Adonis Diaries

Massacres in Sabra and Chatila Palestinian camps in Lebanon (June 11, 2009)

For two days and three nights, genocide was perpetrated in September 16, 1982.  Over 2,000 Palestinian civilians were massacred in the camps of Sabra and Chatila on the outskirt of Beirut. The Israeli Army had cordoned off the camps, provided logistics for the invaders, lighted the “field of operations”, and excavated mass graves. 

Israel Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was there, supervising the genocide activities.  The head of intelligence branch of the Lebanese Forces militia, Elie Hobeika, was witnessed over a hill overhanging the camps observing the scene through binoculars. 

The Palestinian resistance fighters had vacated Lebanon a month ago and multinational forces, headed by the USA, were supposed to guarantee the safety and security of the Palestinian civilians in the various camps around Beirut.   

In July 2001, Elie Hubeika invited the news media for an announcement. He divulged that Israel tried not to indict Ariel Sharon, the real culprit of the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatilla in 1982, by shifting the blame to him.  Elie Hobeika offered to witness in front of the Belgium court that was prosecuting claims against Sharon by the families of the victims in the camps.  

 Hobeika insisted that he has evidences to prove his innocence and information that are contrary to what the official Israeli Kahana Commission presented.  Hobeika said “I am one of the wrongly accused in this case; I was set up and will present all the evidences that the Belgium court demands of me.”  said to a friend: “This is a big and dangerous game.  I was waiting for such an opportunity to tell the whole truth for a lie that lasted 19 years. I can no longer sustain the burden of suspicion in the eyes of my family and son.”

            The Belgium head delegation, Roger Dubee, met with Hobeika in Lebanon and recorded the evidences and then promised to fly to Belgium once the court is ready for hearings on the massacres case.

A roadside bomb exploded in the convoy of Hobeika on January 24, 2002, 150 meters from his home.  Hobeika had once told his friend: “The worst section when you are targeted is the stretch close to your house”.  The area was top security because the presidential Palace, the Defense Ministry, and Army headquarter were located near by. 

The investigations led nowhere, but everyone pointed the finger toward Sharon’s PM decision to eliminate Hobeika.  This assassination was to be the first in a series of frequent assassinations after Rafic Hariri’s in February 2005.

Elie Hobeika was born in 1956 in the town of Kulai3at and studied in several private Christian schools.  He studied commerce and banking and worked for a while at the Lebanon/Brazil Bank.  He joined the Phalange Party (Kataeb) in 1972.  

Hobeika always carried his favorite machine gun HK, and Bashir Gemayel gave him the nickname HK after an impossible successful mission of breaking up a blockade on trapped militias.  Beshir dispatched Hobeika in 1977 to south Lebanon.  Hobeika fought the Palestinians around Ain Ebel for 7 months under the code name “Edward” and antagonized Israeli officers.

The daughter of Beshir Gemayel, Maya, was assassinated in 1980.  Thus, Beshir Gemayel assigned Hobeika the task of establishing an intelligence branch.  It was Hobeika who suggested to Bashir to open up communication lines with President Sarkis.  Hobeika wed Gina Nashati in 1981. 

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and would push foreword and enter the Capital Beirut.  Hebeika joined Bechir on a visit to Saudi Arabia in June 1982 as preparation for the succession to President Sarkis.  Beshir would be elected President on July 23, 1982 under the bayonet of the Israeli army in Beirut.

            Bashir was assassinated on September 14, 1982 before being officially consecrated President.  Elie Hobeika was with Amine Gemayel (elder brother of Basher) in Bikfaya when Saeb Salam PM called Amine to inform him of suspected activities inside the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila.  As head of the intelligence branch Hobeika had no fighting regiment under his orders to dispatch.

Hobeika was elected Deputy after the civil war in 1992 and then in 1996; he was minister of the Lebanese refugees and then minister of Water and Electricity.

 After the assassination of Elie Hobeika, the Belgium court closed the file; as if Hobeika was the only witness to one of the ugliest genocides in this last quarter of this century.  That proves the masquerade of the Western courts when the victims are Palestinians or Arabs.  The families of the over 2,000 civilian victims in the camps of Sabra and Chatila want justice, retribution, and compensation. 

I demand from the Belgium Justice to explain what happened to the case of the camps.  It is a shame that the western Nations don’t take seriously the successive genocides that the Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have succumbed to the Zionist State. 

Lately, Gaza was eradicated after suffering an entire year of embargo on daily trade for survival.  Before that in 1996 the massacre of Qana case was dropped by the US courts. The Horror; the deafening Silence of the able “civilized” Occident.