352. Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon (Part 7)

22:14Anita:Okay, but there are also Palestinian civilians who have no choice. They've been shuttled around. They've just landed here. We're talking again of innocent men, women and children who are in camps. Now, these camps, can we describe them first of all? Because we're not talking about sort of built up edifices. We're talking about full on shanty towns. The kind of things that if you go to even Mumbai now, you'll see behind some of the five star hotels. These are places where people are just getting by, right? Absolutely. 400 ,000 Palestinian refugees, amongst them civilians and a faction of militants, 15 ,000 militants, I think, if my math is correct.

22:52So a majority of civilians are living in what used to be initially just camps with literal tents and whatever was available in 1948.

23:03William:Like in Gaza. Yeah. And then 1967. And then slowly, slowly, they became shanty towns with a little bit of brick and mortar and building little alleyways, etc. Corrugated roofs, whatever you can get. Women and children live there in dismal conditions because Lebanon also doesn't want them. The reality is that there may have been a lot of sympathy, but there's also a lot of hypocrisy. And the Lebanon, the Lebanese state did not want them. They're not allowed to build up real houses. They're not allowed to bring in construction material. They're not allowed to work. They're not allowed to have jobs.

23:39They're not allowed to have residency permits.

23:41William:Certainly not citizenship. And certainly not citizenship. So what makes me really upset, I don't know if it's on behalf of Palestinians, you know, I'm Lebanese. But what makes me upset, there's a lot of talk about the Palestinian cause. But actually, at the end of the day, there's very little really that is done to help the Palestinians in a way that can really advance at least their civil rights. We should say that the Palestinians in Lebanon are the ones from the north of the country. Others are driven westwards into Jordan and into Syria. Others are driven eastwards into the West Bank of Jordan.

24:18William:And the ones to the south, from what had been the south of Palestine, have ended up in Gaza. And they're the ones being bombed now. in Gaza. And some, of course, also ended up in the West Bank itself. Exactly. I myself sort of at first struggled to understand why there were refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. But obviously, this is somewhere they came from within Israel. So these tent cities then turn into shanty towns. They're all over Lebanon. Yeah, they're in the north, they're near Tripoli, they're in the eastern districts of Beirut in Christian areas, they're in the southern suburbs of Beirut, they're in southern Lebanon, they're everywhere.

24:51where the Palestinian organization, liberation organization, headed by Yasser Arafat at the time, builds a state within a state. They have schools, they have TV stations, they have newspapers, they have businesses. It's a multi-million dollar enterprise, actually. And it brings also a lot of money into West Beirut and Lebanon itself. So it is part of the intellectual life of West Beirut, of the American University of Beirut, the cafes, the diversity of life and cultural and political discourse that is really still, even in the middle of a civil war, only possible in Lebanon.

25:31Anita:But we're going to take a break soon. But in summary, you've described these thriving hubs of Palestinian life, albeit in shantytowns. And by the way, some of them, with the grandchildren of those who came over and settled in 1948. I mean, these are people with roots now for two generations. But these are specifically bombed because it is argued that, you know, of these 400 ,000, what was the number you gave? 15 ,000. 15 ,000 are fighters, are Palestinian fighters. We're going to take a break. Join us after the break where we talk about what kind of toll this kind of targeted campaign has, not just on the Palestinians, but on the Lebanese too, who are living cheek by jowl with these people.

26:16William:We are now in the middle of the Israeli siege of West Beirut. And it is a siege that contains many horrors. There are stories I remember reading at the time of phosphorus shells being used on natal hospitals and these lines of little coffins being brought out for burials and the phosphorus then reigniting during the funeral. There were these sort of horror stories all over the papers at the time. Tell us, Kim, your memories, because you were actually there. William, the siege of Beirut was just an atrocious moment in Lebanon's history, and frankly, in Israel's history and American history in the Middle East, because it is a siege that is the birthplace of, as I said, a lot of impunity on all sides.

27:00It is a siege in which, and an invasion generally, in which thousands are killed. As Anita said, Palestinians, but also Lebanese, 17 ,000 total. It is where Israel starts using saturation bombings, as they call them. You know, thousands and thousands of shells landing on Beirut in one night, 11 hours continuous in the hope of a capitulation, right? So that pattern of trying to bomb into capitulation, which the Israelis have somehow gotten from World War II and the the capitulation of Nazi Germany and Japan, and which lives on in people's memory of how you can bring a war to an end. But this is not a state you're fighting.

27:47You're fighting a guerrilla faction in Lebanon, the first time that Israel engages in war with a guerrilla faction rather than a traditional army. So that's important to note as well. And the images on television are just, as you say, atrocious to the extent that Nancy Reagan, First Lady and wife of President Ronald Reagan, who was at the White House at the time, and some of President Reagan's advisors are just appalled. And they press Ronald Reagan to call Menachem Begin and to say, enough, enough. This has been going on now for 30, 40 days, and it's enough. And Ronald Reagan calls Begin and he says, Mr.

28:26Prime Minister, I have a Holocaust on my screen. And that does not go down well with Begin, who is and his family a survivor of the Holocaust. And he gets very, very angry. But there is then a ceasefire declared in August, and it is at the beginning of the negotiations for the PLO's exit and Yasser Arafat's exit from Lebanon. Because Yasser Arafat, with all his shortcomings and all the fury and sympathy he elicited in Lebanon, had the, I would say, foresight or decency to listen to even some of his Lebanese allies who said, we can't take this anymore and we need to save Lebanon. So he agrees on the exit and the negotiations around that are very complicated.

29:17Anita:So let's talk about those complex negotiations because the one man who's chosen, you know, as the Reagan pressure, you know, if it comes right from the top, the pressure is huge to sort this out or to have some kind of exit strategy or release of a valve is this American envoy, Philip Habib, who is actually of Lebanese extraction, Lebanese Mennonite Christian, served during World War II, joined the Foreign Service in 1949, was a key advisor in Vietnam. He's got the pedigree and he's got the chops to do this. A Brooklyn-born and also a bulldozer. So how does Habib go about this and what does he accomplish?

29:50So it's quite complicated to negotiate this exit because the Israelis are adamant that Americans and Palestinians will not sit in the same room, that there can be no direct contact between the Palestinians and the Americans. So all of the back channels that I described in the past are still secret. And during the middle of a war, when you're trying to negotiate something, it really helps to be face to face with the people you're trying to negotiate this with. There was a time when Ambassador Dillon could just call a number and get a Palestinian official on the other line, including sometimes Arafat himself, something that the Israelis, I'm sure, found out about and were furious about as well.

30:31But in this particular situation, they did not want the Americans and the Palestinians to sit in the same room. And actually, practically, it wasn't possible because by then the Americans had vacated their embassy in West Beirut. They were sitting all working in the residence of the American ambassador outside of Beirut, overlooking the city. It was too dangerous to go in and out of a city that was being bombed by the Israelis. The American officials in Beirut were sending signals back to Washington to say, you know, you've got to stop this. Ambassador Dillon himself told me about how he was trying to plead again with his capital.

31:05American-made bombs are killing Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. This has got to stop. So the negotiations happen indirectly via Lebanese messengers who go into West Beirut, relay the American proposal, bring back the Palestinian proposal. And there is an agreement that the Palestinians will leave Lebanon. They will leave their weapons behind. They can take a few light arms. There is a lot of talk about bringing on their, you know, Jeeps or APC or whatever they had at the time. That's a no. They want to bring their families. And there is a real debate about leaving behind civilians. But if you bring the Palestinian militants and their families, you're talking about 100 ,000 people instead of 15 ,000 or 30 ,000?

31:48Who is going to take in that number of Palestinians? So a decision is made in the end that only the militants will leave and the families will stay behind. And there are American guarantees for the safety of these civilians.

32:02William:Arafat is at this moment in a basement under siege. He is in several basements. He moves around because he knows he's targeted and the Israelis try to kill him several times. So he is on the run, but he is, yes, often, I guess, in a basement, but also, you know, possibly just driving around in an unmarked car because it wasn't as easy to track people at the time as now with mobile phones. And they are definitely trying to kill him. And the Americans are very concerned that as this evacuation might get underway, the Israelis might target whoever is getting on that ship. So the Americans want to make sure that the Marines, which they've decided to send in a multinational force, the French, the Italian, the British, the Americans are going to send a multinational force to Lebanon ahead of this evacuation to guarantee the safety of all those who are leaving because they want to make sure nothing goes wrong.

32:58The Israelis are fighting that. They don't want the Americans to deploy too soon either. They send men up north to make sure that the Americans aren't going to come in from the port of Junya. You can really see some of the tension in these negotiations about the Palestinian departure from Beirut. And it is a moment of, you know, defeat for Yasir Arafat. They've lost their base. For many of his men, they've lost the only home they've known. They're leaving behind their families.

33:29William:They've already left Palestine. They've then left Jordan. Now they've been kicked out of Lebanon. And they're going into exile to Tunis, which has no border with Israel. And Israel thinks that that will be the end of, you know, the PLO and political ambitions and militant ambitions. That is not how that plays out. But importantly, you know, in Lebanon, there are two different feelings unfolding here. One is disappointment that, you know, Israel was not defeated and that it is Arafat who has to leave. But at the same time, Israel is not victorious either because the Palestinians and Arafat are still alive.

34:11So they can declare some kind of victory. You know, Beirut, in the words of some of Arafat's allies, stood up to the Israeli military ambition and was not finished off. And there is a famous scene of Walid Jumlat, one of the Druze chieftains and warlords at the time, and Nabi Hibiri, leader of the Amal Shia militia, today speaker of the House, sitting with Yasir Arafat as he's about to depart. And, you know, Wali Jumla talks about how, you know, there is no Arab honor anymore. And Yasir Arafat is driven to the Beirut port, where the Marines are deployed to secure this evacuation. And he's driven by the Lebanese Prime Minister, Shafiq Ozzan, in his own armoured Mercedes.

34:56And the slightly sort of tongue-in-cheek description of that moment is that Shafiq Ozzan wanted to make sure that Arafat was going to get on that boat, that this was it. The other moment, the other feeling there in Lebanon is that now that the Palestinian militancy, the guerrilla fighters are gone, that this aspect of the Lebanese war, which was really the trigger for it, is over in a way, that perhaps the war in Lebanon is now over as well.

35:28William:We should say that an important part of this departure agreement was that the multinational force, including the American Marines, were going to protect the Palestinians after the fighters on. This was the crucial sort of pro quo. They would leave only if they were promised this security. Absolutely. This is a crucial point because it goes to America's failed promises. The Marines deploy and they're supposed to stay on for X number of weeks after the departure of the militants. Bashir Jmeil has by now been elected president. He's president-elect. He's not been inaugurated yet. And there are mixed feelings in Lebanon.

36:07The war is over. Eight years of war have come to an end. The Palestinians are leaving. It's a shameful moment. The left has failed. There's a president of Lebanon that is allied with Israel. But even in West Beirut, where there was so much sympathy for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian intellectuals, not all Palestinians, by the way, it's important to mention, Anita, lived in the camps. They were also well-to-do intellectuals and officials living very much part of cosmopolitan life in West Beirut. So it's this mixed feelings of the war is over. There's a bit of relief. There's shame. There's hope for the future.

36:45The Americans are there. The French are there. They're overseeing this moment of evacuation. There's a sense that there could be a new beginning for Lebanon and we'll bite our tongue and we'll accept this new president. But something goes wrong. But nobody notices what it is, it is that Caspar Weinberger, the defense secretary, orders the Marines to leave before the agreed departure day. And they leave very quickly, much quicker than Philippe Habib wanted to, because he knew about the dangers that could unfold in Lebanon if the Marines left too soon. So part of the agreement was that they were to stay for an extra number of weeks, but they leave on the 10th of September and on the 11th, the French leave as well.

37:27And they leave civilians unprotected.

37:31Anita:Who were promised so much more. But the man who was this kind of, if you like, the sword arm of Israel, the phalangist leader who's now the president-elect, he's not long for this world either. He gets assassinated on September 14th. So tell us the circumstances of the end of Bashir Jamal. How does it happen? And how unexpected is it to the people of Lebanon? In a country with so much war and so many assassinations. Nothing is really unexpected. Just before he is assassinated towards the end of the month of August, when he is president-elect, he gets summoned to Israel by Menachem Begin, who demands a peace treaty and demands that Begin could visit Beirut.

38:14And Bashir Jumayel, in the meantime, has moved on from just his ambitions as a Christian phalangist militia leader. He wants to become president of Lebanon during the invasion. This becomes clear. And so he doesn't actually deliver for the Israelis in the way that they had hoped for, because he has these ambitions and his own people and the Americans are telling him, if you want to become president of Lebanon, you cannot go and massacre people in West Beirut, which is your city, the city over which you will have to rule and be president. He had a lot of shortcomings. He was involved in a lot of massacres, but he does step back a little bit then and he does become elected president by a majority that was present.

38:54Not everyone shows up. He gets elected by Christian and notably at the time, Shia members of parliament. The Sunnis don't really show up. And he gets summoned to Israel, to Nahariya. And he does not like how he's treated there.

39:06Anita:Well, like a whiny boy, like the whiny boy that they called him all along. Like a man who is not delivering for the people who helped him. He's no longer seen as a whiny boy, but he's not delivering for the Israelis. On the 14th of September, he's assassinated. And he is speaking at his headquarters in Christian al-Shafi 'i district of Beirut. And the bomb is placed on the second floor of that building and collapses on him. There are wild rumors. It's the Syrians, it's the Palestinians, it's the Israelis, it's other Christian factions. We will learn soon enough by the investigation that it was actually the Syrians who ordered this assassination.

39:43Because you have to remember that this is already playing out in a much wider geopolitical game where the Syrians don't want to see the Israelis victorious in Lebanon. They don't want to see the Christians become strong in Lebanon with Israel as their backer. They don't want to see an American project succeed in Lebanon. And so they want to get rid of Bashir Jemayel. And they do. And those two things, Caspar Weinberger deciding that the Marines should leave early, and Bashir Jemayel getting assassinated, lay the stage for one of the worst horrors of the Lebanese civil war, which is the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

40:19William:So exactly. We're now coming to the darkest of all the moments in this very dark story of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And the first sign that things are going wrong are when the Israelis move in towards the camps. This was breaking the agreement that had been made with the Americans. And that night, Kim, the lights are turned on. There are flares firing into there. Israeli flares are being pushed into the sky to light up the refugee camps. And there are Israelis at the gates of the refugee camps, and they let the militias in. Tell us that story. The Israelis start moving into West Beirut.

41:02So you have to remember that the southern suburbs and where the camps are is also considered to be part of West Beirut. So they start moving closer and they start positioning themselves on buildings overlooking the camps. They're also on the other side of West Beirut by the sea, by the Corniche, where the American embassy is. And when the Americans learn of that, one of the diplomats, Morris Draper, is actually in Tel Aviv and he's meeting with Begin and Sharon and he says, you promised us you wouldn't do this. You promised us that you wouldn't go into West Beirut. You have to leave now. And there's a whole back and forth that is very detailed in various accounts of how this unfolds.

41:39Bashir Jmail has been assassinated and soon enough, his brother Amin Jmail will become president. He's now the leader of the Falange party. And he is complicit in what unfolds because he is also getting phone calls from the Americans saying, your men are entering the camps, you need to get them out. We're hearing reports of terrible things unfolding in the camps. And he's like, yes, I'll get back to you. From Thursday evening until Saturday morning, there's an orgy of killing inside the camps. It is too gruesome, almost, to describe what happens. And yes, Israeli pilots are throwing flares in the air to light up the camps for the Lebanese forces armed militia leaders who are inside the camps.

42:29And just as a short aside, the Lebanese forces are this new militia created by Bashir Jumayyil as the sort of his own military faction that is slightly separate from the Falange party, but still under the same umbrella. So it's not the Falange party that is inside the camps, but the Lebanese forces, which is slightly distinct. And it's led by a man, Bashir Jumayyil's right hand, Eliyahu Baika. And they are in there, they say, as revenge. But you could also argue that it was always their plan to go in and to finish off whatever they could finish off. Well, what does that mean, though, Kim? Women and children, Anita, women and children who are all seen as just part and parcel of what is the enemy, who could be, you know, collaborating or holding weapons or whatever the excuse is, but they are women and children.

43:20Anita:I mean, there have been investigations. I mean, I've seen documentaries about this, some of the survivors talking about some of the most hideous atrocities taking place against the elderly and the young and everyone in between. And the mass graves that had to be dug for that. And the fact that nobody quite understood. And it's incredible to think today in this day and age that three days could go by or 48 hours could go by without a clear understanding of what was happening in the camps in such a sort of connected time that we live in with social media. You know, massacres still happen, of course, but you know more quickly what is unfolding.

43:58And people were not necessarily able to go in. They weren't being let in. People who were coming out, strangely enough, were not necessarily immediately reporting a massacre. They were reporting some shootings and violence, but the image was very confused. But the one alarming thing was these flares, because you don't light up the sky unless there is a battle. and it was a ceasefire. And that was the real sign that something was off for the Western diplomats in the city and the American ambassador who could see it in front of his window. I read an incredible book which collected the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who were involved in that invasion.

44:40I highly recommend it if you have the stomach for it. It is their recollection of that invasion. I'm surprised it is not more widely known. Some of them speak very candidly about how they were out there to kill the enemy and they shot whatever they would shoot at, whatever they could see. And it was great. And it was like in a film, you know, like a video game. But some became refuseniks after this moment.

45:02Anita:Some were deeply traumatized. They could not believe that this was being done under their uniform. I mean, I've read the same documents and they are absolutely appalled by what they are expected to do and what's been facilitated. And some of them went to their commanders while this was unfolding and said something is terribly wrong inside this camp. There are Lebanese Christian forces killing people, civilians. And the answer was, it's not our problem. Arabs will kill Arabs.

45:34William:And Sharon in particular was approached and didn't do anything. He was approached by the American officials and he said, yes, yes, yes. And then, you know, they were just buying time. What were the casualties in the end? How many people were killed in the Sabra and Shatila massacres? The numbers vary from 800 to 3 ,000. It's very hard to come to a definitive count because so much remains unknown about exactly how it unfolded. And again, it wasn't the first massacre of either Christians or of Palestinians or both. But it was the impunity of it and the way it unfolded and the failed promises of America for safety and the cover that Israel gave that gives Sabra and Shatila such terrible connotations of tragedy and impunity.

46:28There was an investigation into it. The Kahan Commission in Israel said that Israel had clear responsibility, even if it was not directly involved in the actions on the ground, but it had responsibility for what happened and for how it unfolded. Ariel Sharon did not want to resign. Begin did not want him to resign. In the end, the terrible compromise was that he would step down as Minister of Defense, but stayed on as Minister of State. and eventually by within a year became Minister of Trade and Industry.

47:02William:And goes on to become then Defence Minister and finally Prime Minister. Some of the commanders who had served, interestingly enough, even the one who had warned against bombing an Arab capital, they oversaw what was happening in Sabra and Shatila. They were demoted or put into early retirement. No one was really sanctioned. Some of the soldiers who wanted to testify in the Kahan Commission to say exactly what they had seen, etc., were not allowed to do so.

47:31Anita:There is a very interesting Israeli response, though, from Israeli civil society, if you like, because as the details of this massacre become known, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who take to the streets to say not in our name. Absolutely. 400 ,000 Israelis take to the streets to denounce a war that has turned into a tragedy for everyone, for Israeli soldiers, for Lebanese civilians, for Palestinian civilians. This is not what the Israelis thought they had signed up for. They were in support of the war initially. And then they realized that their country was now involved with a massacre.

48:14And that's not what they want. It's the largest peace protest in Israel ever. But it doesn't necessarily change the course of history.

48:23Anita:We are going to pause here. I won't say end it here because you're going to join us for another episode, Kim. I know you'll be speaking to Willie. And if you don't want to wait for that, just join the club at empirepoduk.com, empirepoduk.com. And you can get that straight away without waiting. Till the next time we meet though, Kim, thank you very much indeed. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durham.

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