Posted on 02/14/2002 1:20:27 AM PST by duck soup
Sabra, Shatila return to haunt Sharon
Even as Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic is being tried in The Hague by a UN tribunal, a case has come up against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Belgium, reports Michael Jansen
The main factor inhibiting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from launching an all-out military campaign against the Palestinians is his own 50-year career which has been characterised by excessive use of force. This began in the mid-1940s in the Jewish underground before the proclamation of the Jewish state led, ineluctably, to the massacre at the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during his 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Because of the massacre Sharon is now obliged to prepare the way, step-by-small-step, for an offensive most Israelis believe he will wage as soon as the Palestinians provide him with a big enough pretext. One analyst, Baruch Kimmerling, writing in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on July 12th, says Sharon is "building, with superb tactics and admirable patience, a domestic and international consensus for a war ..of his choosing." In Kimmerling's view, "..all it will take to spark the third Jewish-Palestinian war (after 1948 and 1982) is one more terrorist massacre."
The Sabra-Shatila slaughter, which haunted Sharon's political career for the past 19 years, re-emerged as a key factor because some of its victims have brought legal cases against him in Brussels under a 1993 statute providing for the prosecution in Belgium of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. And a Belgian judge had begun the hearings.
An Israeli inquiry conducted in 1983 concluded that Sharon bore indirect personal responsiblity for the massacre, in which 2,800 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were either slaughtered outright or disappeared. However, the inquiry commission had no mandate to either recommend or initiate prosecution.
The two complaints lodged with judges in Belgium refute the Israeli commission's findings and show that Sharon was directly and personally responsible for the massacre. The case against Sharon, Israel's defense minister in 1982, is compelling. He bears responsibility on two levels, the strategic and the tactical. He not only mounted the invasion but also took charge of the "cleansing" operation in the camps. He was prime mover, planner and executor.
If Sharon had not taken up the post of defence minister, it is unlikely that Israel would have invaded Lebanon in 1982. In July, 1981 U.S.-brokered ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel took effect along the Israel-Lebanon border. Sharon only had to abide by the ceasefire to secure "peace" from Palestinian attack for northern Israel.
Nevertheless, in July, 1981, as the ceasefire was being negotiated, Sharon ordered the army staff to prepare plans for the invasion of Lebanon. The overall plan, code named "Operation Oranim" and completed in January, 1982, involved two scenarios. The first, "Little Pines", was for an Israeli thrust 40-km deep into Lebanon to "clear" the south of PLO "terrorists". The second, "Big Pines", was for a push all the way to Beirut.
In May Sharon secured cabinet approval for "Little Pines". On June 4, an anti-PLO faction attempted to kill the Israeli ambassador in London, providing the pretext Sharon sought to launch the operation which he called "Peace for Galilee". On June 6, Sharon sent tanks and troops across the border to implement "Big Pines" which had been given the highly significant code name of "Operation Snowball".
For many months, Sharon had planned to use Israel's ally, the viciously anti-Palestinian Maronite Christian Phalange militia to mop up West Beirut. Five hundred militiamen had trained in Israel which had provided the force with $100 million in financial assistance as well as uniforms and arms. The code name for the operation to capture West Beirut was "Moah Barzel", "Iron Brain". Sharon told the U.S. of his intentions on June 9, three-and- a-half months before his troops occupied West Beirut in violation of the U.S.-sponsored agreement for the withdrawal of PLO forces.
In preparation for the assault, Sharon met the Phalange chief, Bashir Gemayel (who, on August 23, had been elected Lebanon's president by a parliament prodded by Israel's bayonets) to discuss the details of the "cleansing" of the Sabra and Shatila camps. Sharon claimed "2,000 terrorists" had stayed on in the camps, breaching the PLO's commitment to pull all of its men out of Beirut.Discussions between Sharon and the Phalange continued on the June13. On the June 14 Gemayel was assassinated. On June 15, Sharon, who was in Beirut directing operations, sent his troops into the western sector of the city and finalised the arrangement for the entry by the Phalangists into Sabra and Shatila. The Israeli army "softened up the camps" with bombardment on the June 15 and 16. At 5 pm on June 17, 150 Phalangists moved through Israeli troops encircling the camps and began 40 hours of torture, rape and slaughter. (If there had been "2,000 terrorists", as Sharon claimed, he would never have sent in only 150 Phalangists). On the nights of the June 17 and 18 the Israelis illuminated the area with flares. During the massacre Israeli troops prevented camp-dwellers from fleeing, provided the Phalangists with bulldozers to bury the evidence of their crimes and allowed militiamen to take 1,000 people away in lorries. Most were never seen again.
Sharon and the Israeli army command knew exactly what was taking place in the camps. The defense ministry in Tel Aviv was informed at 11.10 pm on the June16 that 300 people had been killed. Ron Ben Yishai, an Israeli journalist told the BBC team investigating the massacre for the weekly Panorama programme (broadcast on June 17, 23 and 24, 2001) that he rang Sharon at 11.30 pm on the June 17, 1982 and asked him about the massacre. But it was stopped only after the U.S. intervened on the morning of the June 18, 1982.Sharon attempted to exculpate himself by claiming that he could not predict what the Phalange would do. In the Panorama programme Morris Draper, US special envoy, revealed that in the crucial days before Israel's capture of Beirut the US had warned Sharon that Washington could not "tolerate" the deployment of the Phalange force "because it would be a massacre." Draper was right.
In 1976 the Phalange massacred 1,500 Lebanese Muslims at the Qarantina and Maslakh quarters in East Beirut and hundreds of Palestinians at the Tel Zaatar refugee camp.
Sharon also argued that the Phalangists rampaged to avenge their chief. But 10 days after the killing in the camps ceased, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that Israeli intelligence had concluded the massacre "was not the result of an explosion of (Phalangist) anger and a desire for vengeance (for the killing of Gemayel).. as claimed by the Israeli authorities".
The real objective, Haaretz continued, was the "expulsion of the whole Palestinian population of Lebanon, beginning with Beirut. (The aim was) to create panic, to provoke an exodus, en masse, of Palestinians towards Syria and to convince all Palestinians in Lebanon that they were no longer safe in that country."
Jonathan Frankel, an associate professor at the Hebrew University, wrote in the Jerusalem Post on June 27, nearly three months BEFORE the massacre: "Ariel Sharon ... has never sought to keep secret his grand strategy... Lebanon should be cleared of foreign (PLO and Syrian) forces and re-established as a (pro-Israel) Christian-dominated state. The PLO should be effectively destroyed; the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza) annexed to Israel; the Arab population there granted a highly limited form of internal autonomy; and Jewish settlements vastly expanded. Finally, the Palestinians should be encouraged to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom and convert Jordan into their own national state" which could serve as a refuge for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians pushed across the frontier by Israel.
Experts interviewed by Panorama said Sharon should be indicted. South African Justice Richard Goldstone, who served on the international war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, stated, "..justice requires that people should be brought to book" for war crimes committed while they exercise "command responsibility", as did Sharon. Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University, elaborated: "Sharon's specific command responsibility arises from the fact that it was he (who) gave the directions and orders" which led to the massacre.
The indictment of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes should serve as a precedent for others, including Sharon. As Judge Goldstone observed, ".. people, regardless who they are, (if they) are shown by an investigation to have been in breach of the law, then clearly criminal prosecution should follow."
but seriosly, that whole "war crimes trib." looks like a load of bollocks. Maybe Sharon should be tried, if he's inocent he's inocent, if he's guilty then well he's guilty. Besides he'll get a fair trial, unlike Milosevich.
Why can't they try all war criminals, such as those from Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, etc.... ? I mean just because there is a possibility that Americans may be tried doesn't make it a bad idea. Let the courts decide so to speak.
Kangaroo court with no ability to force Sharon to appear. Next these whiney malcontents will try and go after Bush I suppose...
THE HAGUE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The legal adviser to Belgium's foreign ministry said on Thursday he believed a war crimes lawsuit filed in Brussels against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would be dropped following the World Court's ruling that all serving ministers should be protected from prosecution.
"The Sharon case, in my opinion, is closed," legal adviser Jan Devadder told Reuters after the ruling by the U.N.'s highest judicial body.
The lawsuit against Sharon on genocide and war crimes charges has been delayed while a Brussels appeals court decides if Belgium has the right to prosecute the Israeli leader.
"They will have to take into account today's judgment. The judgment is clear: immunity for all ministers for all crimes while they are still in office."
Devadder added that it was no mistake that the Brussels ruling on Sharon was not scheduled to be released until after the World Court had given its ruling in the case of a Belgian arrest warrant issued for a former Congolese minister.
11:32 02-14-02
But that's today, Duck Soup gets his news/current event articles from last year. Post your next September.
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