By Franklin Lamb
February 20, 2012
“My friends and I like Iran. Maybe they will ask their friends in Lebanon to help baba (daddy) to be allowed to work and our family allowed owning a home outside the camps.”
These
words come from Hanadi, a precocious youngster at Shatila Camp’s Shabiba center
on learning last week from her teacher that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warmly welcomed Palestinian leaders to Tehran
during the 33rd anniversary celebrations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and
that both committed Iran to a “religious and moral duty to alleviate the
effects on Palestinian refugees of the Nakba’s ethnic cleansing.”
See: THE CHILDREN OF SHATILA
See: THE CHILDREN OF SHATILA
LEBANON ~ A LETTER TO JANET ABOUT SABRA-SHATILLA
Around noon on Tuesday September 14, 1982, the day before Israel gave the green light for the launch of the three day Sabra-Shatila Massacre, two white vans pulled into Rue Sabra, diagonal from Akka Palestinian Hospital (PCRS), the main Shatila camp road.
ED: Can you possibly IMAGINE the filth of the mindset of men who could conduct such a survey? Certainly in comparison the broken sewers of Shatila would be like the flowers of spring!
Mrs. Halabi, a
Palestinian teacher thought the four foreigners who exited the vehicles near
the current Martyrs cemetery, were from a European NGO because they
carried detailed maps of Shatila camp and she guessed that they might be
assessing camp needs for an infrastructure project.
“Can you show us all the
camp shelters?” she recalls one of the heavily accented men asking.
“Yes of course,”
Mrs.Halabi replied and as the men followed her and took notes and photos, she
explained that the shelters were too small to be of much use during
“bombardments.”
“We understand”, said the
apparent group leader, the only one their Palestinian guide recalls speaking
during their visit.
He then asked, “Why does
this place smell so foul? “
Embarrassed by the
question, Mrs. Halabi explained that the sewers in Palestinian camps,
especially Shatila and nearby Burj al Barajneh are always in need of repair.”
We now know that the
“European NGO delegation’ were in reality two Israeli intelligence agents
accompanied by two Phalange intelligence operatives including their chief, Elie
Hobeika. They arrived at Shatila camp for the purpose of identifying shelters
where Palestinians would likely try to hide during the coming days.
And they succeeded.
It was to the 11 shelters
inside and on the edge of Shatila camp that the first arriving Kataeb
(Phalanges) militiamen found their way through unfamiliar alleys and began their
46 hours of non-stop slaughter. With very few exceptions all of the hundreds of
refugees who huddled into the identified shelters were among the first to be
massacred.
The Mossad organized
group was not the only ones to complain about the sewer gases from Shatila.
For weeks the Israeli
troops sharing with Hobeika’s troops the HQ west of the camp at the Kuwaiti
Embassy also complained to journalists that when the wind came off the
mountains to the east and swept through the camp toward the sea behind them
that they “could actually smell the Palestinian terrorists.”
30 years since the
massacre at Sabra-Shatila, the camp sewer problem persists. When the wind blows
eastward from the sea across Shatila camp, the Ghouberi Municipality offices
located where the former Algerian Embassy stood in 1982 can smell the Shatila
camp sewers just as the Israelis did.
During the Sabra-Shatila
massacre, the then Algerian Embassy gave sanctuary to refugees lucky enough to
flee to the diplomatic compound which is about 50 meters from the eastern edge
of Shatila camp. To do so, the survivors had to dodge five Israeli tanks
positioned to block camp residents inside Shatila. Those who were caught were
forced by Israel soldiers back into the death camp.
And those who today work
to the east of Shatila in the Ghouberi Municipality offices and live nearby are
not alone. If the wind happens to blow from north to south across Shatila
camp and the Bir Hassan neighborhood it is the Iranian Embassy that receives
the wafting foul air.
While the overwhelmed and
broken camp sewers, lack of electricity, inadequate clean water, no heat in
winter, no AC in summer, absence of sun light and fresh air, intense
over-crowding-sometimes eight persons to a room, inadequate nutrition and
health care, sky-rocketing respiratory disease, high dropout rates, increased
drug usage, are among the seemingly endless problems in the 12 Palestinian
refugee camps in Lebanon and impact every life, every day, recent words of
solidarity from Iran are much appreciated.
According to Iran’s
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic endorses the creation of a
Palestinian state, regarding Israel as Palestine under occupation by the
“Zionist regime”. Iran rejects a two state solution and considers that
Palestine is indivisible and inseparable, probably reflecting a majority
opinion today as support for Zionist Israel plummets globally.
“Iran does not expect
anything except endurance from Palestine’s resistance,” Khamenei was quoted as
saying.
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who had a very successful visit to Lebanon, last year, repeated
his call for a free referendum for the entire Palestinian population, including
Arab citizens of Israel, to determine the type of government in the future Palestinian
state, while reiterating that establishment of a Palestinian state alongside
Israel would “never mean an endorsement of the Israeli occupation”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister
Ali Akbar Salehi told visiting Palestinians last week of “the need for
Palestinian adherence to the basic principles of resistance as the key
ingredient for their victory against Israel,” according to the official Iranian
PRESS TV news agency.
.
PLO-IRANIAN
RELATIONS
Before the Iranian
revolution, there was no Palestinian embassy in Iran. The Shah was much more
interested in maintaining good relations with Israel and the United States,
than in the Palestinians or in the Arab-Israeli peace process. The Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) developed close ties with the Iranian opposition,
training Iranian dissidents at PLO camps in Lebanon
The PLO backed the 1979
revolution, and several days after the revolution, PLO chief Yasser Arafat led
a Palestinian delegation to Iran. The Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan
hosted an official welcome ceremony for Arafat, where the keys to the former
Israeli embassy were symbolically handed over to the PLO.
However, the leader of
the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini while supporting the Palestinian
cause did not warm much to Arafat. During an intense two-hour meeting on
Feb. 18, 1979, the ayatollah criticized the PLO for what he considered its
limited nationalist and pan-Arab agenda. He urged Arafat to model the PLO on
the principles of the Islamic revolution. While Arafat was an observant Muslim,
he told aides why he rejected some of the ideas of Khomeini. Arafat and
Khomeini never met again.
As with most countries in
the region, PLO-Iranian relations fluctuated, sometimes dramatically.
They deteriorated fast when Arafat supported Iraq during the 1980-1988
Iran-Iraq war and again when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Iran condemned Arafat
in 1988, after he recognized Israel, renounced terrorism, and called for peace
talks with Israel. In 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named Arafat a “traitor and
an idiot” and while the PLO maintained diplomatic relations with Tehran, Iran
did not aid the PLO again until 2000.
Figuratively speaking,
will Iran help fix the sewers in Lebanon’s camps and will the Iranian
leadership ask their close Lebanese friends to enact the right to work and
repeal the 2001 law that outlaws home ownership for Palestinians in
Lebanon?
Quite frankly, the
absence of these very basic human rights in Lebanon negatively affects
Palestinian lives day after day and not the goal of liberating Al Aqsa, however
essential that is to achieve.
NO
RIGHT TO WORK OR HOME OWNERSHIP PLEASE, THEY’RE PALESTINIANS!
“Miss International”,
Zeinab al Hajj, born and raised in Shatila camp, regularly explains to visitors
from Iran:
“If we are allowed to work and own a home our capacity to engage in the liberation of Palestine will grow. As part of an economic middle class we could do more than struggling to put bread on our table for our children. We will have the energy and more time to resist the Zionist occupation of our country. Currently we are so forlorn ~ who among us has the energy to do more than just try to survive, not really live mind you, but try to survive and barely keep our families together.”
A bit more than words of
solidarity are needed from Iranian friends of Palestine to help them escape the
sewers in which they exist not far from where their Muslim sisters and brothers
and all foreigners in Lebanon enjoy full civil rights.
.
During this 33rd Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the 30th anniversary of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila, for the Iranian government to give solid achievement to its words and to facilitate the right to work and to own a home for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would require Tehran, Beirut, and political forces in Lebanon, close ranks and push for a once-and-for-all solution to the refugees in Lebanon.
Parliament should meet
its Lebanese constitutionally mandated and internationally required obligation
to immediately grant the basic human right of work and home ownership to its
quarter million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon until they are able to return
to their own country, Palestine.
He is the author of The
Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against
Civilians in Lebanon. Dr. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East
Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the
Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut Mobile: +961-70-497-804
Office: +961-01-352-127
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut Mobile: +961-70-497-804
Office: +961-01-352-127
No comments:
Post a Comment
If your comment is not posted, it was deemed offensive.