When will the ghosts of Sabra and Shatila catch up with Israel’s prime minister?

by Michael Young

Will Ariel Sharon soon be sent up to the slammer? Will his lawyers argue that he suffers from dementia, as they did in the case of Augusto Pinochet, to keep him out of court? Not likely, although if several lawyers and an anthropologist have their way, the Israeli prime minister will find it increasingly difficult to escape a memory he has spent almost 20 years expunging: that of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in September 1982.
Earlier this week three lawyers (a Lebanese, Chibli Mallat, and two Belgians, Michael Verhaeghe and Luc Walleyn) prepared a legal complaint in Belgium in the name of survivors of the massacre. The complaint was directed against Sharon and other senior Israeli officials. The lawyers based their complaint on dozens of testimonies collected by a Palestinian refugee, Sana Hussein, working in collaboration with a British anthropologist, Rosemary Sayigh.
The highlights of Sharon’s involvement in the massacres have long been known. On Sept. 28, 1982, the Israeli government appointed a commission of inquiry headed by the president of the Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan. The commission found that Sharon was indirectly responsible for what had taken place in the camps. What this meant, however, was that he had not actively participated in the killings. However, in a part of the commission’s report offering recommendations, the members found that “the minister of defense bears personal responsibility,” a considerably stronger formulation.
There are two approaches to Sharon’s responsibility outlined in the commission’s report. Nevertheless, only one argument is developed in depth, and it essentially states that Sharon should have known a massacre would took place given the past performance of the Lebanese Forces, statements of intent by the militia’s commanders, and the pervasive anger in its ranks after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. The commission also established that fear of a massacre was rife in the Israeli military hierarchy in Lebanon.
Sharon was further accused by the Kahan commission of having taken no precautions to prevent a massacre. On the contrary, the report stated that the ramifications of a probable massacre “did not concern (Sharon) in the least.” This led to his failure to ensure “effective and ongoing supervision by the IDF over the actions of the Phalangists at the site.” It should also be noted that control of the Lebanese Forces in the camps area had been granted to the Israeli Army on Sept. 16, the day the militiamen entered the camps.
What the commission did not expand on, however, was Sharon’s role in inciting the Lebanese Forces. One can turn to two leading authorities on the massacre, Israeli journalists Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, for a partial answer. In a celebrated book written on the 1982 war, they described the aftermath of Bashir’s assassination, when Sharon did two things: He rallied the Lebanese Forces, who were demoralized by their leader’s death, and he forcefully included them in Israel’s plan to enter West Beirut.
Later, he was heard telling Lebanese Forces commanders that he wanted the PLO’s infrastructure in Beirut removed: “I don’t want a single one of them left,” he said. Does this prove incitement? Not necessarily. However, at no point did Sharon clarify the ambiguous statement. One would assume that if he had wanted to avert the killing of innocents, he would have clarified an order that could so easily have been misinterpreted by a militia impatient to liquidate. Indeed, when the senior Lebanese Forces official on the scene asked for clarification, Sharon evaded the issue.
Beyond the legal implications of a complaint filed against Sharon and other Israeli officials, there is the matter of memory. The Jews, by virtue of the historical torments they have endured, are often said to marinate in memory. However, Sharon’s recent election was evidence that Israel is as adept as other states in forgetting the more sordid episodes from its past. By the same token, Sharon has always hidden behind the phrase “indirect responsibility” to protect himself, arguing that he had not expected a massacre and had not heard that one was taking place until a full day after it began.
The mediocrity of that defense was summed up by the Kahan commission, which said: “When we are dealing with the issue of indirect responsibility, it should also not be forgotten that the Jews in various lands of exile … suffered greatly by pogroms perpetrated by various hooligans … The Jewish public’s stand has always been that the responsibility for such deeds falls not only on those who rioted and committed the atrocities, but also on those who were responsible for safety and public order, who could have prevented the disturbances and did not fulfill their obligations in this respect.”
The passage had and still has enormous meaning. The Kahan commission, intentionally or not, thus undermined its own reference to Sharon’s indirect responsibility. It effectively suggested that one needn’t be an Eichmann or, more recently, a Ratko Mladic, to be accountable for crimes against humanity.
By associating Sharon with the perpetrators of past pogroms against the Jews, the commission dented one of the more consecrated of Israeli symbols, which holds that the Jewish state, because its people were persecuted throughout history, represents a moral force on the international scene.
If that is the case, then Israelis must explain how Ariel Sharon reached the highest levels of power in their country. At some point soon, a Belgian magistrate will take up the legal case, in a country that recognizes universal jurisdiction in crimes against humanity. That particular aspect of international law has changed considerably since 1982, when the Sabra and Shatila massacres were perpetrated. Now is the time for Sharon to face up to his personal responsibility for that odious crime.

Michael Young writes a weekly commentary for The Daily Star