November 1992, Page 25
Remembering the Sabra-Shatila Massacre
Palestinian Cemetery Becomes a Playground in Beirut
By Marilyn Raschka
The piece of wasteland along the road to the airport looks like neither a cemetery nor a playground, but 10 years after the September 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacre, it is both. Beneath the sandy red earth lie the bodies of hundreds of men, women and children shot and hacked to death in the Shatila camp for Palestinian refugees and the adjacent Lebanese-Palestinian neigborhood called Sabra.
But today there are no headstones, wreaths, or even memories for the Shi'i children who play soccer on what they call their malaab (playground).
On the 10th anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila massacre following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Palestinians of the area walked en masse to hang a memorial wreath on the locked iron gate that barred their entrance to the empty lot.
As Palestinians recited verses from the Qur'an, young Lebanese boys inside kicked a ball back and forth across the field.
"Don't they know this is a cemetary?" Shahira Abu Adrini explained. Exactly 10 years earlier, her husband and six other members of her family were killed by Lebanese militiamen trucked to the camp by Israeli soldiers. The Israelis barred exits and watched the slaughter from outside the walls, even sharing a rooftop command post with militia officers directing the massacre.
The Massacre Begins
The massacre began two days after the Sept. 14 assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel in Christian East Beirut. The following day Israeli troops, already in East Beirut, invaded Muslim-held West Beirut and surrounded Sabra and Shatila. The massacres started within hours.
Events of a decade ago haven't faded in Mrs. Abu Adrini's mind. Her wide brown eyes recorded them forever. "The men had southern accents," she recalls. "They had names like Elie, Michel and George." Her gaze moves across the street. "See where that truck is? That's where Israeli soldiers were parked in their jeep."
Maronite Christians from the Lebanese Phalangist Party milita and from the Israeli-sponsored forces of Lebanese Major Saad Haddad, who ruled the Israeli "security zone" along the Lebanese-Israeli border, did the actual killing.
Shatila had 7,000 residents in 1982. Today only 1,500 Palestinians live there. Most of those who escaped the massacre fled to other refugee camps in Lebanon. Many sought shelter in half-finished buildings around Beirut.
The anniversary commemoration was quiet and non-provocative. Syrian soldiers stood guard at four entrances to the camp, and checked the credentials of journalists.
The massacre, like all Israeli attempts to purge the PLO and remove the Palestinians from Lebanon during the 1982 invasion, fell short of its goals. Within a year, Palestinian fighters who had left Beirut only after President Ronald Reagan guaranteed Israel's pledge not to molest their families, began filtering back from exile. For some the quest for families left behind led straight to the mass grave under the red sand.
The Final Blow
Ironically, three years later, it was Syria, Israel's main adversary, that dealt the final blow to the Palestinians in Lebanon. Damascus armed the Shi'i Amal militia and then turned a blind eye-much as the Israelis did in 1982 to their protege Maronite militiamen-to Amal's 1985-88 war with the inhabitants of the pro-PLO refugee camps. The struggle turned the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut into mini-Sarajevos.
After the PLO was driven from the camp, Amal withdrew and pro-Syrian Palestinian factions took over. All that is left of the PLO in the camp today is under the adjacent "playground."
Until 1985, Shahira and other bereaved family members were able to make daily visits to the graves. But, after Amal gained the upper hand, the cemetery was declared off limits. For them, "it was too much a symbol," said a camp resident who survived the massacre.
First the wreaths and pictures of the martyrs disappeared. Then, one by one, so did the headstones.
"Amal turned the cemetery into a playground for Shi'i children in the neighborhood," camp residents say. "The kids have no idea of what went on here 10 years ago."
A third disaster befell the refugees when the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait resulted in the return of thousands of Palestinians, who until then had been sharing generous salaries earned in the Gulf with their families in Lebanon.
Each new disaster has been painful for Shahira, but her memories of the massacre were especially painful today.
"The militiamen ordered us to walk over the dead bodies of babies, even children still holding sandwiches," she says, as if viewing it on a video. "Just outside of where they held us, they sharpened their knives."
But more horror awaited them when they returned to their simple cement block homes. Pieces of scalp with hair clung to the walls. Family members and neighbors had been axed to death in the narrow hallways.
Shahira's former house was destroyed in the 1986 fighting. Then U.N. Relief and Works Agency funds made possible the rebuilding of a smaller version-with fewer rooms but no fewer memories.
Marilyn Raschka is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut.
