Beirut remembers Sharon

From massacre survivors to Christian allies, Lebanese speak out about the man who invaded their country.

By Mitchell Prothero

Read more: Politics, Israel, Ariel Sharon, News, Lebanon

Jan. 12, 2006 | BEIRUT, Lebanon -- For most Arabs and Muslims, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon epitomizes the cruel side of Israeli policies, from his leadership of the infamous Qibya massacre to his harsh tactics in putting down a Palestinian insurgency in Gaza (which gave him his nickname, "The bulldozer"), to his crushing response to the second Palestinian intifada of 2001. As he battles for his life after a massive stroke, reaction across the region has been marked by anger and jubilation, but also fear of an unsettled future and even grudging respect for his powerful leadership of Israel.

In Israel's northern neighbor Lebanon, probably more than in any other Arab country, reactions to Sharon's critical illness range across the spectrum -- from hatred almost too deep to be expressed to open admiration. This gamut of emotions reflects the political, ethnic and religious complexity of this small country -- and, of course, Sharon's personal role in Lebanon's history. He masterminded Israel's disastrous invasion 23 years ago.

Some Lebanese, Christian and Muslim alike, welcomed Israel's invasion for their own motives -- only to turn against Israel after they found themselves shot at, besieged and occupied for almost 20 years. Some of Israel's sworn enemies have come to rely on the specter of Sharon to stay relevant. Still others see the struggle as hurting the nation's economic prospects in the name of liberating a bunch of Palestinians no one likes anyway.

The most notorious episode in Sharon's career, for which many still regard him as a war criminal, took place in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on the outskirts of Beirut on Sept. 16-18, 1982. Enraged by the assassination of Israel's puppet, Maronite Christian leader Bashir Gemayel, Israel's Phalangist militia allies, in plain sight of Israeli troops, entered the mostly unarmed camps and began a three-day slaughter, killing between 800 and 2,000 men, women and children (the final figures were never established). While it was never proven that Sharon himself knew that the militia was planning the massacre, according to the authoritative account by Israeli journalists Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Israeli officials knew the massacre was taking place and did little to stop it. An Israeli investigation found Sharon, who was defense minister at the time, bore "personal responsibility" and demanded he resign. Sharon refused. Although he was forced out of his defense post, he remained in the cabinet, and completed his rehabilitation when he was elected prime minister in 2001.

I went into the Shatila camp to talk to Palestinian survivors of the massacre about Sharon and his condition. I meet 43-year-old Hamad Shamus sitting in a garden used as a memorial to the victims, the outside walls covered in pictures of piles of bodies and screaming women. It's a grim memorial, but Shamus' memories are worse. "They put all of us against the wall by our home and shot us," he says with little emotion. "Me, my father, my brother and a family of Lebanese Shiite [Muslims] from next door. I was shot three times." He points to the side of his head, his right hip and left leg, on which he still limps.

"My father and brother were dead [immediately]. One Lebanese man with us lived for an hour before he gave up and died. I lay there for three days listening to them kill the others. I prayed to God for myself and for my family. I don't know how I lived."

Shamus rises and limps to the front of the memorial where huge pictures depict the piles of dead left to rot in the September sun. He points to one picture of a woman wailing and waving her arms. "That is Milana Boutros al-Ha." He points to one of the bodies behind her. "That is my father, and that leg," he points again, "is that of my brother."

Shamus says he is watching Sharon's medical condition closely and prays for his recovery in the name of justice. "I want to see him recover so that we can charge him with crimes," he says. "But it seems maybe God has decided to charge him instead."

Abu Mohammed, 55, smokes a water pipe in Shatila and looks down the street he helped defend during the massacre. In the wake of Gemayel's murder, he sensed something bad could be coming and hid his family with his brother. He then returned to his home as the Phalangists and their Israeli advisors were entering the camp.

"They called to me to come to them. I ran," he says. He ran half a kilometer to the nearby football stadium, which the PLO had used as a weapons depot before its withdrawal, and with five other men found assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They then began to defend their block of homes from the marauding bands of militiamen.

"It was our right to resist; we are not terrorists. It was easier to kill the unarmed so they left us alone. But one of my neighbors worried that the Israelis would send jets to bomb us, so he insisted on walking out of the camp with a white flag to tell them we were just civilians defending our homes. They shot him in the street.

"Like all Palestinians we pray he does not die," Abu Mohammed says of Sharon. "If he is going to be dead then he will not suffer like he caused the Palestinian people."

"He is the King Kong of massacres," interrupts Abu Khalil, 46, another survivor of those terrible three days. "I wanted him to die until I heard he would be handicapped. Now I pray for him to suffer as a cripple as he crippled the people of Sabra and Shatila. But his death will mean nothing because the Israelis will just replace him with someone just as bad."

Abu Mohammed agrees with the Kahan Commission on one key point: He knows Sharon himself didn't do the killings. "Sharon did not massacre us himself, he sent people working for him to do it," he says.

"We cannot forget what he did to us and we will never forgive," adds Abu Khalil. "That Jew just did too much to us to forgive him. I wish he would live so we could see him tried in The Hague for a war crime."

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