The call by Human Rights Watch came as Prime Minister Sharon
begins a visit to the United States. The Israeli leader´s visit
here comes as controversy mounts in Europe over his
responsibility for the 1982 killings.
“There is abundant evidence that war crimes and crimes
against humanity were committed on a wide scale in the Sabra and
Shatilla massacre, but to date, not a single individual has been
brought to justice,” said Hanny Megally, executive director of
the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.
“President Bush should urge Prime Minister Sharon to cooperate
with any investigation.”
As Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon had overall responsibility
over the Israeli Defense Forces and allowed Phalangist militias
to enter the camps and terrorize the residents for three days.
Human Rights Watch said that the United States had a
substantial interest in the case because the Israeli occupation
of West Beirut followed written U.S. assurances that
Palestinians remaining there would be safe, as part of an
arrangement that saw the evacuation of Palestine Liberation
Organization forces.
The debate in Europe erupted following a BBC documentary on
the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, which was aired in the United
Kingdom on June 17. The day after, survivors of the massacre
lodged a complaint against Sharon in a Belgian court.
During the BBC program, Morris Draper, the U.S. Special Envoy
to the Middle East at the time, said that U.S. officials were
horrified when told Sharon had allowed Phalange militias into
West Beirut and the camps “because it would be a massacre.”
He told the BBC that after the killings began he cabled Defense
Minister Sharon, telling him, “You must stop the slaughter….
The situation is absolutely appalling. They are killing
children. You have the field completely under your control and
are therefore responsible for that area.”
The Kahan Commission (named after the President of the
Israeli Supreme Court) that investigated the massacre in 1983
concluded that “Minister of Defense [Sharon] bears personal
responsibility” and should “draw the appropriate personal
conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to
the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office.”
The commission recommended that Prime Minister Menachem Begin
remove Sharon from office if he did not resign. Sharon did
resign as minister of defense, though he subsequently assumed
other cabinet positions. Annexes of the commission report have
not yet been made public, and it is not known if they contain
additional information specific to Sharon´s involvement.
Human Rights Watch said that the findings and conclusions of
the Kahan Commission, however authoritative in terms of
investigation and documentation of the facts surrounding the
massacre, could not substitute for proceedings in a criminal
court in Israel or elsewhere that would bring to justice those
responsible for the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians.
Human Rights Watch recognizes that Sharon, in his capacity as
Prime Minister, enjoys temporary immunity; however, that should
not preclude an active criminal investigation into his conduct
whether in Israel, Belgium, or elsewhere.
“Criminal investigations and prosecutions must include
militia leaders like Elie Hobeika in Lebanon who carried out
these atrocities,” Megally said. “But the Israeli government
also has a responsibility to conduct an investigation into the
actions of its own high officials who knew – and, in any case,
certainly should have known -- that atrocities were likely to
occur and did not act promptly to stop them once they knew the
killing had started.”
Background
Details of the massacre: The massacre at the Sabra and
Shatilla refugee camps occurred between September 16 and 18,
1982, after Israel Defense Forces (“IDF”) then occupying
Beirut and under Ariel Sharon´s overall command as Israeli
Defense Minister permitted members of the Phalange militia into
the camps. The precise civilian death toll most likely will
never be known. Israeli military intelligence estimated that
between 700 and 800 people were killed in Sabra and Shatilla
during the sixty-two-hour rampage, while Palestinian and other
sources have claimed that the dead numbered up to several
thousand. The victims included infants, children, women
(including pregnant women), and the elderly, some of whom were
mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.
Journalists who arrived on the scene immediately after the
massacre also saw evidence of the summary execution of young
men. To cite only one contemporaneous account, that of Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times: “[M]ostly I saw groups of
young men in their twenties and thirties who had been lined up
against walls, tied by their hands and feet, and then mowed down
gangland-style with fusillades of machine-gun fire.”
By all accounts, the perpetrators of this indiscriminate
slaughter were members of the Phalange (or Kata´eb, in Arabic)
militia, a Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied
to Israel since the outbreak of Lebanon´s civil war in 1975. It
must be noted, however, that the killings were carried out in an
area under IDF control. An IDF forward command post was situated
on the roof of a multi-story building located some 200 meters
southwest of the Shatilla camp.
Findings of the Kahan Commission:
In February 1983, the three-member Israeli official
independent commission of inquiry charged with investigating the
events known as the Kahan Commission named former Defense
Minister Sharon as one of the individuals who "bears
personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatilla
massacre.
Former Defense Minister Sharon´s decision to allow the
Phalange into the camps: The Kahan Commission report detailed
the direct role of former Defense Minister Sharon in allowing
the Phalangists into the Sabra and Shatilla camps. For instance,
then-Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan testified that the
entry of the Phalangists into the refugee camps was agreed upon
between former Defense Minister Sharon and himself. Thereafter,
former Defense Minister Sharon went to Phalangist headquarters
and met with, among others, a number of Phalangist commanders. A
document issued by former Defense Minister Sharon´s office
containing “The Defense Minister´s Summary of 15 September
1982” states: “For the operation in the camps the
Phalangists should be sent in.” That document also stated that
“the I.D.F. shall command the forces in the area.”
Former Defense Minister Sharon´s disregard of the
consequences of that decision: As to former Defense Minister
Sharon´s testimony that “no one had imagined the Phalangists
would carry out a massacre in the camps,” the Kahan Commission
concluded that “it is impossible to justify [Sharon´s]
disregard of the danger of a massacre” because “no prophetic
powers were required to know that a concrete danger of acts of
slaughter existed when the Phalangists were moved into the camps
without the I.D.F.´s being with them.” In fact, the
Commission found: “In our view, everyone who had anything to
do with events in Lebanon should have felt apprehension about a
massacre in the camps, if armed Phalangist forces were to be
moved into them without the I.D.F. exercising concrete and
effective supervision and scrutiny of them…. To this backdrop
of the Phalangists´ [enmity] toward the Palestinians [in the
camps] were added the profound shock [of Bashir Jemayel´s
recent death]….”
The Kahan Commission further found that:
If in fact the Defense Minister, when he decided that the
Phalangists would enter the camps without the I.D.F. taking part
in the operation, did not think that that decision could bring
about the very disaster that in fact occurred, the only possible
explanation for this is that he disregarded any apprehensions
about what was to be expected because the advantages . . .
to be
gained from the Phalangists´ entry into the camps distracted
him from the proper consideration in this instance.
The Commission explained that “if the decision were taken
with the awareness that the risk of harm to the inhabitants
existed, the obligation existed to adopt measures which would
ensure effective and ongoing supervision by the I.D.F. over the
actions of the Phalangists at the site, in such a manner as to
prevent the danger or at least reduce it considerably. The
Defense Minister issued no order regarding the adoption of such
measures.”
The Commission concluded: “In our view, the Minister
of Defense made a grave mistake when he ignored the danger of
acts of revenge and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the
population in the refugee camps.”
As its ultimate recommendation, the Kahan Commission
recommended that Sharon be discharged from serving as Minister
of Defense, and that, if necessary, the then-Prime Minister
should consider removing him from office.
* * *
Human Rights Watch takes the position that what happened at the
Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps constitute war crimes and
crimes against humanity, and that all those responsible need to
be brought to justice. Enough questions are raised by the Kahan
Commission report to warrant a criminal investigation by Israel
into whether former Defense Minister Sharon and other Israeli
military officials—including some who knew the massacre was
occurring but took no actions to stop it—bear criminal
responsibility. The findings and conclusions of the Kahan
Commission, however authoritative in terms of investigation and
documentation of the facts surrounding the massacre, cannot
substitute for proceedings in a criminal court in Israel or
elsewhere that will bring to justice those responsible for the
killing of hundreds of innocent civilians. The Lebanese
government should institute a similar investigation regarding
the role of the Phalange militia in this massacre.
