This interview by Caroline Tisdall is with Fatah leader who led the resistance in massacre by forces.
It is reprinted with permission from Beirut: Front Line Story, Selim Nassib with Caroline Tisdall. Photographs by Steele-Perkins. Pluto Press. £3.95.
AFTER IHE evacuation people. gradually started to come back to the camps, During the 'war heaviest bombardments most of them had been sheltering in flats and empty schools outside the camps, in terrible conditions sometimes 20 to room, while the fighters stayed in the Lallios. So it was relief to 'home', and a relief that the bombardments had stopped. But we were num Deo ov mie devasaon are mre uncertainty of the future.
At a meeting of the camp committee ten days before the massacre, we had decided to lay down our personal weapons. As you know, the "LU handed over its heavy weapons at the time of the evacuation, but we still had the Kalashnikovs with which have defended the camps since 1969. We surrendered them to the Lebanese National Movement.
It was a hard decision but we took it tor several reasons. Anter Ine eection of Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese analy caric mnio uic canos scarle for arms, and found the underground We knew that if they store in sabra. found more large caches there could be reprisals. That was why, when we realised a massacre was happening in Chatila tried to organise resistance, we cond onv find rocket launcher 5 rockets, Kalashnikovs, all of which had been greased, wrapped in sacking plastic and buried because we didn't expect to use them. We didn't even have time or petrol to clean off the grease so, when it came to it, all we had were about 45 men and boys try. ing to protect Chatila with 15 boilingnol greasy guns anu one rocker launcher But the main reason for disarming was that although the future looked unci larkl we didn't expect Wal come again. We felt that the PLO had kept the terms of the Habib agree• ment in evacuating, and we had to put our trust in the multinational peacekeeping force to protect us. They Chris the come Wing round the houses for guns that the ola peoble naa maden since ley were mostly too frightened to come out.
groups, each to try to defend the spots they came from and the alleys they knew best: the southern, eastern and Broad. Some of the groups didn't even It was horrible and confusing to the point where you just stopped thinking. It happened so fast: suddenly the enemy was there and the On Thursday the flares over the although the horizon was still light, I0 une narrow spaces verween tne nousc. were geting dark.
were woman running with a child on the The aftermath of the massacre. Those surviving search for relatives.
were so close.
brother of the wrestling champion' -as if that would make any difference. • They killed him. He was a good man. head was split open with an axe ir memorv that his mother.
gecase him: "Come here you son of a bitch.' 'But I'm Mohammed Nabusi. I'm the Diab who was 15. They tied her hands and legs and did everything that men can to her. Then they drove an iron an 18-year-old Syrian whose front of his mother. There was Abu Brahim who survived — he was one o!
sister and brothers were killed and that his pregnant wife had the baby cut out of her LIC things like that. After the massacre we found the place some of them had stayed in that night, among the breeze blocks we had brought for rebuilding. Piles of lager cans, and two syringes. documents without which one would was crazy to go back then and I really happened. He got back to our house, and found the bag and filled another outside the wreck of the Palestinian Red Crescent clinic in Chatila Street he'd been told to stop there by a Haddad man who marched him 10 metres before a Phalangist came up with a My fader kepi sa yon g they ha d ss.
out ne nold They marched him with nunarcas or olner peopie down lo uic southern entrance of the camp. There women who all began to recite the Koran, preparing for the worst.
Kuwaiti Embassy Hill and a bomb exploded. The Egyptian in front of my father was killed and the injured were Israeli lorry came and loaded them up and took them to their headquarters June or lae ocer clalla , allC . My father was one of the lucky .one who was released. Maybe he was mass shootings in the camp were goWe do not know how many died. The Red Cross said 1,500 at the time, and then there were at least 900 who were driven off and never seen again. Some roads going east and to the mounmassacre. I believe they were trying to set a terrible example for the other Arab-countries, to prevent the other accoune Palestinians as an organised force in 1 September:
Reagan presents American peace plan proposing Palestinian self-government in association with Jordan, , rejecung botn a ralesu nian state on the West Bank and Israeli sovereignty of it, calling for a halt to Jewish settlement in that and stating that future negotiations should decide status of Jerusalem.
2 September:
Israeli cabinet unanimously rejects Reagan peace plan. Eight new settlements immediately announced Sharon, Begin, Shamir perhaps 'Major' Haddad hold secret meeting with president-elect Bashir Gemayel who is now reluctant to sign a peace treaty with 9 September:
Fez conference of Arab heads of state produces a peace plan incorporating the spirit of the Fahd peace plan, giving recognition of the PLO, the withdrawal of Israe by bomb explosion at Phalangist by SKS, the Kitaeb (Phalange)
IS cabinel consultanon, set ln actiol 'Operation Iron Brain': it involves the occupation of West Beirut 'to and 'to preserve tranquillity and sheltering there, some in refugee were finding shelter for us: by the Sunday they had found a flat for ms lally.
We were trapped like animals in that camp. and that is how they have always trec to show us to the world. They wanter us to believe it ourselves. They wantec us with memories we can never forget Perhaps in that they have succeeded but only as long as we remain unarm humiliate us. They couldn't beat u armed so they beat us unarmed: the hordes came when the fighters left' is what we say to that. The experience oi being unable to defend even my owI family when the whole camp is m! family has left me confused and ver! KLOV DUL ABCHICOOILIaC d sense of failure because I feel that as resistance we were able to do flut! more than we thought we could with terrorists and that we weic dillas terrorists in our camps. Everyone who knows us knows we were fighters ye: Guild a progressiv enerley ne
----- pull-quotes -----
Jamal, 28-year old
Sabra-Chatila camp to the Phalangist
EVACUATION TO MASSACRE