From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1995 edition, p. 160-166
When I finally reached the Commodore Hotel and met a few of my American press colleagues, they told me that they had heard a rumor that Phalangists were in Shatila. The camp was sealed off by the Israelis, though, so no one had been able to get inside. That night at dinner, my friend from Time magazine, Roberto Suro, told me he had managed to get to the edge of Shatila earlier in the day and it had left him with an uneasy feeling. He had gone as far as the Kuwaiti embassy traffic circle, which overlooked Shatila from the west, and found a group of Phalangist militiamen relaxing, being fed and provided for by a group of Israeli soldiers.
There was this one Phalangist militiaman wearing aviator sunglasses who looked as though he might be in charge, so I decided to try to talk to him, Roberto told me. He was a tall, skinny guy, and as we talked you could hear bursts of gunfire and explosions coming from the camps, but this guy didnt flinch. In fact, he behaved as though it was perfectly normal. I asked him what was going on inside and he just smiled. Not far away there were these Israeli soldiers sitting on a tank. Even though there was gunfire in the camp, they were just lounging around, reading magazines and listening to Simon and Garfunkel on a ghetto blaster. It was pretty clear to me that whatever was happening, the Phalangists were going to be in charge of this area when it was all over, so I asked this Phalangist officer what they were going to do with Sabra and Shatila. Ill never forget what he said: Were going to turn it into a shopping center.
What none of us knew at the time was that a day earlier some 1,500 Phalangist militamen had been trucked fro mEast Beirut to Beirut Airport, which they used as their staging ground. From there, small units of Phalangists, roughly 150 men each, were sent into Sabr and Shatila, which the Israeli army kept illuminated through the night with flares. The Phalangists wanted to avenge not only Bashirs death but also past tribal killings of their own people by Palestinian guerrillas, such as the February 1976 massacre by Palestinians of Christian villagers in Damour, south of Beirut. Sharon would give them their chance. From Thursday, September 16, until Saturday morning, September 18, Phalangist squads combed through the Sabra and Shatila neighborhoods, liquidating whatever humanity came in their path.
No one knows exactly how many people were killed during the three-day massacre, and how many were trucked off by the Phalangists and killed elsewhere. The only independent official death toll was the one assembled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose staff buried 210 bodies-140 men, 38 women, and 32 children-in a mass grave several days after the massacre. Since most victims were buried by their relatives much earlier, Red Cross officials told me they estimated that the total death toll was between 800 and 1,000.
Afterward, the Israeli solders would claim they did not know what was happening in the camps. They did not hear the screams and shouts of people being massacred. They did not see wanton murder of innocents through their telescopic binoculars.
The Kahan Commission, the Israeli government inquiry board that later investigated the events in Sabra and Shatila, uncovered repeated instances within the first hours of the massacre in which Israeli officers overheard Phalangists referring to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Some Israeli officers even conveyed this information to their superiors, but they did not respond. The most egregious case was when, two hours after the operation began on Thursday evening, the commander of the Israeli troops around Sabra and Shatila, Brigadier General Amos Yaron, was informed by an intelligence officer that a Phalangist militiaman within the camp had radioed the Phalangist officer responsible for liaison with Israeli troops and told him that he was holding forty-five Palestinians. He asked for orders on what to do with them. The liaison officers reply was Do the will of God. Even upon hearing such a report, Yaron did not halt the operation.
The Israelis knew just what they were doing when they let the Phalangists into those camps. Again, as the Kahan Commission itself reported: during meetings held between Bashir Gemayel and Israeli Mossad secret agents, Israeli officials heard things from [Bashir] that left no room for doubt that the intention of this Phalangist leader was to eliminate the Palestinian problem in Lebanon when he came to power-even if that meant resorting to aberrant methods against the Palestinians.
The Israelis at least held an investigation when they were involved in a massacre, which is more than the Syrians ever did. But for all their inquiring, what was the final outcome? Sharon, who was found by the Kahan Commission to bear personal responsibility for what happened in the camps, was forced to step down as Defense Minister and become a minister-without-portfolio instead, until the next Israeli government was formed, when he became Minister of Industry and Trade. Israels Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, who was also assigned blame for what took place in the camps, who had lied to dozens of world newsmen when asked if Israel had sent the Phalangists in, was allowed to finish his tour of duty with dignity and was then elected to the Israeli parliament. Brigadier General Yaron was told he could never get another field command, but was then promoted to major general and put in charge of the manpower division of the Israeli army, which handles all personnel matters. After fulfilling that job, in August 1986 he was handed one of the most coveted assignments-military attaché in Washington.
A week after the massacre, the Israelis granted me the only interview given any Western journalist with Major General Amir Drori, the overall commander of Israeli troops in Lebanon. I was driven up to Aley, northeast of Beirut, to the Israeli headquarters at the summer palace of a Kuwaiti sheik. The interview was held at a long wooden conference table, with Drori seated at the head. Around the table sat all his staff, including Brigadier General Yaron, as well as my escort officer, Stuart Cohen, a gentle Israeli reservist from England whom I had taken a day earlier up to the roof of the Lebanese apartment building the Israelis had used as their headquarters outside Sabra and Shatila. I showed him through my own cheap binoculars-which were nowhere near as powerful as those used by Israeli troops-just how well one could see into certain open spaces in the camps, where the freshly turned dirt from mass graves used by the Phalangists to dump bodies was still clearly evident; Stuart was shocked. This was not the line that he had been fed from headquarters.
I must admit I was not professionally detached in this interview. I banged the tabled with my fist and shouted at Drori, How could you do this? How could you not see? How could you not know? Drori had no answers. I knew it. He knew it. It was clear his men either should have known what was happening, or did know and did nothing.
