AS WE APPROACH the 40th anniversary of the Sabra Shatila massacre, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and for the Palestinians living in refugee camps in countries neighboring Israel could not be more dark and grim. The constant arrests, house demolitions and killing of unarmed Palestinians in the West Bank and the regular bombing of blockaded Gaza are rarely reported in the mainstream media anymore. Funding for Palestinian refugees is also in jeopardy. The Gulf’s normalization with Israel resulted in severe funding cuts to UNRWA. Fourteen U.S. Republican senators are also trying to erase Palestinian refugees by redefining who is a refugee and conditioning aid to UNRWA (S. 2479).
The six million refugees living outside historic Palestine (now called Israel) are all but forgotten. Many of us have allowed them to fade in our consciousness. Yet every Palestinian killed—be they the recent 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, killed by Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2021; or the 2,022 killed, including 526 children, in Operation Protective Edge in 2014; the 1,400 deaths, including 300 children, in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9; or in the Great March of Return cannot be forgotten.
These deaths wrench out the hearts of their family and those who love them, leaving large gaping wounds which have not healed. There is no healing as the violence against the Palestinians is ongoing. There is no post-traumatic stress syndrome; there is only ongoing traumatic onslaughts and wounding of their bodies and souls. Every child born in Gaza after 2008 has experienced four major military assaults with intensive bombardment, deaths and injuries. Two million Palestinians are held under blockade in Gaza since 2007 converting Gaza into a large prison whose “inmates” are bombed and not allowed to escape.
This year also marks the 74th anniversary of the Nakba—and the 105th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, drafted with support of U.S. Justice Louis Brandeis and two other Americans who were part of the then-nascent Zionist movement. Britain was on its ascent in colonial power, thus paving the way for the giving away of the homes of the Palestinians and wiping Palestine off the world map.
SABRA AND SHATILA MASSACRE
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra Shatila massacre in 1982. Many readers of this article were not born then. Some will want to bury these events; others simply to forget. But I want to remember the Palestinians who taught me profound lessons about justice and struggle. I will honor their memories and share them with you.
Forty years ago, I arrived as a volunteer surgeon with the British Christian Aid team to war-torn Lebanon, ravaged by Israel’s invasion. I was posted to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and worked in its Gaza Hospital in Sabra Shatila. Until then, I had supported Israel and never knew Palestinians existed.
That invasion killed thousands and destroyed homes, livelihoods, hospitals, libraries, factories, schools and offices. It also split 14,000 Palestinian families through the deportation of their beloved husbands and sons, euphemistically called the “evacuation of the PLO” in exchange for a ceasefire. The U.S. Habib Peace Plan guaranteed the protection of the non-PLO civilians left behind. But the evacuation only paved the way for the land invasion of Lebanon in September by hundreds of Israeli tanks. A contingent of tanks proceeded to seal all the escape routes from Sabra Shatila refugee camp so that the brutal and infamous Sabra Shatila massacre could be conducted over the days of Sept. 15-18, 1982. At least 3,000 unarmed and defenseless Palestinians and their Lebanese neighbors were murdered by Israel’s ally, the Lebanese Christian militia, trained and armed by Israel. No one came to defend the helpless children, women and old people from being slaughtered. Many were tortured and women raped before being killed in those three dark days.
When the photographs of the heaps of dead bodies in the camp alleys were published, there was worldwide outrage and condemnation. But international attention was short-lived. The victims’ families and survivors were soon left alone to plod on with their lives and to relive the memory of that double tragedy of the massacre, and the preceding ten weeks of intensive land, air and sea bombardment and blockade of Beirut during the invasion, with the forced deportation of 14,000 bread-winners and leaders of their Palestinian society. The survivors were left to rebuild their shattered lives and homes, bring up their children while burying the dead in mass graves. The world moved on and they were forgotten—dead to the consciousness of the international community.
Since then, the everyday downward spiral of hopelessness and despair, made worse by the sense of being forgotten and abandoned, worsens. They just do not excite the headlines of mainstream media anymore. As someone close to the Palestinians in Lebanon I would ask—where is solidarity and where is hope for them?
Yet, when I talk to Palestinians in Lebanon directly, they rarely complain about being forgotten. Their first concern is about occupied Palestine. They live for Palestine. They know that Lebanon will make sure they cannot settle and has progressively made it more and more difficult for them to live in dignity, in Lebanon. It is like a punishment for having been expelled from Palestine into a country that had enough of them, and therefore would want to get rid of them by making life unbearable and unlivable. Their only option is to go back to Palestine, but their enshrined right of return has never been honored.
Twelve official United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) refugee camps in Lebanon were established to host the initial 110,000 persons who fled to Lebanon—some of the 750,000 refugees from Palestine expelled to make way for Israel in 1948. Since then, four generations have lived and died in those refugee camps. Children were born refugees, grew up refugees and died refugees on those little plots of Lebanese soil which make the finite, rigid borders of the official camps. The same plots for the 110,000 refugees from 1948 now have to accommodate a population grown to half a million just by natural increase, together with the influx of Palestinian refugees from Syria. Simple arithmetic will conclude that the camps’ population density has increased fivefold!
Their situation is dire—no right to work, no right to own a home, hungry, despised, a typical refugee camp squashing 100,000 persons into 1.7 square kilometers (0.657 sq miles) to live, die and be buried. Their survival as dignified human beings is at stake and must be supported and safeguarded by all of us.
I remember vividly the morning of September 18, 1982, when Ellen Siegel and I, as part of our 22-member team of international medical volunteers, were forced out of Gaza Hospital at machine-gun point, leaving behind 30 critically wounded patients, many of them children. We had struggled for three days and nights to save the many dozens of wounded brought to Gaza hospital. We discharged those who could leave the night before as we got news that our hospital would be invaded anytime, but the critically wounded on life-support could not leave. I was desperate and thought they would be killed once we left them.
With guns pointing at us we walked along the main road of the camp. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of unarmed camp people—women, old men and children—were rounded up by militia. I remember the terror in their eyes. A desperate young mother passed me her baby—so warm and cuddly. At gunpoint she was forced to take him back. Both were killed, together with those rounded up after we were taken away. Homes were bulldozed by large military bulldozers.
Those who sought to annihilate Palestinians thought—surely this will put an end to them! We have solved the “Palestinian problem” in Lebanon, and they will never raise their heads again.
A couple of days later, I returned to visit Sabra and Shatila. There were mass graves, decaying bodies, broken homes and grieving relatives. There was despair, desolation, piercing screams and a vale of tears.
But it was not over. Among the children who made it, including many homeless orphans, the spirit of defiance was very much alive. As they lined up for me to take their photograph, they raised their hands in the victory sign saying, “We are not afraid. Let the Israelis come.” Behind them were their homes bombed and shelled to rubble, in the foreground decaying bodies yet to be identified. The air was filled with the stench of decaying human flesh. But between death and destruction were the destitute Palestinian children defiantly staking their right to be part of humanity. They were my first green shoots of life!
For Great Britain, our historical responsibility of helping to create the Palestinian tragedy during the British Palestine Mandate must be remembered and confronted. For the United States—hear the voice of the suffering Palestinians including the refugees in Lebanon crying out asking for justice and fairness! May we let their voices be heard and journey with them from death to life.
Dr. Swee Chai Ang is founder and patron of British Charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians” updated and republished 2019 by The Other Press, Kuala Lumpur. She was an orthopedic surgeon in Gaza Hospital Sabra Shatila during the 1982 massacre.
Article taken from Washington Report on Middle East Affair in a Special Report by Dr Ang Swee Chai.