Portraits of Arafat, Palestinian flags in every corner, portraits of the golden dome that rules Jerusalem… enter the field refugees Shatila in Beirut is a trip to Palestine.. But it is also a journey through a frozen moment in history. The impromptu buildings, with the tangle of cables and impossible stairs crowning every street, are proof of that. time doesn’t move For Palestinian refugees in Lebanon Forty years ago, across the same streets, entire families ran in horror as they tried to escape the inhumane violence perpetrated by Christian forces. In 1982, in the middle of the Lebanese civil war, Sabra and Shatila camp massacre cost more than 3,000 Palestinian lives.
Despite being in internal conflict for more than seven years, 1982 was the most tragic. The June invasion of Israel was crowned with: prolonged siege capital of lebanon. Finally, the ceasefire on August 21 allowed the safe evacuation of Palestinian militias from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the supervision of Western forces. US and European troops pledged to ensure the safety of refugees and civilians living in refugee camps. On 9/11 it was only the international powers that made this promise. They left Beirut.
Three days later, on September 14, 1982, the Lebanese president, Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Christian gangs, was killed by another Maronite Christian, a Syrian intelligence agent. But Tension and greed for revenge gripped the city. They poisoned all rationality. It wasn’t even 24 hours before the Israeli Army decided to surround the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and set up checkpoints and observation posts to block entry and exit. Only fear could reach these densely populated areas, where thousands of Palestinians live in poverty.
Genocide
In four days, more than 3,000 Palestinians, men, women, elderly and children, were massacred by the Lebanese Forces, phalanx militia, the current Kataeb. Both groups that turned into parties are currently represented in the parliament. “I have seen dead women in their homes with their skirts open to the waist.; dozens of teenagers were shot after leaning against the wall; children with their throats cut, a pregnant woman with her stomach torn and her eyes still open, her blackened face silently screaming in fear; countless babies and children were stabbed and dismembered and those thrown into the garbage heaps,” said American journalist Janet Lee Stevens, who was one of the first to enter the field at the time.
The United Nations condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre as an act of genocide. Even in Israel, a commission created after the largest protests in the country’s history pointed out that the Army stationed in Lebanon was indirectly responsible for the events. knowingly avoiding murders from the same. A year later, the UN decided that Israel, as the occupying power of the camps, was responsible for the violence that took place in the camps. The agony before the horror brought thousands to the streets in demonstrations around the world.
no convicts
But he is inhuman and it has been 40 years since the days of his death. In what forty years no one was arrested or prosecuted for the massacre. Without justice or reparations, the Palestinians in Lebanon have put another defeat on their scoreboard. About 12,000 Palestinian refugees still live in Shatila, amid images of their land being taken from them and the filth of overcrowding. Thousands of Syrian refugees settled in the same square kilometer and the population of the camp doubled. Beyond these borders, sealed by Israeli soldiers 40 years ago, there is a large Palestinian community that went to Lebanon in 1948 after the establishment of the State of Israel in search of a better life.
They never found him. 450 thousand Palestinians living in a country dozen refugee camps in this small Mediterranean state they do not enjoy political and civil rights. Despite being deprived of citizenship in any state, they are unable to work in dozens of occupations on Lebanese soil despite decades and generations. They also cannot have properties. They even have a hard time burying their dead legally. The meaning of all these obstacles serious economic consequences and a clear condemnation of the absence of a future.
Faced with this tomorrow marked by uncertainty and abandonment, Palestinians cling to yesterday. A yesterday stained with blood and perpetual mourning, but a yesterday that was theirs. 40 years ago they again tried to destroy them: murdered in their own homeThey are far from their land because they are Palestinians. Forty years later, among the streets adorned with portraits of their real homes, Palestinian families in Shatila gather around a table with the gift of yesterday that enables the little ones to fight for a future, their rights tomorrow.