International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra- Shatila Massacre

By Franklin P. Lamb

This book documents in great specificity, and to date unchallenged detail, the hour by hour unfolding events of the September 15-18, 1982 massacre at Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. The author took a leave of absence from his work as Assistance Counsel to the US House Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC to investigate this massive crime against humanity.
Lamb, who would later give testimony before the Israeli Kahan Commission in Jerusalem which found officials including Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon indirectly culpable, and censored others who were involved in facilitating the massacre, spent months documenting exactly what happened in Shatila camp during the three days of slaughter. This volume stands as an indictment of those in Lebanon and Israel who planned and carried out the massacre of approximately 3000 civilians.
The author Memorializes American journalist Janet Lee Stevens, with whom he fell in love during that fateful summer of 1982 and his Letter to Janet reveals a love story between two Americans who sought justice for Palestine and for all who are deprived of their basic human rights. And the tragedy of what happened to Janet Lee Stevens and their son, Clyde Chester Lamb III on another fateful date, April 18, 1983 when the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon was car bombed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Franklin P. Lamb
• Release date: Jan 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310314650

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International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra - Shatila Massacre

33rd Anniversary Edition: 1982-2015

Franklin P. Lamb PhD

ISBN

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Introduction

Palestinians perceive a consistent problem in any investigation for an Israeli massacre committed against its people. One reason is that what has been written extensively about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila relates to checking the facts in detail which is essential. Of- ten the causes of the massacre are not sufficiently addressed nor the broader objectives of each aggression by the Zionist occupation.

What Palestinians observe in objective writing of many they have focused on documenting events from Tuesday 14 September 1982 to Sunday evening, 19 of the same month in one location is a camp of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut – Lebanon. The massacre is presented often as one incident and as such is taken out of the broader historical context. The accusations and condemnations focus on one event which by implication identifies only certain individual Zionist officials for direct or indirect responsibility. This narrow focus of accusations is inaccurate in that is avoids identifying the fundamental and immediate causes of genocidal slaughters of Palestinian civilians and that is the Zionist ideology with its philosophical and political exclusionist colonial enterprise that historically have produced the criminal carnage at Deir Yasin (03/09/48 during which Irgun gangs slaughtered 250 Palestinian unarmed civilians. Also the massacre at the village of Qibya 14-15 October in 1953 which led to the killing of 70 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli military force led by Ariel Sharon, or the Kafr Qasem massacre in 1956 as well as literally tens of others over the past century.

The responsibility for the massacres and their countless crimes is clear to all objective observers and properly placed on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the displacement of her people who are scattered to the corners of the earth, and who are pursued by aerial bombardment, sea and land in a series of aggressions and massacres which continues until today. Legal accountability and trials before independent judges have to date not taken place for the Israeli war criminals. This raises the subject of cooperation between the dominant forces supporting the Western-Zionist screen that covers the close cooperation even sometimes complicity with Zionist massacres.

In the case of Sabra and Shatila, most assumed, based on the signed agreement between the PLO and American Envoy Philip Habib that there would be a peaceful evacuation of PLO forces from Lebanon which included the American pledge, as quid pro quo, the protection of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Most especially for camp residents after the exit of fighters who were defending them.

No one since the horrible massacre has been held accountable even by any American official, despite knowledge of the identity of the criminals who killed women and the elderly, children and men, patients, doctors and countless others. Only Israeli propaganda was echoed in the Western press claiming that many of the secret cells of the guerrillas remained hidden in Shatila. This despite massive evidence available to prosecutors of the details of the slaughter and killings done which included collective executions at point blank range. Never was even an apology offered nor criticism of the Israeli army sealing off the camp or sending in its agents from the Lebanese Forces. Nor was one person held accountable for incitement to commit a massacre.

There was silence and failure to even investigate serious questions- some posed by human rights groups, behind the abrupt withdrawal of the American and French multinational forces, even without coordination with Lebanese officials. The multinational forces being sent originally under claims of providing security. But they left abruptly following the PLO evacuation. Was this cooperation pure coincidence without any responsibility on Western officials for the massacre?

Nevertheless, the Palestinian people cannot forget the positive role of the media, especially the Western, in the dramatic impact of ex- posing the massacre and illuminating what happened. Reporters in Lebanon who followed the details, with steadfastness and objectivity the Israeli invasion during the three months of the siege and even its achievement of helping stop the massacre, as their reports shook the conscience of the world. Reporters such as Robert Fisk with his reports and analysis in the Times of London newspaper Times, Loren Jenkins of the Washington Post, Amnon Kapeliouk in Le Monde and as well as the American Janet Lee Stevens. All pursued and reported the facts of what was happening in Beirut that summer and fall, de- spite the impact of their reports on exposing the pro-Zionist policy of the government administration of President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig.

The wounded Palestinian people despite the injustice done to them for decades, the unlawful occupation of their country, the expulsion of nearly a majority of their sons and daughters to become refugees outside their country, remains steadfast to the principles, rules and standards of international law.

The Palestinians remain resolute in their mantra of We shall never give up our rights. It is linked with their declared program of struggle to expel the Israeli settler/occupiers while establishing an independent sovereign state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and with Jerusalem as its capital. As they insist on the application of UN resolution 194, which stipulates the right of return of refugees to their homes.

Israel to this day refuses to end its occupation and is backed by the American administration. The US government insists that only through negotiation between the parties can this be achieved. Nearly four decades of this approach has proved to everyone that this peace process is absurd given Israel›s refusal to withdraw as it expands land confiscations and establishment of settlements on Palestinian land all the while accelerating the flow of settler occupiers to the West Bank and to Jerusalem. Intensifying too the imposition of conditions of humiliation on the Palestinians This process gained momentum in 2000 under the leadership of Ariel Sharon›s re-occupation, and the destruction of the Jenin refugee camp.

This is what caused the fifth session of the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations to adopt a resolution establishing a committee to investigate Israeli war crimes, headed by Mary Robinson, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, which visited the West Bank, and issued statements about the practices of Israel, but failed to publish its report. Nor did it provide any suggestions to punish criminals from among Israeli officials.

After the year 2000, Gaza is the area mainly repeatedly abused. In the period between 27/12/2008 until January (January) 2008, the Israeli occupation forces bloody aggressions on the Gaza Strip and its people, have caused massive destruction to infrastructure, buildings, and massive loss of life.

These crimes caused the United Nations Council for Human Rights to establish a fact-finding mission to investigate Israel›s violations of international law, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone. The Commission of Inquiry which carried out its field works for many months and issued an important report distinct in the impartiality and accuracy as well as its condemnation of Israeli violations. However, the Palestinian side did not raise the conclusions before the International Criminal Court or seek to prosecute those who have committed crimes because of the illusion that to do so would block Zionist willingness to negotiate to end its occupation. This approach was soon shown to be defective to say the least.

Another aggression named «Cast Lead» ordered by the then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on responsibility with the Government of Israel, launched in March 2012, ended with 900 Palestinian martyrs and the destruction of more buildings and infrastructure. A cease-fire agreement sponsored by the Egyptian leadership to effect and demonstrated the Israeli enemy’s inability to break the will of the Palestinian resistance, steadfastness and confrontation and it caused millions of Israelis to hide in shelters and paralyze daily life in the Zionist entity.

The recent aggressions which Israel launched against Palestinians demonstrate clearly that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, the chief of staff, Beni Gantz, are leading Israel into a position of losing support and home and abroad for Israeli crimes. The ineffective occupation of the three-kilometer border was withstood by Palestinians for fifty days included the massacre at Khuzz’s and Rafah. This despite nearly two thousand dead and 12,000 wounded including 2,000 children, in addition to the destruction of some 9,800 housing units.

The Palestinian people continue to insist on a just peace. A peace of that comes with a sovereign, independent State with fixed inviolate borders, and with its capital in Jerusalem as well as the right of return of refugees to their homes.

Resistance will continue to confront the aggressive Zionist cruelty and ferocity which is permitted by American protection from punishment or holding the guilty accountable. This is what enhances the demands of the Palestinian people to be free to work as refugees in Lebanon and to provide the elements of steadfastness and support for the liberation of their homeland, and to end of last colonization on the face of the planet.

This book preserves the memory of the martyrs of Sabra and Shatila massacre and retains the continuity of the series of sacrifices of the Palestinians, whether in Lebanon or elsewhere. The Palestinian people are shown as people who remain steadfast against Israeli aggression and the continuous occupation and the cause of the displacement of the refugees.

The Palestinians will not stop their just struggle until reaching Palestine and until its people realize their rights to freedom, independence and self-determination. We thank all who support our rights and human justice, and for those who have sacrificed on the road to help us obtain them.

Suheil Natour

Center for Human Development

Mar Elias Palestinian Camp.

Beirut, Lebanon

September, 2015

Contents

Dedication

In Memorium-Janet Lee Stevens

Preface

1. The International Law of Armed Conflict

International Customary Law: Individual and Derivative

The Tokyo and Nuremberg Tribunals

Ordering a Massacre

Implementation of International Rules in National Laws

Treaty Law: The 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocol

The Duty of an Occupying Power of Stop War Crimes

Responsibility of an Occupying Power for Those Under Its Control

Israel’s Status in West Beirut: Occupying Power

Occupants of Refugee Camps Are Protected Persons

Knowledge by Occupation Authorities

2. The Sabra-Shatila Massacres, September 16-18, 1982: Findings of Fact

From June 6 to September 13—The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon

Tuesday, September 14—The Assassination of Bashir Gemayal

Wednesday, September 15— The Israeli Occupation of West Beirut

Thursday, September 16— The «Cleansing of the Camps», Day 1

Friday, September 17— The «Cleansing of the Camps», Day 2

Saturday, September 18— A Stillness in the Camps, Day 3

Discussion of the Evidence

The Commission’s Conclusions

The Commission’s Bias

Contradictory Testimony

Unanswered Questions

Journalists Reports

Sharon’s Culpability

The Commission’s Abrogation of Its Duty

International Legal Sanctions Applicable to Israel for the Sabra and Shatila Massacre

Selected Bibliography and Citations

About the Author

DEDICATION

To the victims of the organized barbarism perpetrated at the Sabra- Shatila camps in Beirut, Lebanon, on September 16-18, 1982.

May God in infinite wisdom, justice and mercy manifest that they have not died in vain and that their countrymen’s full Right of Return shall be imminent.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author expresses his deep appreciation to the countless Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s camps, particularly residents of Shatila, Mar Elias, and Burj al Barajneh, many of whom were interviewed in September-October 1982 while they were in hospital or suffering debilitating trauma.

Miss Manal Saway of the Palestine Embassy in Beirut worked with the author over many months to produce this 6th Edition, in Arabic and English of International Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre. I am deeply indebted to Manal as well as to HE Ambassador Ashraf Dabbour, Media Advisor Hassan Sheshneyi, and their supportive and patient Embassy colleagues.

I wish to thank educator and Syrian Nationalist, Ms. Sawsan Fatoum, for translating the English version into Arabic un- der difficult circumstances.

Franklin Lamb

September 16, 2015

Shatila Camp, Beirut

IN MEMORIAM

Janet Lee Stevens (1951-1983)

The American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens, from Atlanta, Georgia, was a gifted athlete, linguist, writer, humanist, loyal friend and indefatigable advocate for the liberation of occupied Palestine.

Janet died on April 18, 1983, at the age of 32, at the instant of the explosion which destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

Twenty minutes before the blast, Janet arrived at the Embassy having walked along the sea past the light house from her office at Al-Kifah Al-Arabi Magazine at corniche mazna to meet with US A.I.D. official Bill McIntyre. Janet had come to her embassy to advocate for more American aid for the Palestinians with whom she worked and lived at Shatila and Burj Burajneh refugee camps and for the Shia of South Lebanon, who for years had been bombed, shelled and terrorized by American weapons gifted to Israel. Both Palestinians and Lebanese living in the South, mainly Shia, were victims of Israel’s 1982 invasion and occupation, as well as the September 15-18 massacre which the Zionist regime’s defense minister had organized.

As they sat at a table in the cafeteria, where Janet had planned to ask why the US government has never