(2 of 6)
When newsmen tried to enter the Sabra camp late Friday afternoon, they were stopped at the checkpoint by Israeli soldiers, who told them that fighting was still going on inside the camp. Reported Suro: "We could hear the burst of automatic weapons fire and the explosion of grenades. It was clearly not a firefight because the volleys of gunfire were not being returned: the guns were being fired in only one direction." Israeli soldiers rested at the edge of the camp even as the firing continued. They did not appear concerned about snipers or any kind of attack from inside the camp. Obviously the Israelis knew of the blood-hatred between the Muslims and the Christians. How could they have failed to realize that, under their very noses, a massacre of Palestinian civilians was taking place?
By late Saturday, the full impact of the events in Beirut was being felt throughout the world. Israel was virtually shut down for celebrations of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The government was also preoccupied with a new outburst of anti-Jewish terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris that wounded more than 40 people. As a result, though the government promised to conduct an inquiry, official reaction was slow and confused. A military spokesman claimed that Phalangist forces had broken into the Shatila camp and started a fight, and the Israeli troops had intervened; shots were exchanged between Phalangists and Israelis, he said, and the Israelis had prevented an even worse massacre than took place. In Washington, Ronald Reagan expressed his sense of horror at the murders. Radio Moscow blamed the Israelis and their "Lebanese Christian puppets" for the massacre. Zehdi Labib Terzi, P.L.O. observer at the U.N., denounced what he called the "genocide" in West Beirut, and P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, declaring that as many as 1,400 had been slain, appealed for help—including from the Soviet Union—in protecting the lives of Palestinians in Lebanon. The U.S., France and Italy, the three nations that had contributed troops to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon last month, called on the UN. to dispatch observer teams to the "place of suffering and human loss."
The event that precipitated the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps had occurred scarcely 72 hours earlier. At exactly 4:08 last Tuesday afternoon, an explosion in the heart of East Beirut shook buildings for blocks around. An instant later, a huge cloud of dust and smoke began to rise above a three-story structure whose ganglia lay exposed and bare. In the street outside, a Christian Phalangist member of the Lebanese parliament raised his hand to his mouth and cried "Ya Allah![My God!] That's the Kata'eb!"
He was referring to the headquarters of Gemayel's Christian Phalange Party. The explosion had smashed cars and scattered parts of bodies through the streets Near by was the head, shoulder and arm of a person who had been blown apart. Sirens screaming, the cars of Gemayel's Lebanese Forces began screeching to a halt in front of the building. Suddenly a Phalangist official struck himself on the face in dismay and frustration and shouted: "Bashir is inside!"