UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - Mideast situation/Jerusalem/Golan/Lebanon/Genocide – GA resolution

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/

37/123.  The situation in the Middle East

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Taking note of the reports of the Secretary-General,1/

Recalling Security Council resolution 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981,

Reaffirming  its  resolutions  36/226  B  of  17  December  1981  and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling its resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, in which it defined an act of aggression, inter alia, as “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof” and provided that “no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression”,

Reaffirming the fundamental principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

Reaffirming once more the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Noting that Israel’s record and actions establish conclusively that it is not a peace-loving Member State and that it has not carried out its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations,

Noting further that Israel has refused, in violation of Article 25 of the Charter, to accept and carry out the numerous relevant decisions of the Security Council, the latest of which was resolution 497 (1981), thus failing to carry out its obligations under the Charter,

1.Strongly condemns Israel for its failure to comply with Security Council resolution 497 (1981) and General Assembly resolutions 36/226 B and ES-9/1;

2.Declares once more that Israel’s decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights constitutes an act of aggression under the provisions of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX);

3.Declares once more that Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and has no legal validity and/or effect whatsoever;

4.Declares all Israeli policies and practices of, or aimed at, annexation of the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, to be in violation of international law and of the relevant United Nations resolutions;

5.Determines once more that all actions taken by Israel to give effect to its decision relating to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights are illegal and invalid and shall not be recognized;

6.Reaffirms its determination that all the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 3/ and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and calls upon the parties thereto to respect and ensure respect of their obligations under these instruments in all circumstances;

7.Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and their effective annexation by Israel on 14 December 1981, following Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on that territory, constitute a continuing threat to international peace and security;

8.Strongly deplores the negative vote by a permanent member of the Security Council which prevented the Council from adopting against Israel, under Chapter VII of the Charter, the “appropriate measures” referred to in resolution 497 (1981) unanimously adopted by the Council;

9.Further deplores any political, economic, financial, military and technological support to Israel that encourages Israel to commit acts of aggression and to consolidate and perpetuate its occupation and annexation of occupied Arab territories;

10.Firmly emphasizes once more its demands that Israel, the occupying Power, rescind forthwith its decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Syrian Golan Heights, which has resulted in the effective annexation of that territory;

11.Reaffirms once more the overriding necessity of the total and unconditional withdrawal by Israel from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, which is an essential prerequisite for the establishment of a comprehensive and just peace in the Middle East;

12.Determines once more that Israel’s record and actions confirm that it is not a peace-loving Member State, that it has persistently violated the principles contained in the Charter and that it has carried out neither its obligations under the Charter nor its commitment under General Assembly resolution 273 (III) of 11 May 1949;

13.Calls once more upon all Member States to apply the following measures:

(a) To refrain from supplying Israel with any weapons and related equipment and to suspend any military assistance that Israel receives from them;

(b) To refrain from acquiring any weapons or military equipment from Israel;

(c) To suspend economic, financial and technological assistance to and co-operation with Israel;

(d) To sever diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Israel;

14.Reiterates its call to all Member States to cease forthwith, individually and collectively, all dealings with Israel in order totally to isolate it in all fields;

15.Urges non-member States to act in accordance with the provisions of the present resolution;

16.Calls upon the specialized agencies and other international organizations to conform their relations with Israel to the terms of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Recalling  the relevant  provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,4/

Recalling also the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 5/ and all other relevant international instruments concerning the right to cultural identity in all its forms,

Having learned that the Israeli army, during its occupation of Beirut, seized and took away the archives and documents of every kind concerning Palestinian history and culture, including cultural articles belonging to Palestinian institutions – in particular the Palestine Research Centre – archives, documents, manuscripts and materials such as film documents, literary works by major authors, paintings, objets d’art and works of folklore, research works and so forth, serving as a foundation for the history, culture, national awareness, unity and solidarity of the Palestinian people,

1.Condemns those acts of plundering the Palestinian cultural heritage;

2.Calls upon the Government of Israel to make full restitution through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, of all the cultural property belonging to Palestinian institutions, including the archives and documents removed from the Palestine Research Centre and arbitrarily seized by the Israeli forces.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 36/120 E of 10 December 1981, in which it determined that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which had altered or purported to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, in particular the so-called “Basic Law” on Jerusalem and the proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, were null and void and must be rescinded forthwith,

Recalling Security Council resolution 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980, in which the Council, inter alia, decided not to recognize the “Basic Law” and called upon those States that had established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City,

1.Deplores the transfer by some States of their diplomatic missions to Jerusalem in violation of Security Council resolution 478 (1980);

2.Calls upon those States to abide by the provisions of the relevant United Nations resolutions, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 95 (I) of 11 December 1946,

Recalling  also  its  resolution  96 (I)  of 11 December 1946, in which it, inter alia, affirmed that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices -whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable,

Referring to the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1948,6/

Recalling the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/

Appalled at the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps situated at Beirut,

Recognizing the universal outrage and condemnation of that massacre,

Recalling its resolution ES-7/9 of 24 September 1982,

1.Condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps;

2.Resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide.

The General Assembly,

Having heard the address by the President of the Lebanese Republic on 18 October 1982,7/

Taking note of the decision of the Government of Lebanon calling for the withdrawal from Lebanon of all non-Lebanese troops and forces which are not authorized by the Government to deploy therein,

Bearing in mind Security Council resolutions 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982 and 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982,

1.Calls for strict respect of the territorial integrity, sovereignty, unity and political independence of Lebanon and supports the efforts of the Government of Lebanon, with regional and international endorsement, to restore the exclusive authority of the Lebanese State throughout its territory up to the internationally recognized boundaries

2.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly on the implementation of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Reaffirming its resolutions 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981 and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling Security Council resolutions 425 (1978) of 19 March 1978, 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981, 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982, 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982, 511 (1982) of 18 June 1982, 512 (1982) of 19 June 1982, 513 (1982) of 4 July 1982, 515 (1982) of 29 July 1982, 516 (1982) of 1 August 1982, 517 (1982) of 4 August 1982, 518 (1982) of 12 August 1982, 519 (1982) of 17 August 1982, 520 (1982) of 17 September 1982 and 521 (1982) of 19 September 1982,

Taking note of the report of the Secretary-General of 12 October 1982,8/

Welcoming the world-wide support extended to the just cause of the Palestinian people and the other Arab countries in their struggle against Israeli aggression and occupation in order to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights, as affirmed by previous resolutions of the General Assembly relating to the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East,

Gravely concerned that the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, still remain under Israeli occupation, that the relevant resolutions of the United Nations have not been implemented and that the Palestinian people is still denied the restoration of its land and the exercise of its inalienable national rights in conformity with international law, as reaffirmed by resolutions of the United Nations,

Reaffirming the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to all the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Reiterating all relevant United Nations resolutions which emphasize that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible under the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law and that Israel must withdraw unconditionally from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,

Reaffirming further the imperative necessity of establishing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region, based on full respect for the Charter and the principles of international law,

Gravely concerned also at recent Israeli actions involving the escalation and expansion of the conflict in the region, which further violate the principles of international law and endanger international peace and security,

Welcoming the Arab peace plan adopted unanimously at the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference, held at Fez, Morocco, on 25 November 1981 and 9 September 1982,9/

Bearing in mind the address made, on 26 October 1982, by His Majesty King Hassan II of Morocco, in his capacity as President of the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference,10/

1.Condemns Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations, and demands the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all these occupied territories;

2.Reaffirms its conviction that the question of Palestine is the core of the conflict in the Middle East and that no comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region will be achieved without the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights and the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all the Palestinian and other occupied Arab territories;

3.Reaffirms further that a just and comprehensive settlement of the situation in the Middle East cannot be achieved without the participation on an equal footing of all the parties to the conflict, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian people;

4.Declares once more that peace in the Middle East is indivisible and must be based on a comprehensive, just and lasting solution of the Middle East problem, under the auspices of the United Nations, which ensures the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and which enables the Palestinian people, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to exercise its inalienable rights, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, national independence and the establishment of its independent sovereign State in Palestine, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations relevant to the question of Palestine, in particular General Assembly resolutions ES-7/2 of 29 July 1980, 36/120 A to F of 10 December 1981, 37/86 A to D of 10 December 1982 and 37/86 E of 20 December 1982;

5.Rejects all agreements and arrangements in so far as they violate the recognized rights of the Palestinian people and contradict the principles of just and comprehensive solutions to the Middle East problem to ensure the establishment of a just peace in the area;

6.Deplores Israel’s failure to comply with Security Council resolutions 476 (1980) of 30 June 1980 and 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980 and General Assembly resolutions 35/207 of 16 December 1980 and 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981, determines that Israel’s decision to annex Jerusalem and to declare it as its “capital”, as well as the measures to alter its physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and status, are null and void and demands that they be rescinded immediately, and calls upon all Member States, the specialized agencies and all other international organizations to abide by the present resolution and all other relevant resolutions, including Assembly resolutions 37/86 A to E;

7.Condemns Israel’s aggression and practices against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and outside these territories, particularly Palestinians in Lebanon, including the expropriation and annexation of territory, the establishment of settlements, assassination attempts and other terrorist, aggressive and repressive measures, which are in violation of the Charter and the principles of international law and the relevant international conventions;

8.Strongly condemns the imposition by Israel of its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, its annexationist policies and practices, the establishment of settlements, the confiscation of lands, the diversion of water resources and the imposition of Israeli citizenship on Syrian nationals, and declares that all these measures are null and void and constitute a violation of the rules and principles of international law relevant to belligerent occupation, in particular the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949;

9.Considers that the agreements on strategic co-operation between the United States of America and Israel signed on 30 November 1981 would encourage Israel to pursue its aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, would have adverse effects on efforts for the establishment of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and would threaten the security of the region;

10.Calls upon all States to put an end to the flow to Israel of any military, economic and financial aid, as well as of human resources, aimed at encouraging it to pursue its aggressive policies against the Arab countries and the Palestinian people;

11.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council periodically on the development of the situation and to submit to the General Assembly at its thirty-eighth session a comprehensive report covering the developments in the Middle East in all their aspects.

 1/ A/37/169 and Add.1-3-S/14953 and Add.1-3.

 2/ United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 75, No. 973, p. 287.

 3/ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907 (New York, Oxford University Press), 1915, p. 100.

 4/ Resolution 217 A (III).

 5/ See Manual of the General Conference, 1981 edition (Paris, UNESCO, 1981).

 6/ Resolution 260 A (III).

 7/ See A/37/PV.35.

 8/ A/37/525-S/15451.

 9/ See A/37/696-S/15510, annex.

10/ See A/37/PV.44.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - Mideast situation/Jerusalem/Golan/Lebanon/Genocide – GA resolution

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/ Publication 16/12/1982 

37/123.  The situation in the Middle East

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Taking note of the reports of the Secretary-General,1/

Recalling Security Council resolution 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981,

Reaffirming  its  resolutions  36/226  B  of  17  December  1981  and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling its resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, in which it defined an act of aggression, inter alia, as “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof” and provided that “no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression”,

Reaffirming the fundamental principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

Reaffirming once more the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Noting that Israel’s record and actions establish conclusively that it is not a peace-loving Member State and that it has not carried out its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations,

Noting further that Israel has refused, in violation of Article 25 of the Charter, to accept and carry out the numerous relevant decisions of the Security Council, the latest of which was resolution 497 (1981), thus failing to carry out its obligations under the Charter,

1.Strongly condemns Israel for its failure to comply with Security Council resolution 497 (1981) and General Assembly resolutions 36/226 B and ES-9/1;

2.Declares once more that Israel’s decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights constitutes an act of aggression under the provisions of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX);

3.Declares once more that Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and has no legal validity and/or effect whatsoever;

4.Declares all Israeli policies and practices of, or aimed at, annexation of the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, to be in violation of international law and of the relevant United Nations resolutions;

5.Determines once more that all actions taken by Israel to give effect to its decision relating to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights are illegal and invalid and shall not be recognized;

6.Reaffirms its determination that all the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 3/ and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and calls upon the parties thereto to respect and ensure respect of their obligations under these instruments in all circumstances;

7.Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and their effective annexation by Israel on 14 December 1981, following Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on that territory, constitute a continuing threat to international peace and security;

8.Strongly deplores the negative vote by a permanent member of the Security Council which prevented the Council from adopting against Israel, under Chapter VII of the Charter, the “appropriate measures” referred to in resolution 497 (1981) unanimously adopted by the Council;

9.Further deplores any political, economic, financial, military and technological support to Israel that encourages Israel to commit acts of aggression and to consolidate and perpetuate its occupation and annexation of occupied Arab territories;

10.Firmly emphasizes once more its demands that Israel, the occupying Power, rescind forthwith its decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Syrian Golan Heights, which has resulted in the effective annexation of that territory;

11.Reaffirms once more the overriding necessity of the total and unconditional withdrawal by Israel from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, which is an essential prerequisite for the establishment of a comprehensive and just peace in the Middle East;

12.Determines once more that Israel’s record and actions confirm that it is not a peace-loving Member State, that it has persistently violated the principles contained in the Charter and that it has carried out neither its obligations under the Charter nor its commitment under General Assembly resolution 273 (III) of 11 May 1949;

13.Calls once more upon all Member States to apply the following measures:

(a) To refrain from supplying Israel with any weapons and related equipment and to suspend any military assistance that Israel receives from them;

(b) To refrain from acquiring any weapons or military equipment from Israel;

(c) To suspend economic, financial and technological assistance to and co-operation with Israel;

(d) To sever diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Israel;

14.Reiterates its call to all Member States to cease forthwith, individually and collectively, all dealings with Israel in order totally to isolate it in all fields;

15.Urges non-member States to act in accordance with the provisions of the present resolution;

16.Calls upon the specialized agencies and other international organizations to conform their relations with Israel to the terms of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Recalling  the relevant  provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,4/

Recalling also the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 5/ and all other relevant international instruments concerning the right to cultural identity in all its forms,

Having learned that the Israeli army, during its occupation of Beirut, seized and took away the archives and documents of every kind concerning Palestinian history and culture, including cultural articles belonging to Palestinian institutions – in particular the Palestine Research Centre – archives, documents, manuscripts and materials such as film documents, literary works by major authors, paintings, objets d’art and works of folklore, research works and so forth, serving as a foundation for the history, culture, national awareness, unity and solidarity of the Palestinian people,

1.Condemns those acts of plundering the Palestinian cultural heritage;

2.Calls upon the Government of Israel to make full restitution through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, of all the cultural property belonging to Palestinian institutions, including the archives and documents removed from the Palestine Research Centre and arbitrarily seized by the Israeli forces.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 36/120 E of 10 December 1981, in which it determined that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which had altered or purported to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, in particular the so-called “Basic Law” on Jerusalem and the proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, were null and void and must be rescinded forthwith,

Recalling Security Council resolution 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980, in which the Council, inter alia, decided not to recognize the “Basic Law” and called upon those States that had established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City,

1.Deplores the transfer by some States of their diplomatic missions to Jerusalem in violation of Security Council resolution 478 (1980);

2.Calls upon those States to abide by the provisions of the relevant United Nations resolutions, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 95 (I) of 11 December 1946,

Recalling  also  its  resolution  96 (I)  of 11 December 1946, in which it, inter alia, affirmed that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices -whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable,

Referring to the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1948,6/

Recalling the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/

Appalled at the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps situated at Beirut,

Recognizing the universal outrage and condemnation of that massacre,

Recalling its resolution ES-7/9 of 24 September 1982,

1.Condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps;

2.Resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide.

The General Assembly,

Having heard the address by the President of the Lebanese Republic on 18 October 1982,7/

Taking note of the decision of the Government of Lebanon calling for the withdrawal from Lebanon of all non-Lebanese troops and forces which are not authorized by the Government to deploy therein,

Bearing in mind Security Council resolutions 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982 and 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982,

1.Calls for strict respect of the territorial integrity, sovereignty, unity and political independence of Lebanon and supports the efforts of the Government of Lebanon, with regional and international endorsement, to restore the exclusive authority of the Lebanese State throughout its territory up to the internationally recognized boundaries

2.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly on the implementation of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Reaffirming its resolutions 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981 and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling Security Council resolutions 425 (1978) of 19 March 1978, 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981, 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982, 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982, 511 (1982) of 18 June 1982, 512 (1982) of 19 June 1982, 513 (1982) of 4 July 1982, 515 (1982) of 29 July 1982, 516 (1982) of 1 August 1982, 517 (1982) of 4 August 1982, 518 (1982) of 12 August 1982, 519 (1982) of 17 August 1982, 520 (1982) of 17 September 1982 and 521 (1982) of 19 September 1982,

Taking note of the report of the Secretary-General of 12 October 1982,8/

Welcoming the world-wide support extended to the just cause of the Palestinian people and the other Arab countries in their struggle against Israeli aggression and occupation in order to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights, as affirmed by previous resolutions of the General Assembly relating to the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East,

Gravely concerned that the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, still remain under Israeli occupation, that the relevant resolutions of the United Nations have not been implemented and that the Palestinian people is still denied the restoration of its land and the exercise of its inalienable national rights in conformity with international law, as reaffirmed by resolutions of the United Nations,

Reaffirming the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to all the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Reiterating all relevant United Nations resolutions which emphasize that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible under the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law and that Israel must withdraw unconditionally from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,

Reaffirming further the imperative necessity of establishing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region, based on full respect for the Charter and the principles of international law,

Gravely concerned also at recent Israeli actions involving the escalation and expansion of the conflict in the region, which further violate the principles of international law and endanger international peace and security,

Welcoming the Arab peace plan adopted unanimously at the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference, held at Fez, Morocco, on 25 November 1981 and 9 September 1982,9/

Bearing in mind the address made, on 26 October 1982, by His Majesty King Hassan II of Morocco, in his capacity as President of the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference,10/

1.Condemns Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations, and demands the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all these occupied territories;

2.Reaffirms its conviction that the question of Palestine is the core of the conflict in the Middle East and that no comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region will be achieved without the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights and the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all the Palestinian and other occupied Arab territories;

3.Reaffirms further that a just and comprehensive settlement of the situation in the Middle East cannot be achieved without the participation on an equal footing of all the parties to the conflict, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian people;

4.Declares once more that peace in the Middle East is indivisible and must be based on a comprehensive, just and lasting solution of the Middle East problem, under the auspices of the United Nations, which ensures the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and which enables the Palestinian people, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to exercise its inalienable rights, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, national independence and the establishment of its independent sovereign State in Palestine, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations relevant to the question of Palestine, in particular General Assembly resolutions ES-7/2 of 29 July 1980, 36/120 A to F of 10 December 1981, 37/86 A to D of 10 December 1982 and 37/86 E of 20 December 1982;

5.Rejects all agreements and arrangements in so far as they violate the recognized rights of the Palestinian people and contradict the principles of just and comprehensive solutions to the Middle East problem to ensure the establishment of a just peace in the area;

6.Deplores Israel’s failure to comply with Security Council resolutions 476 (1980) of 30 June 1980 and 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980 and General Assembly resolutions 35/207 of 16 December 1980 and 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981, determines that Israel’s decision to annex Jerusalem and to declare it as its “capital”, as well as the measures to alter its physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and status, are null and void and demands that they be rescinded immediately, and calls upon all Member States, the specialized agencies and all other international organizations to abide by the present resolution and all other relevant resolutions, including Assembly resolutions 37/86 A to E;

7.Condemns Israel’s aggression and practices against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and outside these territories, particularly Palestinians in Lebanon, including the expropriation and annexation of territory, the establishment of settlements, assassination attempts and other terrorist, aggressive and repressive measures, which are in violation of the Charter and the principles of international law and the relevant international conventions;

8.Strongly condemns the imposition by Israel of its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, its annexationist policies and practices, the establishment of settlements, the confiscation of lands, the diversion of water resources and the imposition of Israeli citizenship on Syrian nationals, and declares that all these measures are null and void and constitute a violation of the rules and principles of international law relevant to belligerent occupation, in particular the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949;

9.Considers that the agreements on strategic co-operation between the United States of America and Israel signed on 30 November 1981 would encourage Israel to pursue its aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, would have adverse effects on efforts for the establishment of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and would threaten the security of the region;

10.Calls upon all States to put an end to the flow to Israel of any military, economic and financial aid, as well as of human resources, aimed at encouraging it to pursue its aggressive policies against the Arab countries and the Palestinian people;

11.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council periodically on the development of the situation and to submit to the General Assembly at its thirty-eighth session a comprehensive report covering the developments in the Middle East in all their aspects.

 1/ A/37/169 and Add.1-3-S/14953 and Add.1-3.

 2/ United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 75, No. 973, p. 287.

 3/ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907 (New York, Oxford University Press), 1915, p. 100.

 4/ Resolution 217 A (III).

 5/ See Manual of the General Conference, 1981 edition (Paris, UNESCO, 1981).

 6/ Resolution 260 A (III).

 7/ See A/37/PV.35.

 8/ A/37/525-S/15451.

 9/ See A/37/696-S/15510, annex.

10/ See A/37/PV.44.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/

2012sep16 NYT Opinion | A Preventable Massacre

Op-Ed Contributor By Seth Anziska, (Prof, University College London)  Opinion Sept. 16, 2012  nytimes

ON the night of Sept. 16, 1982, the Israeli military allowed a right-wing Lebanese militia to enter two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. In the ensuing three-day rampage, the militia, linked to the Maronite Christian Phalange Party, raped, killed and dismembered at least 800 civilians, while Israeli flares illuminated the camps’ narrow and darkened alleyways. Nearly all of the dead were women, children and elderly men.

Thirty years later, the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps is remembered as a notorious chapter in modern Middle Eastern history, clouding the tortured relationships among Israel, the United States, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

ISRAEL - WE DON'T TAKE RESPONSIBLITY

In 1983, an Israeli investigative commission concluded that Israeli leaders were “indirectly responsible” for the killings and that Ariel Sharon, then the defense minister and later prime minister, bore “personal responsibility” for failing to prevent them.

While Israel’s role in the massacre has been closely examined, America’s actions have never been fully understood. This summer, at the Israel State Archives, I found recently declassified documents that chronicle key conversations between American and Israeli officials before and during the 1982 massacre.

The verbatim transcripts reveal that the Israelis misled American diplomats about events in Beirut and bullied them into accepting the spurious claim that thousands of “terrorists” were in the camps. Most troubling, when the United States was in a position to exert strong diplomatic pressure on Israel that could have ended the atrocities, it failed to do so. As a result, Phalange militiamen were able to murder Palestinian civilians, whom America had pledged to protect just weeks earlier.

Israel’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war began in June 1982, when it invaded its northern neighbor. Its goal was to root out the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had set up a state within a state, and to transform Lebanon into a Christian-ruled ally. The Israel Defense Forces soon besieged P.L.O.-controlled areas in the western part of Beirut. Intense Israeli bombardments led to heavy civilian casualties and tested even President Ronald Reagan, who initially backed Israel. In mid-August, as America was negotiating the P.L.O.’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Reagan told Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the bombings “had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered,” Reagan wrote in his diaries.

The United States agreed to deploy Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational force to supervise the P.L.O.’s departure, and by Sept. 1, thousands of its fighters — including Yasir Arafat — had left Beirut for various Arab countries. After America negotiated a cease-fire that included written guarantees to protect the Palestinian civilians remaining in the camps from vengeful Lebanese Christians, the Marines departed Beirut, on Sept. 10.

Israel hoped that Lebanon’s newly elected president, Bashir Gemayel, a Maronite, would support an Israeli-Christian alliance. But on Sept. 14, Gemayel was assassinated. Israel reacted by violating the cease-fire agreement. It quickly occupied West Beirut — ostensibly to prevent militia attacks against the Palestinian civilians. “The main order of the day is to keep the peace,” Begin told the American envoy to the Middle East, Morris Draper, on Sept. 15. “Otherwise, there could be pogroms.”

By Sept. 16, the I.D.F. was fully in control of West Beirut, including Sabra and Shatila. In Washington that same day, Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger told the Israeli ambassador, Moshe Arens, that “Israel’s credibility has been severely damaged” and that “we appear to some to be the victim of deliberate deception by Israel.” He demanded that Israel withdraw from West Beirut immediately.

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In Tel Aviv, Mr. Draper and the American ambassador, Samuel W. Lewis, met with top Israeli officials. Contrary to Prime Minister Begin’s earlier assurances, Defense Minister Sharon said the occupation of West Beirut was justified because there were “2,000 to 3,000 terrorists who remained there.” Mr. Draper disputed this claim; having coordinated the August evacuation, he knew the number was minuscule. Mr. Draper said he was horrified to hear that Mr. Sharon was considering allowing the Phalange militia into West Beirut. Even the I.D.F. chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, acknowledged to the Americans that he feared “a relentless slaughter.”

On the evening of Sept. 16, the Israeli cabinet met and was informed that Phalange fighters were entering the Palestinian camps. Deputy Prime Minister David Levy worried aloud: “I know what the meaning of revenge is for them, what kind of slaughter. Then no one will believe we went in to create order there, and we will bear the blame.” That evening, word of civilian deaths began to filter out to Israeli military officials, politicians and journalists.

THE MEETING - 17 SEPTEMBER

At 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir hosted a meeting with Mr. Draper, Mr. Sharon and several Israeli intelligence chiefs. Mr. Shamir, having reportedly heard of a “slaughter” in the camps that morning, did not mention it.

The transcript of the Sept. 17 meeting reveals that the Americans were browbeaten by Mr. Sharon’s false insistence that “terrorists” needed “mopping up.”

It also shows how Israel’s refusal to relinquish areas under its control, and its delays in coordinating with the Lebanese National Army, which the Americans wanted to step in, prolonged the slaughter.

Mr. Draper opened the meeting by demanding that the I.D.F. pull back right away. Mr. Sharon exploded, “I just don’t understand, what are you looking for? Do you want the terrorists to stay? Are you afraid that somebody will think that you were in collusion with us? Deny it. We denied it.” Mr. Draper, unmoved, kept pushing for definitive signs of a withdrawal. Mr. Sharon, who knew Phalange forces had already entered the camps, cynically told him,

“Nothing will happen. Maybe some more terrorists will be killed. That will be to the benefit of all of us.”

Mr. Shamir and Mr. Sharon finally agreed to gradually withdraw once the Lebanese Army started entering the city — but they insisted on waiting 48 hours (until the end of Rosh Hashana, which started that evening).

Continuing his plea for some sign of an Israeli withdrawal, Mr. Draper warned that critics would say, “Sure, the I.D.F. is going to stay in West Beirut and they will let the Lebanese go and kill the Palestinians in the camps.”  

Mr. Sharon replied: “So, we’ll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them. You are not going to save these groups of the international terrorism.”

Mr. Draper responded: “We are not interested in saving any of these people.” Mr. Sharon declared: “If you don’t want the Lebanese to kill them, we will kill them.”

Mr. Draper then caught himself, and backtracked. He reminded the Israelis that the United States had painstakingly facilitated the P.L.O. exit from Beirut “so it wouldn’t be necessary for you to come in.” He added, “You should have stayed out.”

Mr. Sharon exploded again: “When it comes to our security, we have never asked. We will never ask. When it comes to existence and security, it is our own responsibility and we will never give it to anybody to decide for us.”

The meeting ended with an agreement to coordinate withdrawal plans after Rosh Hashana.

By allowing the argument to proceed on Mr. Sharon’s terms, Mr. Draper effectively gave Israel cover to let the Phalange fighters remain in the camps. Fuller details of the massacre began to emerge on Sept. 18, when a young American diplomat, Ryan C. Crocker, visited the gruesome scene and reported back to Washington.

AMERICANS, CULPABLE, GULLIBLE, RESPONSIBLE

Years later, Mr. Draper called the massacre “obscene.” And in an oral history recorded a few years before his death in 2005, he remembered telling Mr. Sharon: “You should be ashamed. The situation is absolutely appalling. They’re killing children! You have the field completely under your control and are therefore responsible for that area.”

On Sept. 18, Reagan pronounced his “outrage and revulsion over the murders.” He said the United States had opposed Israel’s invasion of Beirut, both because “we believed it wrong in principle and for fear that it would provoke further fighting.”

Secretary of State George P. Shultz later admitted that “we are partially responsible” because “we took the Israelis and the Lebanese at their word.” He summoned Ambassador Arens. “When you take military control over a city, you’re responsible for what happens,” he told him. “Now we have a massacre.”

But the belated expression of shock and dismay belies the Americans’ failed diplomatic effort during the massacre. The transcript of Mr. Draper’s meeting with the Israelis demonstrates how the United States was unwittingly complicit in the tragedy of Sabra and Shatila.

Ambassador Lewis, now retired, told me that the massacre would have been hard to prevent “unless Reagan had picked up the phone and called Begin and read him the riot act even more clearly than he already did in August — that might have stopped it temporarily.” But “Sharon would have found some other way” for the militiamen to take action, Mr. Lewis added.

Nicholas A. Veliotes, then the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, agreed. “Vintage Sharon,” he said, after I read the transcript to him. “It is his way or the highway.”

The Sabra and Shatila massacre severely undercut America’s influence in the Middle East, and its moral authority plummeted. In the aftermath of the massacre, the United States felt compelled by “guilt” to redeploy the Marines, who ended up without a clear mission, in the midst of a brutal civil war.

On Oct. 23, 1983, the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed and 241 Marines were killed. The attack led to open warfare with Syrian-backed forces and, soon after, the rapid withdrawal of the Marines to their ships. As Mr. Lewis told me, America left Lebanon “with our tail between our legs.”

The archival record reveals the magnitude of a deception that undermined American efforts to avoid bloodshed. Working with only partial knowledge of the reality on the ground, the United States feebly yielded to false arguments and stalling tactics that allowed a massacre in progress to proceed.

The lesson of the Sabra and Shatila tragedy is clear. Sometimes close allies act contrary to American interests and values. Failing to exert American power to uphold those interests and values can have disastrous consequences: for our allies, for our moral standing and most important, for the innocent people who pay the highest price of all.

new

For more stories, return to home.

Seth Anziska is a doctoral candidate in international history at Columbia University.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 17, 2012, Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: A Preventable Massacre. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/a-preventable-massacre.html>

BIO: Mohamed S. Farsi-Lindenbaum Associate Professor of Jewish-Muslim Relations

s.anziska@ucl.ac.uk

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish/people/academic-staff/dr-seth-anziska

Tel: 020 7679 2766 | University College London

Biography

Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Lindenbaum Associate Professor of Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London, where he is the founding director of the Middle East Research Centre. His research and teaching focuses on modern Middle Eastern history, Israeli and Palestinian society and culture, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics.

He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, 2018; Arabic edition, Institute for Palestine Studies, 2022), which was awarded the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies Book Prize. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, +972 Magazine, and the 55th Venice Biennale.

Seth received his PhD in International and Global History with distinction from Columbia University, his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and his BA in history from Columbia University. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and visiting professor at Dartmouth College, and has held fellowships at New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut.

Research

Seth’s research is focused on the international history of the Middle East in the 20th century, particularly Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, and US relations with the wider region. His first book, Preventing Palestine, examined the emergence of the 1978 Camp David Accords and the consequences of international diplomacy in circumscribing Palestinian self-determination. He is also interested in archival practices and visual culture of the Middle East, as well as the legacy of Arab-Jewish encounters in Europe and the Levant.

Current projects include an international history of Israel’s 1982 Lebanon War, which explores the possibility and limitations of historical research across national borders given the afterlife of political violence. His research has been supported by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust, and his work has appeared in Humanity Journal, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, the Jewish Quarterly Review, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He is a member of the editorial board of the Statelessness and Citizenship Review.

 1982sep21 NYT U.S. JEWISH SPOKESMEN ASSERT THAT ISRAELIS ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR; MASSACRE

The New York Times September 21, 1982, Section A, Page 18

The heads of 30 major Jewish-American organizations said yesterday that Israel should not be blamed for the mass slayings of Palestinians last weekend in Beirut.

TALKING POINT - ALWAYS THE SAME--WE ARE HORRIFIED, BUT ISRAEL IS BLAMELESS BY DIVINE COVENANT (and CASH)

Each said he was shocked and horrified by the killings but expressed disbelief that the Israeli Government had been directly involved in the massacre or had foreknowledge of it.

All of them, in separate interviews, stressed that their support for Israel and the Government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin had not decreased.

Some of the spokesmen, however, raised questions about policy or judgment errors by the Begin Government that might have led to the massacre. They called for an investigation to determine whether Israel could have prevented the slayings.

Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The leaders are members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The 35-member conference represents a broad segment of religious, civic, social welfare and Zionist groups in the country. The presidents of the remaining groups declined to comment or were abroad and could not be contacted yesterday.

EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEWS

The leaders were asked for their reaction to the massacre and how it affected their attitudes toward Israel and the Begin Government. Following are excerpts from the interviews: 

Julius Berman President, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations:

We join with President Reagan and Prime Minister Begin in expressing our shock and revulsion at the massacre of civilians in Beirut.

We reject the idea of any participation or involvement by the Israeli Defence Forces. 

OUR SECRET WEAPON IS THE HOLOCAUST AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Rabbi Walter Wurzburger President, Synagogue Council of America

The history of the Jewish people is too full of massacres and pogroms, and the injunctions of Jewish laws are too powerful a force in Jewish consciences, to have permitted or even countenanced a Jewish role in this awful incident. Rabbi Walter Wurzburger President, Synagogue Council of America

I have no hesitance to say that it might well be that if Israel had not been in Beirut the tragedy might have been much larger. A lot of people unjustly blame Israel. I don't believe Israel had direct responsibility.

ANTI-SEMITISM--IS ANTI-ISRAEL OR ANTI-JEW---LET'S BE CLEAR RABBI--THERE IS FUCKING DIFFERENCE YOU SNEAKY BASTARD

Maynard Wishner President, American Jewish Committee

If Israel had any inkling that the Phalangists could perpetrate such a crime, it is inconceivable that Israel could have allowed it. Looking in retrospect I would have preferred that Israel not go into West Beirut. The whole situation in Lebanon has increased anti-Semitism all over the world. Maynard Wishner President, American Jewish Committee

I don't believe that Israel in any sense allowed a chain of events that led to this event or in any way wanted it to happen. We ought not to prejudge the matter, but hear more definitive accounts of what happened before talking about changing any policy.

There is a vast difference between things that take place as a matter of policy or intent and the terrible consequences that occur if there is an error of judgment. I don't know enough about the facts to make a judgment. Howard M. Squadron President, American Jewish Congress

Nobody I know puts direct responsibility on the Israelis. No Israeli soldiers were in the camps. Having taken on the policing responsibility, Israel did fail to police adequately. There is no praise for Israel involved in this.

I'm sure there will be a commission of inquiry in Israel. If there is not, I would be very disappointed. I don't believe the Israelis in any way encouraged or condoned the Phalangist behavior. Jack J. Spitzer International President, B'nai B'rith From everything I can learn, none of the killing was done by Israelis. I compare the situation to the New York Police Department, which assumes the responsibility of law and order. If irresponsible people kill other people, I regret the killing and wish the police had been there to stop the killing.

I don't think it is the responsibility of the Israeli Government to investigate this. I don't think there is any value in the United States President condemning Israel. I think the U.S. should use its moral suasion to persuade all foreign forces to leave Lebanon. Rabbi Arnold Goodman President, Rabbinical Assembly I think Israel has to make it clear, though we still don't know all the facts, that this kind of thing will not be tolerated on the part of the Christian Phalangists. Israel must take whatever steps necessary to protect the Palestinians.

I assume that it certainly could not have been done with the complicity of Israel. Israel will do everything possible to unearth exactly what happened. If there is any semblance of cooperation, I'm sure action would be taken swiftly. I don't believe there was. pick up add SUB ZION - spokesman is SPICEHANDLER. Rabbi Arnold Goodman President, Rabbinical Assembly

I think Israel has to make it clear, though we still don't know all the facts, that this kind of thing will not be tolerated on the part of the Christian Phalangists. Israel must take whatever steps necessary to protect the Palestinians.

I assume that it certainly could not have been done with the complicity of Israel. Israel will do everything possible to unearth exactly what happened. If there is any semblance of cooperation, I'm sure action would be taken swiftly. At this point I don't believe there was. Dr. Ezra Spicehandler President, Labor Zionist Alliance

The facts are not completely in but someone goofed on the Israeli side. I hope this was not the policy of the Begin Government. However, there was an atmosphere generated which have led young Israeli officers to misunderstand.

It's very much like a My Lai thing. The question is why the Israelis didn't act sooner. It has not altered by support of Israel or my devotion for Israel. I believe the style of Begin and Sharon does not represent the Israeli people.

I don't think the American Government should get involved militarily in a no-win situation. A force of 5000 to 6000 United Nations troops could do it. Rabbi Joseph P. Sternstein President, American Zionist Federation

We were shocked. We don't know all the facts of what happened. We don't know the precise sequence of events. We are confident the Israelis are not culpable. They don't do it in war, lining up people and shooting. Even with recognized P.L.O. captives they don't do it. It is not the Jewish way.

We were regretful that the President shot from the hip - as if Israel was derelict and was involved in the event. My own feeling is that the Israeli Government should move its troops out. Sidney E. Leiwant President, Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training

I don't think this changes my view of Israel. I feel sorry that the course of action was taken without apparently thinking what might happen. It was clearly a mistake the Israelis made. They did not think it would result in tragedy. I might have lost faith in good judgement sometimes but not in the nation as a whole or its morality.

Any action to reduce support of Israel at this time would be fatal to the relationship between Israel and the United States. The Israelis, up to the point of this massacre, in my judgment were more than correct in carrying out. Goldie Kweller President, Women's League for Conservative Judaism

I was horrified by the massacre. I think anybody who doen't have respect for human life is not fully a human being. I don't know what the true story is, but I know that Israelis did not blatantly kill people. Knowing the Israeli defense forces, the Biblical injunctions and how the army is trained, I can't believe the Israeli Army is responsible. When the full story is told, I feel Israel will be exonerated. Theodore Mann President, National Conference on Soviet Jewry

I was one of those people highly supportive of the fact that the Lebonese war took place and how it was carried out. In the current situation, while I don't think the facts will establish any moral blame on Israel, if the Israelis undertook to be the policeman in the Middle East, it failed to carry out their responsibilities. It may be negligence or poor judgment, but in terms of a serious responsibility they failed.

In terms of the possibility of diminishing aid to Israel, I don't think it is in the American interests to do that. Marshall Wolke President, United Synagogue of America

We don't know exactly what happened at this moment, but I can't conceive that the Israeli military deliberately allowed anybody to be killed. The verdict is still out, I don't believe they deliberately sent in people to kill others. If they did send them in, I think they believed everything would be okay.

My support for Israel is unwavering. It doesn't mean I approve of everything Israel does. But in no way does my personal support for Israel change.

The United States has to keep cool in terms of its reactions and investigate carefully before making long-range reactions. Ivan Novick President, Zionist Organization of America

Israel would not knowingly be a participant in such carnage. If they misjudged conditions it was not malicious and it was not intentional. The entire thing is contrary to everything Jews hold sacred.

IT WAS A MISTAKE

What happened over the weekend was not a premediated, blatant act by Israel although Israel might have misjudged the situation or been misinformed. It is not a reason for a close friend and ally like the United States to come down hard on you. Dr. Harold M. Jacobs President, National Council of Young Israel

Israel had nothing to do with the massacre. It was hot blood on the part of Phalangists who took revenge after seven years of the killing of Christians. It was people out of control. It is not in the Jewish nature to kill people. I don't believe there was any conspiracy on the part of the Israelis to let the Phalangists into the camps to kill.

There should be no change in the attitude of the American Government toward Israel. The Israelis want to pull out of West Beirut. Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler President, Union of American Hebrew Congregations

BULLSHIT--IT'S LIKE WHEN POLITICIANS OFFER PRAYERS FOR VICTIMS OF MASS SHOOTINGS, BUT REFUSE TO PASS LEGISLATION--BOUGHT

Every Jew has got to feel awful and sickened by the tragedy. We share the shock and revulsion that every civilized person feels. I don't ever recall ever being more depressed.

Albert D. Chernin Executive Vice Chairman, National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council

But I don't believe the Israeli Defense Forces were a party to this; it goes against the grain of anything Jewish. I hope there is no change in American policy, obviously I reject the notion that Israel is solely reasonable for this deed. Albert D. Chernin Executive Vice Chairman, National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council

It is inconceivable that the Government of Israel would have even a passive involvement, any involvement, in this. But there should be an inquiry into what took place there.

DEFLECT BLAME

No one can justify what took place but I believe it was something between the Phalangists and the Palestinians, one more horror in a series of horrors between Moslems and Christians in Lebanon.

Israel's goals in Lebanon are identical to ours. Any cutting back on aid would run counter to American policies in Lebanon. pick up 2d add zion Mrs. Shirley Leviton President, National Council of Jewish Women

We abhor the massacre. Once again innocent lives have been destroyed as a result of factional warfare in the Middle East. Until we learn what actually occured it is too early to make a full response. But the U.S. should definitely not change its policy towards Israel. It is the only democracy in the Middle East. The scenes on TV showing Israel citizens upset proves that democracies have a way of resolving their own problems. The U.S. has no better friend in the Middle East than Israel. Rabbi Louis Bernstein Chairman of the Board, Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi

No adjective can describe our feelings. It is deplorable, abhorent and whoever is responsible should be punished. But I link it directly to the murder last week of the president-elect of Lebanon. I'd like to see someone go in and find out about murder of the president elect and scores of people with him. There was no international outcry to find out who was responsible for that massacre.

Israeli soldiers are taught the concept of purity of arms, not to kill wantonly. This incident certainly will provoke anti semitism. the kilings will bring attack on snyagogues, jewish instituions and leaders. Jewish groups throughout the world will have to be on the gurard now. Rabbi Bernard Walfish Executive Vice President, Rabbinical Council of America

We abhor this kind of act on behalf of anyone. I don't the the facts have been ascertained - how they got into the camps, whether the Israeli forces knew and looked the other way.

It seems to me the Israeli defense forces should be instructed to do their utmost that these things don't happened. It doesn't color my attitude to the state of Israel. If any proof were found showing any involvement by Israelis, my attitude would certainly be affected toward the Government.

I find it very difficult as an American citizen to ask my President to put American forces in Beirut. If the President felt it should be done, I would have no objections. Rabbi Joseph B. Glaser Executive Vice President, Central Conference of American Rabbis

It was, I guess, a continuation of the terrible hatred that exists in Lebanon. I don't think there was any implicit involvement by Israelis is respect to the massacre. First of all, there is the careful instruction of the Israeli soldiers. I am not jumping to any conclusions until there is a reliable report of exactly what happened.

To hear from American Government sources that Israelis were involved was dismaying. It was clear they were not involved. I am getting bitter - no one said anything about the Christian Phalangists.

I think the American Government has to go and play a vigorous peacekeeping force. Dorothy Binstock International President, B'nai B'rith Women

I am appalled by the loss of life in the massacre. I also am greatly distressed that the finger of accusation is being made before the facts are in.

It seems unbelievable to me that the Israeli Army was involved. It think it is presumptuous to imply that Israeli leaders should resign. The United States Government should be a moderator. They should encourage an investigation. They should not send troops if it is possible to avoid it. Sidney Wiener President, B'nai Zion

There is no justification for the massacre - it is the culmination of the atrocities of the P.L.O. in Lebanon. We categorically deny the possibile inference that the Israeli defense forces took part in this horrible action. There is no change in our strong support for Israel. We support the Government of Israel. There is an inference, that these are bad boys who should be spanked. This is 100 per cent wrong.

The American Government should consult and act with the state of Israel which is the only democratic ally in the Middle East. Frieda Lewis President, Hadassah

I don't think Israel can be held responsible for a civil war that has been going on in Lebanon for seven years. The Israeli Government has expressed its shock. I understand the Government is conducting an investigation. It has certainly not changed my attitude to the Israeli Government. As far as going back into Lebanon - Israeli lives were at stake. President Reagan will be sending American forces. I welcome that. I believe the American Government is very sincere in its desire for peace. Nathan Perlmutter National Director, Anti-Defamation League

While one has no problem with the motive of Israel in Beirut, something went monstrously wrong. Rather than shoot from the lip, it is important that an investigation be conducted by the Israeli Government and suitable steps be taken. It could include resignations.

Obviously the reputation and image of Israel has been compromised by these events. I don't believe in the weeks ahead, no matter the awfulness of what happened, that the understanding of Israel will be materially damaged.

One should not confuse criticsim of any individual - Begin in this instance - with the American Jewish community's support for the security of Israel. Jerry Strober Member, Executive Committee, Herut-U.S.A.,

All massacres are deplorable. I don't believe the Israelis have any involvement what so ever. The Israelis went into Beirut to prvent this kind of thing. I understand they intervened to prevent a greater massacre.

If anything we should stand firmer in our stance with Israel. We understand she has become subject to the most horrendous charges, which are almost automatic.

The American government should go back to the original role of mediator. I don't think American troops are called for. pick up third add zion Roselle Silberstein President, American Mizrachi Women

Knowing the tenor of the people, I know there was no intention for there to be a massacre. It is not an Israeli doing. Israel then and now is primarliy interested in her own security. They went into Beirut to prevent a recurrence of civil war. I think the government is doing the best it can in a very difficult situation. How can you aske the Israelis to be responsible for the acts between the Lebanese themselves?

I don't think there is a need for the American government to press Israel to get out of Beirut. The American role should be strengthen the government of Lebanon. Stanley Zwaik National Commander, Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A.

We join with President Reagan in expressing outrage at these atrocities. As I hear the media, the Israeli troops were in the vicinity. I doubt they personally condoned it. There is no question the Israeli government was the aware that the Christian militia went into the camp. But I don't believe they knew they were going to fire and kill women and children and unarmed men.

At this point there is no reason for me to personally change my view of the state of Israel or of the government. The Israeli people will have to determien the future of the government by the ballot. Rabbi David Teutsch Executive Director, Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation

I deny categorically they would be involved. I don't have nay information to draw on. It is a matter of faith. Whatever our view of the politics of the current government, it doesn't alter our commitment to the state of Israel. There are individual areas of difference with the Begin government but obviously any government that makes peace with Sadat is doing things right.

The American government is still the force for lasting peace. The quicker it can get Syria to withdraw, the quicker the Israelis will withdraw. Mrs. Charlotte Jacobson Chairman, American section of the World Zionist Organization

We are saddened by the tigger-quick eagerness of the world to lay the blame for this terrible event at Israel's door. Those who glossed over the hundred thousand victims of the P.L.O. and its vendetta heritage, now rush to condemn Israel for the reprisal of Arabs who live and die acording to a feudal and feuding code of revenge that is completely alien to the prophetic ethos of Israel.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 1982, Section A, Page 18 of the National edition with the headline: U.S. JEWISH SPOKESMEN ASSERT THAT ISRAELIS ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR; MASSACRE. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/21/world/us-jewish-spokesmen-assert-that-israelis-are-not-to-blame-for-massacre.html

nytimes.com

1982sep21 SURVIVORS OF MASSACRE TELL OF REIGN OF TERROR

By Colin Campbell, Special To the New York Times | Sept. 21, 1982

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/21/world/survivors-of-massacre-tell-of-reign-of-terror.html

A Palestinian woman who barely escaped being slain Friday night in a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Beirut returned to the scene today and screamed for a long time.

For Umm Qasim Abu Harb, the screams began as she realized - from the pools of blood in the houses of friends and the bodies that were being uncovered from nearby rubble - that 30 or more of her friends and relatives had been killed.

She is among the survivors and witnesses who have begun to tell their versions of what happened in the Sabra and Shatila camps when Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militiamen moved in on Thursday, a day after the guns of Israeli tanks had pounded the areas.

On questions such as the precise political identity of the uniformed militiamen, few survivors interviewed today appeared to know much. What they knew most about was whom they had seen killed or wounded or stomped upon.

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'We Begged Him'

One wounded woman knew only that the man who tossed a grenade Thursday night in Sabra into a room into which she and 19 or 20 other women and children were gathered was dressed in a green uniform.

There was no electricity, but they saw him at the window when a 6-year-old boy lighted a candle. The militiaman shot him, wounding the boy.

''We begged him, 'Please, for God's sake, don't shoot us,' '' the woman, Hasna Ibrahim Matar, recalled, speaking from her bed at Makassad Hospital.

'' 'For God's sake, we are women and children.' And he threw a grenade at us.'' 'Started Shooting at Our Feet'

''We said, 'Please, we give up,' '' Mrs. Matar, 65, went on. ''Then he said, 'I will count one, two, three, and you should all be out.' ''

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She said the militiamen ''started shooting at our feet.'' She said the militiamen found a man about 35 years old who had ''tried to find shelter in our house'' with his wife and small son. ''Two soldiers took the baby from him,'' Mrs. Matar related, ''and gave it to the mother.'' She said the militiamen then shot the father.

The militiamen found a man about 70, Mrs. Matar said, who pleaded, '' 'Please, don't shoot.' And they shot him.'' Mrs. Matar said she asked one of the militiamen to let her pass with the baby and children and, after being cursed, was allowed to go.

''We started to run,'' said Mrs. Matar. ''An ambulance that belongs to Gaza Hospital was around and they took us to the hospital. We saw people dead in the streets and in the houses.''

Her daughter, Sanaa, who is 18, was slightly wounded on the wrist. Neither mother nor daughter knew who the uniformed men were. Others said they were Lebanese Christian Phalangists, or Israelis, or followers of Maj. Saad Haddad, who heads a militia that holds a strip of territory along Lebanon's border with Israel. 'They Are Inhuman'

''They speak Arabic,'' said Mrs. Matar, ''and are inhuman.'' Other witnesses to the events of Thursday and Friday mentioned bright flares in the sky on both nights, and one 18-year-old male patient at Makassad Hospital said the flares came from the Israeliheld stadium just north of the camps.

''Friday evening,'' he said, ''we were sitting in Abu Yasir's shelter.'' Abu Yasir, he said, was a Lebanese. He estimated there were 50 men, 20 women and about 25 children in the shelter. Called Themselves Phalangists

Armed men entered, he said, and announced that they were Phalangists. The young man later said he did not know there was any difference between Phalangists and Major Haddad's men.

He recalled that one of the men had asked if the people in the shelter were happy that the Phalangist leader and President-elect, Bashir Gemayel, had been assassinated.

The women and children were taken off - to Akka Hospital just south of the camps, the militiamen told everyone. The men were taken out, lined up on both sides of the street and ordered to turn around with their hands up.

He said the militiamen opened fire on their captives, apparently killing most of them. It was about 9 P.M. He said that he and a few others were saved by half a dozen Al Fatah guerrillas who suddenly opened fire on the militiamen before they had finished their killing. During the firefight, the young man and two others he knew of managed to escape.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 21, 1982, Section A, Page 18 of the National edition with the headline: SURVIVORS OF MASSACRE TELL OF REIGN OF TERROR. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

"BEGIN" WITH DEIR YESSIN MASSACRE, END WITH BEIRUT MASSACRE

1982sep26 NYT THE MASSACRE BRINGS ON A CRISIS OF FAITH FOR ISRAELIS

By David K. Shipler | Sept. 26, 1982

September 26, 1982, Section 4, Page 1Buy Reprints

JERUSALEM AFTER the events of last week, Israel may never again be able to feel the same way about itself. Something snapped. The belief, the conviction that Israel was somehow different, somehow special amid the brutality and hypocrisy of the world's nations, was profoundly shaken if not swept away.

Only at the pinnacle of governmental power did a tight circle of moral certainty seem to remain. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, wrapped in the mantle of virtue he has always worn, dismissed as ''a blood libel'' the assessment that Israel bore some responsibility for the massacre by its Lebanese Christian allies of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children in two refugee camps in Beirut. ''No one will preach to us ethics and respect for human life,'' Mr. Begin thundered. And then he had the full Cabinet endorse his declaration, despite the quiet misgivings of several ministers.

. ''Let the Arabs kill each other. They deserve it.''

The Prime Minister's sense of righteousness found some echoes among those who wear their bigotry proudly.

''Who cares?'' people were heard to say. ''Let the Arabs kill each other. They deserve it.'' Rabbi Meir Kahane, who heads the Kach movement, the Jewish Defense League of Israel, issued a written statement saying, ''The massacre in Beirut merely shows, in all its clarity, the nature of the Arab.''

But these sentiments seemed aberrations. The incident itself, and the Government's impulse to cover up an Israeli involvement that gradually came to light, disgusted Israelis at almost every corner of the society, mobilizing a powerful surge of outrage that extended into the upper levels of the army and into the Cabinet room, and even into the ranks of Prime Minister Begin's most faithful admirers.

By the week's end, after a relentless Israeli press had ferreted out piece after piece of evidence that Israel had sent the Phalangists into the refugee camps and that army headquarters had known of the massacre soon after it began, some stalwart members of Mr. Begin's Herut Party were telling each other - but apparently not the Prime Minister - that a full-blown judicial inquiry must be convened and that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon must go. And Mr. Begin's refusal to dismiss him, arguing personal loyalty and perhaps fearing Mr. Sharon's vindictive disclosures should he be removed, left the Prime Minister more alone than he has been for a long time.

It was Mr. Begin himself who recalled Deir Yassin. He brought it up at a Cabinet meeting, and in several private conversations. The name is scarcely known outside the Middle East, except to those who follow the region closely.

But it is a codeword of terror and anger and revenge among the Arabs, and a stain that has marked Menachem Begin throughout most of his life.

On April 9, 1948, Deir Yassin was an Arab village at the western edge of Jerusalem. In the continual Arab attacks on Jewish convoys between Jerusalem and the coast, the village was considered an enemy military stronghold by Mr. Begin's underground, the Irgun Zvai Leumi.

His men attacked at dawn that day, suffering four dead and nearly 40 wounded, according to his account, and leaving dozens of dead Arabs - men, women and children, said by survivors to have been lined up against stone walls in the village and shot in cold blood. Mr. Begin has always insisted publicly that the civilian population, warned to get out, had been hurt inadvertently in the heat of battle.

It all came back to him last week. He was not in Deir Yassin himself, he pointed out, and knew nothing of it until after the fact. But he never broke ranks with his men by pointing a finger of blame, he told his colleagues. And he would not do that now. He would not dismiss his friend, Arik Sharon. He would not implicate Israel by calling the full judicial inquiry urged by the opposition Labor Party - a device, he felt, to topple his Government.

Alarm and Dismay

Many people who had believed in Menachem Begin were shocked, suddenly seeing a shallower morality than they had imagined in a man so moved !nd driven by the horror of the Holocaust, a man so contemptuous of those ''good'' Germans who insisted that they had not known.

''We do not know what is happening in the camps,'' said the Israel army spokesman, more than 36 hours after headquarters in Tel Aviv was advised that civilians were being killed.

Even some officials who had worked hard for Mr. Begin and argued for him in these five years of his prime ministership were plunged into disillusionment. One noted that the circle had come full round, that Mr. Begin would now end his career in bitter symmetry, stained by the Beirut massacre, as he began it stained by Deir Yassin.

In addition, a shiver of alarm went through the country over Ariel Sharon. Many Israelis were haunted not only by the television pictures of the bodies in the Shatila camp, but also of the face of their Defense Minister as he attacked the Labor opposition in the Knesset, Israel's Parliament. He accused Labor members of giving comfort to the enemy in the war, and he taunted them with suggestions for an investigation of that. ''And to make it easy for you,'' he said, ''we will make it a secret commission of inquiry.''

He implied that in 1976, when Shimon Peres, the Labor leader, was Defense Minister, Israeli army officers had some involvement in the Christians' massacre of Palestinians at the Tel Zaatar refugee camp. It was his strange, twisted smile while he made this charge that reminded one American-born Israeli official of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, a parallel that occurred to editorial writers and other Israelis as well. ''It was a performance that only the infamous Joe McCarthy could have fully appreciated,'' wrote The Jerusalem Post. ''The single item missing, as Sharon stood at the Knesset rostrum, was the clutch of bogus documents that McCarthy was wont to wave.''

As the revelations tumbled out - provided mostly by Israeli army officers to Israeli journalists, it must be stressed - the restive members of Mr. Begin's coalition pressed backstage for an inquiry, finally obtaining a half-concession that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan, could conduct an administrative investigation, apparently without the power to subpoena witnesses and documents or to take testimony under oath. Justice Kahan demurred for the moment, citing two petitions on the matter pending before the court. Mr. Sharon then said he supported some kind of investigation and would accept its results. But this was a political decision taken in the face of a potential coalition crisis. It remained to be seen whether it would be sufficient either to dampen the political turmoil in the governing coalition or to satisfy the nation.

A democracy has the capacity to purge itself, and Israel proved again last week what a vigorous democracy it is. Some concerned Israelis see a danger now that the outside world, in virulent anti-Semitism, will hound the Jewish state with boycotts and sanctions, setting defense mechanisms in motion and interfering with the internal corrective process. Mr. Sharon has already played to this: The whole world knew the Phalangists carried out the attack, he said, and yet not a word is said against them, only against Israel. [ALWAYS DEFLECTING BLAME--SHARON IS THE BUTCHER OF BEIRUT--HE CONTROLLED THE SITUATION AND UNLEASHED CARNAGE]

But the sense of responsibility remained. Yaacov Kirschen, in his ''Dry Bones'' cartoon strip for The Jerusalem Post, had his character Shuldig addressing the readers:

''When terrorists attacked from Syria, we blamed the Syrians.

When murderous infiltrators slipped in from Lebanon, we blamed the Lebanese.

When P.L.O. killers launched raids from Jordan, we blamed the Jordanians.

When fedayeen goons came in from Egypt, we blamed the Egyptians.

But when we send a bloodthirsty gang into a refugee camp, we blame everyone in the world except ourselves. Whether it was omission or commission, we've got something to atone for this Yom Kippur.''

A prominent Israeli journalist remarked: ''Sharon, in order to survive, has to get rid of some generals. Begin, if he wants to survive, has to get rid of Sharon. We, if we want to survive, have to get rid of all of them.''

Billionaire Donor Assails Brown’s ‘Unconscionable’ Deal With Protesters

For more stories, return to home.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 26, 1982, Section 4, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: THE MASSACRE BRINGS ON A CRISIS OF FAITH FOR ISRAELIS. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/26/weekinreview/the-massacre-brings-on-a-crisis-of-faith-for-israelis.html>

For more stories, return to home.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 26, 1982, Section 4, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: THE MASSACRE BRINGS ON A CRISIS OF FAITH FOR ISRAELIS. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/26/weekinreview/the-massacre-brings-on-a-crisis-of-faith-for-israelis.html>

1982sep26 NYT | The Massacre | Mourning, Anger And Moral Outrage

By David K. Shipler  Sept. 26, 1982

Credit...The New York Times Archives

See the article in its original context from

September 26, 1982, Section 4, Page 1

EXCERPTS---

• HUNDREDS of bodies BULLDOZED into MASS Graves - relatives and Red Cross workers in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut covered their faces against the odor of death as they unearthed several hundred corpses and parts of bodies that had been bulldozed into hasty graves.

• ISRAELIS ZIONIST ULRA-RIGHT REGIME DENIES KNOWLEDGE & RESPONSIBILITY (known risk, expected)

• Mr. Begin asserted, ''Goyim kill goyim, and they immediately come to hang the Jews.'

• Mr. Sharon admitted his officers had ''coordinated'' the Maronites' entry into the camps, after Lebanese army regulars refused to search for terrorist suspects.

• Outraged Israelis, including army officers, and Jewish notables abroad demanded that Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resign.

-----------------------------FULL ARICLE-

IN a world numbed by political brutality and terror, images of slaughtered Palestinian women and children brought gasps of horror last week, and profound consequences.

Lamenting relatives and Red Cross workers in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut covered their faces against the odor of death as they unearthed several hundred corpses and parts of bodies that had been bulldozed into hasty graves.

MOTIVATION

The Palestinians were massacred last weekend by Christian militia men, rampaging after the bomb assassination of dozens of Christian Maronite leaders, including Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon's President-elect.

ISRAELIS ZIONIST ULRA-RIGHT REGIME DENIES KNOWLEDGE & RESPONSIBILITY (known risk, expected)

In the scramble to disclaim responsibility, Israeli authorities at first denied, but later implicitly admitted, they had known about the killings for at least 24 hours without calling a halt. Israeli flares lighted the sky after the militia entered the camps through the Israeli lines.

CALL FROM ISRAELI CIVILIANS & MILITARY FOR RESIGNATION | SHARON & BEGIN

Outraged Israelis, including army officers, and Jewish notables abroad demanded that Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resign.

PROTESTS IN TEL AVIV - SHARON ADMITS he COORDINATE MASSACRE

Thousands attended a protest rally in Tel Aviv last night. Mr. Sharon admitted his officers had ''coordinated'' the Maronites' entry into the camps, after Lebanese army regulars refused to search for terrorist suspects.

But Mr. Sharon insisted the Israelis had forbidden the militia to attack civilians. [WINK WINK] And Mr. Begin asserted, ''Goyim kill goyim, and they immediately come to hang the Jews.'' In a Knesset debate stormy even for Israel, Shimon Peres, the opposition Labor Party leader, said, ''There is no way to pass over the heavy sins of the Government, which did not pay attention to the obvious state of things.'' A few of Mr. Begin's Likud coalition members angrily resigned. but his followers defeated a proposal for an independent board of inquiry, 48 to 42. Later, as friends of Israel in the United States and Europe expressed dismay at what they saw as Mr. Begin's moral blindness, the Prime Minister asked Israel's Chief Justice to head an investigation.

LEBANESE DEFIES ODDS AND UNITE IN OUTRAGE

In Lebanon, the tragedy galvanized Moslem and Christian leaders into rare unity behind Amin Gemayel, Bashir's less-controversial older brother. Elected President by the Parliament, he immediately ordered the military to investigate the killings.

ARAB LEAGUE BLAMES AMERICA--AS IT SHOULD

Arab League foreign ministers blamed the United States for Israeli behavior and Egypt recalled its ambassador to Israel. At the United Nations, the United States joined in a Security Council condemnation of the ''criminal massacre.'' Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick said in Washington that the United States was ''implicated in this terrible tragedy'' because it had pulled out the marines too soon after the Palestine Liberation Organization left Beirut last month - a view that differed from that of Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Ronald Reagan, Israel's most powerful friend, was deeply upset, but officials denied reports they were hoping to unseat Mr. Begin.

REAGAN ORDERS TROOPS TO RETURN

In any event, and without waiting to hear from Israel, President Reagan promptly ordered 1,000 marines to rejoin a multinational force of French and Italian soldiers, to help the Lebanese Government maintain internal order and ''resume full sovereignty over its capital.'' That made it all the more ''essential that Israel withdraw from West Beirut,'' Mr. Reagan said. After two days of hesitation while they shipped south 150 truckloads of captured weapons and documents, Israeli forces began leaving. But deployment of the multinational units was delayed while Israel resisted pressure from Mr. Gemayel to evacuate suburbs and the airport.

Thousands of other Israeli troops remained in the country, as did more thousands of Syrian and P.L.O. forces; United States envoy Philip C. Habib, also back on the scene, will now try to extricate them so that Lebanon can breathe freely. President Reagan, appealing to the Lebanese to break their cycle of tragedy, said, ''Children are not avenged by the murder of other children.''

world

BEGIN CALLS BLAMING OF ISRAEL FOR KILLINGS 'TOTALLY DESPICABLE'

For more stories, return to home.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 26, 1982, Section 4, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: THE MASSACRE BRINGS ON A CRISIS OF FAITH FOR ISRAELIS; Mourning, Anger And Moral Outrage. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

From <https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/26/weekinreview/massacre-brings-crisis-faith-for-israelis-mourning-anger-moral-outrage.html>

40 years on, survivors recall horror of Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila massacre

Beirut (AFP) – Forty years after Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees and Lebanese nationals in the country's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the horrors of the tragedy remain seared into survivors' memories.

Issued on: 14/09/2022 - France24

Najib al-Khatib, whose father and 10 other famialy members were killed in the massacre, still remembers the stench of corpses.

It "lingered for more than five or six months. A horrible smell," the 52-year-old Lebanese survivor said.

"They would spray chemicals every day, but the smell stayed," he told AFP from the Sabra camp for Palestinian refugees, where he lives with his family.

From September 16 to 18, 1982, Christian militiamen allied with Israel massacred between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps on Beirut's outskirts. They also murdered at least 100 Lebanese and some Syrians.

Israeli troops, who had invaded in June that year as Lebanon's civil war raged, sealed off the camp while the militiamen went on their killing spree, targeting unarmed civilians.

Camp residents have been readying to mark the massacre's 40th anniversary on Friday.

"Until today, the smell is still in our heads -- the smell of the dead," Khatib said.

'Horses and corpses'

Khatib walked down an alleyway in the impoverished Sabra camp where he witnessed the atrocities four decades earlier.

"This is my grandmother's house. During the massacre, it was full" of dead bodies, he recalled. "They were piled up here. Horses and corpses, all on top of each other."

"This area was full of people they killed," he said.

One of Khatib's most harrowing memories was finding his father's body at the door of his house.

"He was shot in his legs," he said. "They had hit him in the head with a hatchet."

Despite global outcry, no one has ever been arrested or put on trial for the massacre.

It came just days after the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel -- seen as a hero by many Lebanese Christians but hated by many in Lebanon for his cooperation with Israel.

In Israel, an inquiry found a number of officials, including then defence minister Ariel Sharon, were indirectly responsible.

It laid blame on Elie Hobeika, intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces -- a right-wing Christian militia -- for the killings.

The LF, then allied to Israel, has maintained silence, never responding to the accusations.

A group of survivors tried to launch a lawsuit in Belgium against Sharon, but the court threw out the case in September 2003.

'Unimaginable'

Umm Abbas, a Lebanese resident of Sabra who witnessed the massacre, recalled the "unimaginable scenes" that have gone unpunished.

"What did I see? A pregnant woman who had her baby ripped out of her stomach, they cut her in two," the 75-year-old said.

Another woman, "she was also pregnant, they ripped the baby from her stomach too", she said.

Sitting in an alley, Umm Abbas recalled bulldozers scooping up dead bodies and dumping them on top of each other.

"They put them all in a deep hole, I saw them," she said.

Survivors mark the massacre every year, some visiting the graveyard in Sabra where many of the victims were buried.

A simple stone memorial pays tribute to the "martyrs" of the massacre.

Palestinian Amer Okkar prayed at the site, where the makeshift graves still bear no tombstones.

"We found everyone slaughtered on the ground, in all the alleyways and along this street," the 59-year-old former militant remembered.

"We found pills and machetes and hashish and drugs on the ground -- no one could kill like that unless they were on drugs," he said.

From <https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220914-40-years-on-survivors-recall-horror-of-lebanon-s-sabra-and-shatila-massacre>

40 years on, survivors recall horror of Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila massacre

Beirut (AFP) – Forty years after Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees and Lebanese nationals in the country's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the horrors of the tragedy remain seared into survivors' memories.

Issued on: 14/09/2022 - France24

Najib al-Khatib, whose father and 10 other famialy members were killed in the massacre, still remembers the stench of corpses.

It "lingered for more than five or six months. A horrible smell," the 52-year-old Lebanese survivor said.

"They would spray chemicals every day, but the smell stayed," he told AFP from the Sabra camp for Palestinian refugees, where he lives with his family.

From September 16 to 18, 1982, Christian militiamen allied with Israel massacred between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps on Beirut's outskirts. They also murdered at least 100 Lebanese and some Syrians.

Israeli troops, who had invaded in June that year as Lebanon's civil war raged, sealed off the camp while the militiamen went on their killing spree, targeting unarmed civilians.

Camp residents have been readying to mark the massacre's 40th anniversary on Friday.

"Until today, the smell is still in our heads -- the smell of the dead," Khatib said.

'Horses and corpses'

Khatib walked down an alleyway in the impoverished Sabra camp where he witnessed the atrocities four decades earlier.

"This is my grandmother's house. During the massacre, it was full" of dead bodies, he recalled. "They were piled up here. Horses and corpses, all on top of each other."

"This area was full of people they killed," he said.

One of Khatib's most harrowing memories was finding his father's body at the door of his house.

"He was shot in his legs," he said. "They had hit him in the head with a hatchet."

Despite global outcry, no one has ever been arrested or put on trial for the massacre.

It came just days after the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel -- seen as a hero by many Lebanese Christians but hated by many in Lebanon for his cooperation with Israel.

In Israel, an inquiry found a number of officials, including then defence minister Ariel Sharon, were indirectly responsible.

It laid blame on Elie Hobeika, intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces -- a right-wing Christian militia -- for the killings.

The LF, then allied to Israel, has maintained silence, never responding to the accusations.

A group of survivors tried to launch a lawsuit in Belgium against Sharon, but the court threw out the case in September 2003.

'Unimaginable'

Umm Abbas, a Lebanese resident of Sabra who witnessed the massacre, recalled the "unimaginable scenes" that have gone unpunished.

"What did I see? A pregnant woman who had her baby ripped out of her stomach, they cut her in two," the 75-year-old said.

Another woman, "she was also pregnant, they ripped the baby from her stomach too", she said.

Sitting in an alley, Umm Abbas recalled bulldozers scooping up dead bodies and dumping them on top of each other.

"They put them all in a deep hole, I saw them," she said.

Survivors mark the massacre every year, some visiting the graveyard in Sabra where many of the victims were buried.

A simple stone memorial pays tribute to the "martyrs" of the massacre.

Palestinian Amer Okkar prayed at the site, where the makeshift graves still bear no tombstones.

"We found everyone slaughtered on the ground, in all the alleyways and along this street," the 59-year-old former militant remembered.

"We found pills and machetes and hashish and drugs on the ground -- no one could kill like that unless they were on drugs," he said.

From <https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220914-40-years-on-survivors-recall-horror-of-lebanon-s-sabra-and-shatila-massacre>

from paperless archives

https://downloads.paperlessarchives.com/p/tzuig6/

British Intelligence - CIA - DOD Files & more

Menachem Begin

IRGUN - Jewish Underground

FBI - British Intelligence – CIA - Department of Defense Files, & more.

8,207 pages of Menachem Begin and IRGUN, the Jewish Underground,  the establishment of the State of Israel and Begin as Prime Minister FBI, British Intelligence MI5 MI6, CIA, Department of Defense files, and international press monitoring covering Begin.

Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Poland on August 16, 1913. He was educated at the Mizrachi Hebrew School and the Polish Gymnasium (High School). In 1931, he entered Warsaw University and earned a law degree in 1935. Until the age of 13 he belonged to the Hashomer Hatza'ir scout movement, and at the age of 16 joined Betar (Brit Trumpeldor), the nationalist youth movement associated with the Zionist Revisionist Movement. In 1932 he became head of the Organization Department of Betar for Poland traveling on its behalf throughout the country. In 1937 he returned to Poland, and for a time was imprisoned for leading a demonstration in front of the British Legation in Warsaw, protesting against British policy in Palestine. He organized groups of Betar members who went to Palestine as illegal immigrants, and in 1939 became the head of the movement in Poland. On the outbreak of World War II, he was arrested by the Russian authorities and in 1940-41 was confined in concentration camps in Siberia and elsewhere but was released under the terms of the Stalin Sikorski agreement.

Menachem Begin came to prominence as an advocate of the view that mainstream Zionist groups were too accommodating with the British authorities in pre-1948 Palestine, and advocated the use of force to establish a Jewish state. On his release he joined the Polish army and was transferred to the Middle East. After demobilization, in 1943, he assumed command of the Irgun Zvati Leumi (National Military Organization), known by the initials of its Hebrew name as "Etzel".  Claiming that the British had reneged on their original promise of the Balfour Declaration, and that the White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration was an escalation of their pro-Arab policy, he decided to break with the Haganah, which continued to cooperate militarily with the British as long as they were fighting Nazi Germany. Soon after he assumed command, a formal 'Declaration of Revolt' was publicized, and armed attacks against British forces were initiated. The IRGUN’s attacks on British targets in Palestine made him one of the most wanted men in the region. The Palestine Government offered a reward of £10,000 for information leading to his arrest.

As the leader of Irgun, Begin played a central role in Jewish military resistance to the British Mandate of Palestine, but was strongly deplored and consequently sidelined by mainstream Zionist leadership. Begin issued a call to arms and from 1945 to 1948 the Irgun launched an all-out armed rebellion, perpetrating hundreds of attacks against British installations and posts. The Jewish Agency, headed by David Ben-Gurion, did not take kindly to the IRGUN’s independent agenda, regarding it a defiance of the Agency’s authority as the representative body of the Jewish community in Palestine. Ben-Gurion openly denounced the Irgun as the “enemy of the Jewish People”, accusing it of sabotaging the political campaign for independence.  Growing numbers of British forces were deployed to quell the Jewish uprising, yet Begin managed to elude captivity, at times disguised as a Rabbi.

In 1947, Begin met in secret with several members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine as well as the foreign press, to explain the outlook of his movement. In November 1947, the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, and Britain announced its plans to fully withdraw from Palestine by May 1948. Within days of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 Begin broadcast a speech on radio calling on his men to put down their weapons and join with the Haganah to form the newly established Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was the first time that the public had ever heard his voice. As the Israeli War of Independence broke, IRGUN fighters joined forces with the Haganah and Lehi militia in fighting the Arab forces. Notable operations in which they took part were the battles of Jaffa, Haifa, and the Jordanian siege on the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Begin founded the right-wing political party Herut ("Freedom"), which would eventually evolve into the present-day Likud party. On June 1, 1967, Begin joined the Government of National Unity in which he served as Minister without Portfolio until August 4, 1970. Suffering eight consecutive defeats in the years preceding his premiership, Begin came to embody the opposition to the Labor Party, Ashkenazi Mapai-led establishment. On June 20, 1977, Mr. Menachem Begin, head of the Likud party, after having won the Knesset elections on May 17, 1977, presented the new Government to the Knesset and became Prime Minister of Israel. Despite having established himself as a fervent conservative ideologist, Begin’s first significant achievement as Prime Minister was to negotiate the Camp David Accords with President Sadat of Egypt, agreeing on the full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai Peninsula and its return to Egypt in 1978. Together with Anwar Sadat, the two won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

Yet in the years to follow, especially during his second term in office from 1981, Begin’s government was to reclaim a nationalist agenda, promoting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories. In 1981, Begin ordered the bombing and destruction of Iraq's Tammuz nuclear reactor in Osirak by the Israeli Air Force, in a successful long-range operation called Operation Opera. Begin launched a limited invasion into southern Lebanon in 1982, which quickly escalated into full-fledged war. Begin resigned as the sixth Prime Minister of Israel in 1983. Menachem Begin died in Tel Aviv in 1992.

CIA FILES

101 pages of CIA files dating from 1945 to 1948.

Files contain Palestine situation reports discussing: Strategic considerations in relation to U.S. interests; Political Situations; Economic Situations Foreign Affairs; Military Situations.

 A 1947 report examines the consequences of partitioning Palestine. Topics include: Political consequences, Religious pressures, Tribal pressure, probable attitudes of Arab governments, probable actions of Arab governments, Aims of a Jewish state, Attitude of the Soviet Union, and Military consequences. The report contains information about the strengths of Irgun,  Haganah,  and the Stern Gang.

A CIA report titled, "Report on Clandestine Air Transport Operations Outside US Continental Limits Involving US Citizens and US-Owned Aircraft," examines Americans arranging for flights of arms to assist the Jewish underground movement in Palestine.

Other report titles include, "Possible Developments from the Palestine Truce" and "Probable Effects on Israel and the Arab States of a UN Arms Embargo."

CIA Camp David Israel-Egypt Peace Plan Files

106 pages of CIA files reporting to the Carter White House on issue surrounding the Camp David Israel-Egypt Peace Plan.

British Security Service MI5 MI6 Files

253 pages of British Security files on Menachem Begin dating from 1929 to 1955. These files were not released until 2006.

British Security files on Menachem Begin composed of compiled reports on Begin's  movements, contacts and activities drawn from various sources. The files include details about Menachem Begin's early life. The files contain conflicting content on whether or not Begin served in Spain with the International Brigade. The file includes a photograph purportedly of Begin with comrades in Spain, but also information from other sources suggesting that he was elsewhere for the duration of the Spanish Civil War.

The files contain: Information, from an informant code named CHEST, on Begin's activities. Extracts from intercepted letters from underground leaders including Begin. Reference reports of information gained from interrogation of IRGUN members. Intelligence report on Begin's relationship with Ben Gurion. Information concerning his political activity in Israel. Surveillance reports on Begin's political party the Herut Group.

The possibility of Soviet control of Begin´s Irgun organization is one of the key concerns of the file. The files record various terrorist acts attributed to that organization. The file includes a Polish Security Middle East group report on Jewish terrorist activities, dated April 1945; and a report of intelligence sourced from Chilik Weizmann by the Secret Intelligence Service that Begin had undergone cosmetic surgery in February 1947 to conceal his identity (the SIS report comments dryly that "We have no description of the new face").

Later files focus on Menachem Begin´s post-war travels and meetings in Europe and the Americas. There is an April 1953 case summary, including details of the possible connections between Begin and the Russian intelligence service in which an agent writes,  "…the answer would appear to be that Begin was probably not a Soviet agent in the sense that he was working for the RIS…but that there is some slight possibility that during 1947 he might have accepted or even sought Soviet financial assistance for the terrorist organization."

FBI FILES

293 pages of FBI files dating from 1947 to 1949 covering IRGUN and Hagnah. Files contain approximately 85 narrative pages. Files give basic background information on Irgun and Hagnah. Topics include: Possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the Neutrality Act. Publicity for a planned Begin 1948 visit. FBI investigation into whether Begin should be admitted into the US. The files contain a FBI collection of newspaper articles on militant acts against British targets.

Foreign Relations of The United States, 1977–1980, Volume IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978–December 1980, Second, Revised Edition

The 1.450-page Office of the Historian, United States Department of State’s documentary history of the construction of a framework for the Camp David peace plant, August 8–September 17, 1978, Negotiating the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, and search from peace in the region beyond the Camp David agreement.

Primary composed of transcripts of Presidential papers, White House records, Zbigniew Brzezinski material and staff material, President Carter’s correspondence with foreign leaders, Department of State documents, supporting documentation generated by Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and others agencies.

U.S. Government Foreign Press Monitoring

5,100 pages of foreign press monitoring containing with material related to Menachem Begin.

Media monitoring reports from 1977 to 1982, produced by the U.S. government's National Technical Information Service's U.S. Joint Publication Research Service. These 5,100 pages of reports focuses on the Middle East and North Africa. They contain information primarily from foreign newspapers, periodicals and books, but also from news agency transmissions and broadcasts. Materials from foreign-language sources are translated into English.

These 5,100 pages of serial reports contains information on socio-economic, government, political, and technical developments in the countries of the Near East and North Africa. Press coverage from and about Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spanish North Africa, Sudan, Sultanate of Oman, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara, Yemen Arab Republic. 

It includes Arab and Israeli press reaction to the Camp David Accords. This reporting contains samples of Arab and Israeli press reaction to the results of the Camp David Summit Conference. All the material is in the form of editorials, commentaries, and cartoons; and it is selected from some of the most important Arabic, Hebrew, French, and English language newspapers and periodicals published in most of the Arab states and in Israel. Some of the material is from Arabic-language sources published in Paris and London.

Other major news events includes reporting to the 1977 Israel general elections bringing Begin to the head of the Israeli government.  Israel's 1982 invasion into Lebanon. Reports include over 100 cartoons from the Arab press on the Lebanon Crisis. Israeli political events toward the end of Begin's Premiership.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REPORTS 

645 pages of Department of Defense Reports.

Irgun Zvai Leumi: The Jewish Terrorist Element of TheArab-Israeli Conflict (1985)

An historical assessment (1895-1948) of the development and effectiveness of the Irgun during the struggle for an independent Jewish state, by Air Force MAJOR JAMES LARRY FIELDS.

Abstract:  There is a broad variety of literature that examines the moral, psychological, and sociological aspects of terrorism. Current terrorist organizations from all over the world tend to adopt the tactics and techniques of past successful terrorist organizations. One past successful organization was the IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI, the Jewish terrorist element of the pre-1949 Zionist movement. This project provides an historical assessment (1895-1948) of the development and effectiveness of the Irgun during the struggle for an independent Jewish state. The Irgun's methodology, tactics and leadership are contrasted to today's Palestine Liberation Organization. Also the Irgun's impact on future terrorist organizations is approached.

Jewish -- Zionist Terrorism and The Establishment of Israel (1977)

A thesis by John Louis Peeke, Captain, United States Air Force.

Abstract: Terrorist bombings of public buildings, attacks on public

officials, hijackings and assassinations of political leaders are

not new phenomena in Middle East politics. In recent history,

incidents initiated by the Palestine Liberation Organization and

its various components have captured headlines around the world.

As recently as World War II, however, another terrorist war was

fought over the same territory and for the same purposes--the

creation of a Palestinian state. This time, though, the terrorists were Jewish. This paper looks at the activities of the Jewish "terror" organizations in their quest for a Jewish state. Through three chronological, more or less parallel tracks, the paper will deal with the formation of the military and paramilitary groups, their organization, leadership philosophy and actions which eventually forced Great Britain to yield to Zionist demands for a Jewish state in Palestine.

Israel’s Attack on Osiraq: A Model for Future Preventive Strike

Israel’s Attack on Osiraq: A Model for Future Preventive Strike, a 79-page thesis by Major Peter S. Ford, United States Air Force. This thesis examines Osirak for lessons from a preventive attack on a non-conventional target. Ford conducted a personal interview with retired IAF Colonel Dov ‘Doobi’ Yoffe at his home in Israel after viewing the Heads Up Display (HUD) video of the 7 June 1981 strike. The video was a compilation of all Israeli Air Force F-16 aircraft that participated in the raid. It included take-off, ingress, pre-strike maneuvering, footage of the attack, post-strike defensive maneuvering, and egress back to Israel. The thesis contains information from personal interviews about the Osirak mission and the domestic political interaction preceding the strike. Aside from these first-hand sources, the thesis draws from select books on the subject. It also incorporates numerous scholarly articles, government documents, declassified information, foreign policy speeches, and media sources worldwide.

Insurgency in Iraq: An Historical Perspective

This 27-page monograph considers the patterns of insurgency in the past by way of establishing how much the conflict in Iraq (2003-2005) conforms to previous experience. In particular, the author compares and contrasts Iraq with previous Middle Eastern insurgencies such as those in Palestine, Aden, the Dhofar province of Oman, Algeria, and Lebanon. He suggests that there is much that can be learned from British, French, and Israeli experience. Comparisons are made with IRGUN's 1947-1949 campaign against British occupation of Palestine.

Israel: Problems and Viability

 A 12-page National War College student report by Colonel W.W. Connor on the outlook of the partition and the creation of the State of Israel. Covered are agreements from Balfour to Bunche, conflict of Jewish and Arab convictions, immediate problems, social and economic impact of immigration into Israel, political aspects, and the future of Israeli-Arab relations.

The Arab Position on Palestine by Kermit Roosevelt

A National War College transcript of a November 24, 1948 lecture presented by secretary of the Committee for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land, Kermit Roosevelt, in which he mentions IRGUN and Begin.

A Surprise Out of Zion? - Case Studies in Israel’s Decisions on

Whether to Alert the United States to Preemptive and Preventive Strikes, from Suez to the Syrian Nuclear Reactor

From introduction: This study seeks to use historical narrative to inform the reader’s understanding of choices both past and present, over several decades in which the U.S.-Israel relationship has grown far closer and deeper. For these purposes, we may think of Israeli leaders as falling into two categories: confronters and consulters. Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin presented the United States with faits accomplis in 1956 and 1981, running serious risks in the bilateral relationship; by contrast, Levi Eshkol and Ehud Olmert took pains to try to see if Washington would resolve Israel’s security dilemmas in 1967 and 2007. In neither instance did consultation result in a U.S. use of force on Israel’s behalf, but in both cases, it did yield considerable dividends of U.S. understanding when Israel ultimately took matters into its own hands. From Suez on, one thing has not changed: Superpowers do not like being surprised.

“Just War” Case Study: Israeli Invasion of Lebanon in 1982

An essay by Marine Major Christopher A. Arantz.

Abstract: This essay examines Israel’s overall reasons for invasion of southern Lebanon and compares them to just war theory’s war-decision law and war-conduct law. This examination will establish that Israel achieved her objectives before war termination, which lead to some unjust actions.

Between 1948 and 1982 Israel had engaged in conventional combat four times against Arab coalition forces. In all cases, Israel fought for

survival of its state and established a military dominance in the region. In the years leading up to 1982, the Israeli government sought ways to

eliminate security problems in its occupied territory and across its border with southern Lebanon. Israel defined its security problems as terrorist excursions that threatened the security of its people and property in northern Israel. This paper will examine Israeli conduct of deciding to go to war and their conduct of war in relation to just war theory. Three areas will be examined; 1) Did Israel have a just cause, use a legitimate authority and the right intention for invading Lebanon as in accordance with Jus ad Bellum? 2) Did Israel conduct the conflict in accordance with Jus in Bello? 3) What are the long-term ramifications for the region since the invasion?

When David Became Goliath

By MAJ Christopher E. Whitting, RAAOC, Australia

For the first time since its establishment as a nation, and following four successive victories against various Arab conventional armies between 1948 and 1973, Israel was forced to withdraw militarily from south Lebanon in May 2000. This thesis investigates the defeat of the Israeli Defense Force by a guerilla army, Hezbollah. Rarely are the

causes of defeat on the modern battlefield simply a case of military failure. Specifically, this study will focus on the combination of factors that in unison forced the withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Force from Lebanon. The study concludes that a combination of political, military and social factors combined to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. A failure by Israel’s politicians to correctly identify the true nature of the problem and to link political goals to achievable military

objectives condemned the 1982 invasion from the outset. Additionally, the Israeli Defence Force was slow to adapt to guerilla warfare throughout the 18-year war, preferring to rely on the proven methods of prior conventional wars to achieve victory. Moreover, the social impact of a long and unwinnable war without a just cause impacted

severely on Israeli society weakening support for an Army whose historical role had changed from protector to aggressor.

Palestine Police Force Wanted Poster

Palestine Police Force wanted poster of Irgun and Lehi members. Begin appears at the top left.

Also included is an Australian Broadcasting Authority report of an investigation of an airing of a TV news program. The investigation was initiated over a complaint of inaccuracy of comparisons between Jewish underground militant actions and Palestinian militant actions.

The File contains a text transcript of all recognizable text embedded into the graphic image of each page of each document, creating a searchable finding aid. Text searches can be done across all material

From <https://downloads.paperlessarchives.com/p/tzuig6/>

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - Mideast situation/Jerusalem/Golan/Lebanon/Genocide – GA resolution

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/

37/123.  The situation in the Middle East

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Taking note of the reports of the Secretary-General,1/

Recalling Security Council resolution 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981,

Reaffirming  its  resolutions  36/226  B  of  17  December  1981  and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling its resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, in which it defined an act of aggression, inter alia, as “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof” and provided that “no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression”,

Reaffirming the fundamental principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

Reaffirming once more the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Noting that Israel’s record and actions establish conclusively that it is not a peace-loving Member State and that it has not carried out its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations,

Noting further that Israel has refused, in violation of Article 25 of the Charter, to accept and carry out the numerous relevant decisions of the Security Council, the latest of which was resolution 497 (1981), thus failing to carry out its obligations under the Charter,

1.Strongly condemns Israel for its failure to comply with Security Council resolution 497 (1981) and General Assembly resolutions 36/226 B and ES-9/1;

2.Declares once more that Israel’s decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights constitutes an act of aggression under the provisions of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX);

3.Declares once more that Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and has no legal validity and/or effect whatsoever;

4.Declares all Israeli policies and practices of, or aimed at, annexation of the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, to be in violation of international law and of the relevant United Nations resolutions;

5.Determines once more that all actions taken by Israel to give effect to its decision relating to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights are illegal and invalid and shall not be recognized;

6.Reaffirms its determination that all the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 3/ and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, continue to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and calls upon the parties thereto to respect and ensure respect of their obligations under these instruments in all circumstances;

7.Determines once more that the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967 and their effective annexation by Israel on 14 December 1981, following Israel’s decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on that territory, constitute a continuing threat to international peace and security;

8.Strongly deplores the negative vote by a permanent member of the Security Council which prevented the Council from adopting against Israel, under Chapter VII of the Charter, the “appropriate measures” referred to in resolution 497 (1981) unanimously adopted by the Council;

9.Further deplores any political, economic, financial, military and technological support to Israel that encourages Israel to commit acts of aggression and to consolidate and perpetuate its occupation and annexation of occupied Arab territories;

10.Firmly emphasizes once more its demands that Israel, the occupying Power, rescind forthwith its decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Syrian Golan Heights, which has resulted in the effective annexation of that territory;

11.Reaffirms once more the overriding necessity of the total and unconditional withdrawal by Israel from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, which is an essential prerequisite for the establishment of a comprehensive and just peace in the Middle East;

12.Determines once more that Israel’s record and actions confirm that it is not a peace-loving Member State, that it has persistently violated the principles contained in the Charter and that it has carried out neither its obligations under the Charter nor its commitment under General Assembly resolution 273 (III) of 11 May 1949;

13.Calls once more upon all Member States to apply the following measures:

(a) To refrain from supplying Israel with any weapons and related equipment and to suspend any military assistance that Israel receives from them;

(b) To refrain from acquiring any weapons or military equipment from Israel;

(c) To suspend economic, financial and technological assistance to and co-operation with Israel;

(d) To sever diplomatic, trade and cultural relations with Israel;

14.Reiterates its call to all Member States to cease forthwith, individually and collectively, all dealings with Israel in order totally to isolate it in all fields;

15.Urges non-member States to act in accordance with the provisions of the present resolution;

16.Calls upon the specialized agencies and other international organizations to conform their relations with Israel to the terms of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Recalling  the relevant  provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,4/

Recalling also the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 5/ and all other relevant international instruments concerning the right to cultural identity in all its forms,

Having learned that the Israeli army, during its occupation of Beirut, seized and took away the archives and documents of every kind concerning Palestinian history and culture, including cultural articles belonging to Palestinian institutions – in particular the Palestine Research Centre – archives, documents, manuscripts and materials such as film documents, literary works by major authors, paintings, objets d’art and works of folklore, research works and so forth, serving as a foundation for the history, culture, national awareness, unity and solidarity of the Palestinian people,

1.Condemns those acts of plundering the Palestinian cultural heritage;

2.Calls upon the Government of Israel to make full restitution through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, of all the cultural property belonging to Palestinian institutions, including the archives and documents removed from the Palestine Research Centre and arbitrarily seized by the Israeli forces.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 36/120 E of 10 December 1981, in which it determined that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which had altered or purported to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, in particular the so-called “Basic Law” on Jerusalem and the proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, were null and void and must be rescinded forthwith,

Recalling Security Council resolution 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980, in which the Council, inter alia, decided not to recognize the “Basic Law” and called upon those States that had established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such missions from the Holy City,

1.Deplores the transfer by some States of their diplomatic missions to Jerusalem in violation of Security Council resolution 478 (1980);

2.Calls upon those States to abide by the provisions of the relevant United Nations resolutions, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

The General Assembly,

Recalling its resolution 95 (I) of 11 December 1946,

Recalling  also  its  resolution  96 (I)  of 11 December 1946, in which it, inter alia, affirmed that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices -whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable,

Referring to the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1948,6/

Recalling the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/

Appalled at the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps situated at Beirut,

Recognizing the universal outrage and condemnation of that massacre,

Recalling its resolution ES-7/9 of 24 September 1982,

1.Condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps;

2.Resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide.

The General Assembly,

Having heard the address by the President of the Lebanese Republic on 18 October 1982,7/

Taking note of the decision of the Government of Lebanon calling for the withdrawal from Lebanon of all non-Lebanese troops and forces which are not authorized by the Government to deploy therein,

Bearing in mind Security Council resolutions 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982 and 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982,

1.Calls for strict respect of the territorial integrity, sovereignty, unity and political independence of Lebanon and supports the efforts of the Government of Lebanon, with regional and international endorsement, to restore the exclusive authority of the Lebanese State throughout its territory up to the internationally recognized boundaries

2.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly on the implementation of the present resolution.

The General Assembly,

Having discussed the item entitled “The situation in the Middle East”,

Reaffirming its resolutions 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981 and ES-9/1 of 5 February 1982,

Recalling Security Council resolutions 425 (1978) of 19 March 1978, 497 (1981) of 17 December 1981, 508 (1982) of 5 June 1982, 509 (1982) of 6 June 1982, 511 (1982) of 18 June 1982, 512 (1982) of 19 June 1982, 513 (1982) of 4 July 1982, 515 (1982) of 29 July 1982, 516 (1982) of 1 August 1982, 517 (1982) of 4 August 1982, 518 (1982) of 12 August 1982, 519 (1982) of 17 August 1982, 520 (1982) of 17 September 1982 and 521 (1982) of 19 September 1982,

Taking note of the report of the Secretary-General of 12 October 1982,8/

Welcoming the world-wide support extended to the just cause of the Palestinian people and the other Arab countries in their struggle against Israeli aggression and occupation in order to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights, as affirmed by previous resolutions of the General Assembly relating to the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East,

Gravely concerned that the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, still remain under Israeli occupation, that the relevant resolutions of the United Nations have not been implemented and that the Palestinian people is still denied the restoration of its land and the exercise of its inalienable national rights in conformity with international law, as reaffirmed by resolutions of the United Nations,

Reaffirming the applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949,2/ to all the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem,

Reiterating all relevant United Nations resolutions which emphasize that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible under the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law and that Israel must withdraw unconditionally from all the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,

Reaffirming further the imperative necessity of establishing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region, based on full respect for the Charter and the principles of international law,

Gravely concerned also at recent Israeli actions involving the escalation and expansion of the conflict in the region, which further violate the principles of international law and endanger international peace and security,

Welcoming the Arab peace plan adopted unanimously at the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference, held at Fez, Morocco, on 25 November 1981 and 9 September 1982,9/

Bearing in mind the address made, on 26 October 1982, by His Majesty King Hassan II of Morocco, in his capacity as President of the Twelfth Arab Summit Conference,10/

1.Condemns Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian and other Arab territories, including Jerusalem, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations, and demands the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all these occupied territories;

2.Reaffirms its conviction that the question of Palestine is the core of the conflict in the Middle East and that no comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the region will be achieved without the full exercise by the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights and the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel from all the Palestinian and other occupied Arab territories;

3.Reaffirms further that a just and comprehensive settlement of the situation in the Middle East cannot be achieved without the participation on an equal footing of all the parties to the conflict, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian people;

4.Declares once more that peace in the Middle East is indivisible and must be based on a comprehensive, just and lasting solution of the Middle East problem, under the auspices of the United Nations, which ensures the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and which enables the Palestinian people, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to exercise its inalienable rights, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, national independence and the establishment of its independent sovereign State in Palestine, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations relevant to the question of Palestine, in particular General Assembly resolutions ES-7/2 of 29 July 1980, 36/120 A to F of 10 December 1981, 37/86 A to D of 10 December 1982 and 37/86 E of 20 December 1982;

5.Rejects all agreements and arrangements in so far as they violate the recognized rights of the Palestinian people and contradict the principles of just and comprehensive solutions to the Middle East problem to ensure the establishment of a just peace in the area;

6.Deplores Israel’s failure to comply with Security Council resolutions 476 (1980) of 30 June 1980 and 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980 and General Assembly resolutions 35/207 of 16 December 1980 and 36/226 A and B of 17 December 1981, determines that Israel’s decision to annex Jerusalem and to declare it as its “capital”, as well as the measures to alter its physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and status, are null and void and demands that they be rescinded immediately, and calls upon all Member States, the specialized agencies and all other international organizations to abide by the present resolution and all other relevant resolutions, including Assembly resolutions 37/86 A to E;

7.Condemns Israel’s aggression and practices against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and outside these territories, particularly Palestinians in Lebanon, including the expropriation and annexation of territory, the establishment of settlements, assassination attempts and other terrorist, aggressive and repressive measures, which are in violation of the Charter and the principles of international law and the relevant international conventions;

8.Strongly condemns the imposition by Israel of its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, its annexationist policies and practices, the establishment of settlements, the confiscation of lands, the diversion of water resources and the imposition of Israeli citizenship on Syrian nationals, and declares that all these measures are null and void and constitute a violation of the rules and principles of international law relevant to belligerent occupation, in particular the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949;

9.Considers that the agreements on strategic co-operation between the United States of America and Israel signed on 30 November 1981 would encourage Israel to pursue its aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, would have adverse effects on efforts for the establishment of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and would threaten the security of the region;

10.Calls upon all States to put an end to the flow to Israel of any military, economic and financial aid, as well as of human resources, aimed at encouraging it to pursue its aggressive policies against the Arab countries and the Palestinian people;

11.Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council periodically on the development of the situation and to submit to the General Assembly at its thirty-eighth session a comprehensive report covering the developments in the Middle East in all their aspects.

 1/ A/37/169 and Add.1-3-S/14953 and Add.1-3.

 2/ United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 75, No. 973, p. 287.

 3/ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907 (New York, Oxford University Press), 1915, p. 100.

 4/ Resolution 217 A (III).

 5/ See Manual of the General Conference, 1981 edition (Paris, UNESCO, 1981).

 6/ Resolution 260 A (III).

 7/ See A/37/PV.35.

 8/ A/37/525-S/15451.

 9/ See A/37/696-S/15510, annex.

10/ See A/37/PV.44.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186308/