On August 12, the anniversary of the massacre of the Tel al-Za`tar camp for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, in which 4,280 Palestinians were killed and thousands wounded and hundreds missing after a 52-day siege imposed by the Lebanese Christian right-wing militias and the Syrian army on the camp, will mark the anniversary.

Location

Tel al-Za'tar camp for Palestinian refugees was established in 1949, east of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on a square kilometer Maronite endowment land.

The camp has become known by the residents as "Tal Al-Za'tar", after the Palestinian village of Tal Al-Za'tar, in the district of Acre, which was occupied by the Israelis during the Nakba in 1948, as an affirmation of the right of return.

At first, Tal Zaatar camp was not one of the camps registered in the records of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), as it was a Palestinian gathering adjacent to the Dekwaneh and Jisr al-Basha camps, which were established by UNRWA in 1959, and belong to the Mount Lebanon Governorate. In addition to the camps of "Shatila", "Dbayeh" and "Burj al-Barajneh".

The camp is located in an industrial area in which factories and laboratories abound, which made it an attractive place for thousands of workers and their families to live, whether Palestinians, Lebanese or other nationalities.

The areas adjacent to the camp were famous for agriculture, citrus orchards and vegetables, until the number of residents in it was estimated at about 30,000, most of whom were Palestinian refugees.


population

Its residents hail from the villages of northern Palestine, in particular Al-Khalisa, Al-Lazaza and Sulha, in addition to the Palestinian Bedouins who lived in the first periods of asylum in the Al-Maslakh area east of Beirut, who were transferred to the camp in 1965, following the spread of Publicity about the existence of the "plague" disease in the slaughterhouse area.

Historical background

During the Nakba in 1948, 110,000 Palestinians were deported to Lebanon, most of them from the villages of Galilee and the coastal cities of Kayafa, Haifa and Acre, and they - especially the poor among them - were left with nothing but refugee camps and a number of rural gatherings for stability.

With the passage of time, the Lebanese state's treatment of the Palestinians changed, after they were welcomed by most of the Lebanese in the first decade of their displacement.

But in the aftermath of the 1958 Lebanese unrest, President Fouad Chehab used the Military Intelligence Office (also known as the Second Office), as well as the police, to control the camps.

This period witnessed repressive, inhuman and humiliating measures against Palestinians, as permits were imposed on them to visit other camps, and they were not allowed to hold meetings of a non-family nature, and they were prohibited from listening to the radio or reading newspapers, and building or repairing homes was in need of Permit cannot be obtained.


In addition to these practices, Palestinians were subjected to daily harassment, humiliation, extortion, arrests, and sometimes torture at the hands of some police officers.

This miserable situation among the Palestinians, in addition to the repercussions of their expulsion from their country, sparked the rebellion and the search for a change in their lives, especially after the defeat of the Arab armies at the hands of Israel in 1967, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Golan and most of the Sinai, where millions of Palestinians became refugees in Neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

The majority of these Palestinian refugees went out to Lebanon and Jordan with their weapons to resist Israel, which caused great problems for Jordan. King Hussein quickly vacated the camps and expelled the guerrilla organizations, so they moved to Lebanon.

In 1969, an unplanned “revolution” erupted inside the camps of Lebanon, when the residents expelled the officers and agents of the “Second Office” whom they had so hated, then the Palestinians felt that they were back in control of their fate and were struggling within a mass movement to return to their homes.

The Palestinian mass uprising led to the signing of the Cairo Agreement in early November 1969 between Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the commander of the Lebanese army, Emil Al-Bustani. This agreement granted the Palestinians the right to administer their camps and engage in armed struggle in coordination with the Lebanese army.

The Palestinian resistance in Lebanon escalated its armed attacks against Israel, and the latter responded with attacks against Lebanon, inflicting large numbers of deaths among Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, which created in Lebanon a state of alienation towards the Palestine Liberation Organization and increased Palestinian-Lebanese tensions.

The Lebanese Civil War

By allying themselves with the Lebanese national movement, the Palestinians plunged themselves into the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), and with the collapse of the Lebanese state, the Palestine Liberation Organization continued to expand its influence, accused of forming a "state within a state".

Signs of the catastrophe of Tel al-Za’tar camp began in early 1976, when disputes arose between Christian militias and the Palestinian Fedayeen Brigades.

During this period, clashes and battles took place between the two sides, and they were of a religious nature, and thousands of Lebanese Muslims sought refuge in the Tel al-Zaatar camp and joined the Palestinians.

On April 13, 30 Palestinians from the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp were killed on a bus in Ain al-Rummaneh, near Beirut, by members of the "Phalange Forces", the military wing of the right-wing Christian Lebanese Phalange Party, which constituted the first spark of the long and violent Lebanese civil war.

Since the outbreak of the war in Lebanon, the Palestinians have become a target of the right-wing Christian Lebanese militias (Maronite), and the siege of the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp was one of the outcomes of the raging civil war.

Camp Siege

The siege of the camp began on June 22, 1976, and the siege lasted for 52 days, as water, electricity and food were cut off from the camp.

The camp was subjected to 72 attacks, more than 55 thousand shells were bombed, and relief agencies were prevented from entering it.

On August 11, 1976, negotiations were held under the auspices of Arab leaders, and an agreement was reached to allow only civilians to leave the camp through the mediation of the International Red Cross.

On August 12, 1976, the siege ended, with the fall of the camp and the entry of the Lebanese and Syrian forces, who committed extermination and slaughtering of pregnant women's stomachs, indecent assault and slaughter of children, women and the elderly.

The perpetrators of the massacre

The Tel al-Zaatar massacre was carried out by the Syrian forces in Lebanon and the Lebanese Maronite Christian forces, which consisted of:

  • The Kataeb Party led by Pierre Gemayel.

  • Tiger militia of the National Liberal Party led by Camille Chamoun.

  • Zgharta Liberation Army militia led by Tony Franjieh.

  • The Rice Guardians Militia.

Victims of the massacre

The massacre left 4,280 Palestinian refugees dead, half of them in the siege, and half in the exit from the camp, and the majority of them were civilians, women, children and the elderly, in addition to thousands of wounded and hundreds missing (so far there is no accurate count of their number).

After committing the massacre, the bulldozers began to demolish the camp, and the survivors of death wandered on their faces looking for safety, and they were later distributed to other Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

After the Taif Agreement of 1989, which ended the civil war with settlements and carried the slogan "Amnesty for the past", the Lebanese state refused the reconstruction of the camp, as well as the return of the displaced refugees to it.