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LONDON: The Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 was one of the most significant milestones in the turbulent modern political history of Lebanon. 

Members of a Lebanese Christian, right-wing militia entered the southern Beirut neighborhood of Sabra, and the nearby Shatila camp for Palestinian refugees, and murdered hundreds of people. Some sources suggest more than 3,000 died, mostly civilian Palestinians and Muslim Lebanese. 

At the time the atrocities took place, the neighborhood, where many Palestinian leaders resided, and the camp were under the control of the Israeli occupation forces following their invasion of southern Lebanon three months earlier. 

Some sources said that from about 6 p.m. on Sept. 16 until 8 a.m. on Sept. 18, the mass murders were committed in plain sight of Israeli forces. Indeed, some even alleged that the Christian militias were “ordered” by the Israelis to “clear out” Palestine Liberation Organization fighters from Sabra and Shatila, as part of the Israeli advance into predominantly Muslim western Beirut. Later reports suggested the Israelis received reports of the atrocities but took no action to prevent or stop them. 

The massacre, which took place at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, and the reasons behind it shed light on the complex regional dimensions that surrounded the conflict. 

Sectarianism has almost always been at the core of the conflicts that have guided the changing maps and shifting power balances in Lebanon. Even before the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, of which present-day Lebanon was a part, the Mount Lebanon area experienced scattered sectarian confrontations, beginning in 1840 and culminating in 1860 with massacres that prompted a French military intervention. The Ottoman response was swift and decisive in containing the French advance, supported by joint efforts from the major European powers. 

The political outcome was the creation of the autonomous Mount Lebanon district in 1861. It was governed by a Christian Ottoman official, the appointment of whom was ratified by the European powers. 

But, following the defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference of 1920 annexed several areas to Mount Lebanon, including Beirut, and placed the new, expanded Lebanon under a French Mandate. 

In this new Lebanon, the Christian-majority population of Mount Lebanon was hugely diluted as a result of the annexation of major Sunni and Shiite cities and districts. However, Christians felt the French Mandate would be enough to ensure they continued to dominate the political scene. This assumption proved to be wrong, however, especially after Lebanon achieved independence in 1943. 

By then, the three Muslim sects (Sunnis, Shiites and Druze) collectively had become, by many estimates, the clear majority. Furthermore, a tide of Arab nationalism began to rise as a result of the Palestinian Nakba, or “catastrophe,” in 1948, which rapidly radicalized Arab politics. The resultant Palestinian refugee problem fueled grievances in host countries such as Lebanon and Jordan. 

The process of radicalization was further accelerated by the Arab defeat in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which gave rise, as well as enormous credibility, to the Palestinian resistance movement (the “fedayeen”). 

In the fall of 1970, following battles between the fedayeen and the Jordanian army, Palestinian resistance movements relocated their headquarters from Amman to Beirut. 

Lebanese Muslims, Arab nationalists and leftist leaderships stood with the Palestinians and made common cause with them. On the other side, the Christian political elite and wider Christian masses in Lebanon grew apprehensive that this emerging alliance would pose a deadly threat to their dominant position in the country and, subsequently, to its regime, identity and sovereignty. 

I lived through those days and remember them well. In 1973, the Christian-led Lebanese army attempted to contain the power of the fedayeen in the refugee camps, but the Muslim-leftist uproar against the actions of the military set the scene for an imminent civil war. Soon enough, Christian militias were being openly armed and trained by army officers, while leftist and Arabist militias similarly secured arms and training through the Palestinians and some Arab regimes. 

The war erupted in 1975 and continued, through several phases, until 1990. The Israeli invasion in June 1982 was intended to finish off the Palestinian military and political infrastructure, and establish a “friendly” regime in Beirut. Israel attempted to achieve this by using military might to force Palestinian resistance movements out of Lebanon, and then handing the Lebanese presidency to Bachir Gemayel, leader of the Lebanese Forces, the most powerful Christian militia, in August 1982. 

However, Gemayel was assassinated on Sept. 14, 1982, before he could even take the oath of office. His assassination, in a massive explosion in Beirut, shocked Christians and enraged their militias, which retaliated by attacking Sabra and Shatila just two days later. 

By this time, the Arab world was weak and deeply divided following Egypt’s recognition of Israel in the Camp David Accords of 1979, which resulted in the suspension of the country’s Arab League membership. 

The Israelis were therefore able to collude in the Sabra and Shatila massacre without fear of any substantial Arab retaliation. In fact, it was the wider global furor following the massacre that would lead to the establishment of a commission of inquiry chaired by Sean MacBride, an assistant to the UN secretary-general and president of the UN General Assembly at the time. 

The commission’s 1983 report concluded that Israel, as the occupying power, bore responsibility for the violence, and that the massacre constituted a form of genocide. 

The shocked reaction to the massacre was strong even in Israel, where authorities established their own Kahan Commission to investigate the incident. Its report, also published in 1983, found that despite being aware a massacre was taking place, the Israeli military failed to take any serious steps to stop it. 

The commission said that Israel was indirectly responsible “for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge,” and that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore personal responsibility, forcing him to resign. 

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat.