#phalangists

In a new podcast for JWB, Jonathan Randal, author of The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and American Bunglers, marks the upcoming 30th anniversary of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by discussing the continuing legacy of those killings. The discussion is particularly timely and sobering because in Syria today, large numbers of very vulnerable and stateless Palestinian refugees once again-- like so many of the country's other minorities-- find themselves squeezed very hard between violently opposed fighting forces.

In the podcast, Jon Randal draws on the extensive research he has conducted into the diplomatic maneuverings that lay behind the Sabra and Shatila massacres to pinpoint the ways in which both Israel-- whose military forces encircled the refugee camps throughout the whole 42 hours of the massacres, and gave considerable logistic support to the Phalangist killers-- and the United States bore responsibility for what occurred there.

He pointed out in the podcast-- as he also does in the magisterial Preface he has written for the book-- that if Washington had stuck to its original plan for the U.S. military forces which had deployed to Beirut under the terms of a U.S.-brokered August ceasefire, then those forces would still have been able to provide some order and security to West Beirut for one month after the ceasefire-mandated departure of the PLO fighters and headquarters units, which had been completed on September 1. Thus, even after the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayyel on September 14, the United States would still have been able to stick to the commitment it had made to the Palestinians and Lebanese as part of the ceasefire package, that the safety and security of unarmed Palestinian civilians left in Beirut after the PLO's departure would be assured.

But, as Randal noted in both the podcast and the book, infighting in Washington and the extreme reluctance of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to have the U.S. forces stay in Lebanon for one minute longer than he considered necessary, meant that the U.S. and allied forces had all left the country before September 14. So when Gemayyel, who was also the head of the Israeli-supported Phalangist militia, was killed, the Israelis moved forward into the whole of south and West Beirut unopposed, setting the scene for the vengeance-stoked massacres that erupted two days later.

That advance by the Israeli military was also in clear contravention of the terms of the ceasefire-- but the Reagan administration took no steps to either punish Israel for this flagrant violation or to force the Israelis to pull back.

To get the rest of the story-- listen to the podcast. And of course, buy the book, which lays the whole story out in much greater detail.