacked off. I felt physically sick.

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