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- [00:01]
William Durimo
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- [00:19]
Anita Arnold
you were a kid, weren't you? 5 years old in 1982, and your family lived on the front line. Can people have this image of Lebanon back then as being some kind of war zone, Some kind of sort of flattened landscape just shell pockmarked? What was it like? I mean, you know, you were there, you, you knew it. Describe what Lebanon was in 1982.
- [00:40]
Kim
So I sometimes I think that the Lebanon that we imagined from the 60s and the 70s is a myth. Sometimes I think it is real. But it was definitely before the civil war erupted. And it's known as the civil war. I don't call it that. And I'll explain in a moment. I call it the Lebanese war in my next book, which is coming out later this year. In the 60s and 70s and late 50s, you know, Lebanon was this cosmopolitan place. The culture of the Levant exemplified at its best in Lebanon. You know, there was trade and a casino and the international festival of Baalbek with international singers and performers and musicians and dancers, you know, ballet and, you know, others all coming to there.
- [01:27]
William Durimo
Less food in the Middle East.
- [01:30]
Kim
That is still true of Lebanon.
- [01:32]
William Durimo
Best wine in the Middle East, Best Arak in the Middle East. Place of many pleasures.
- [01:35]
Kim
Yes, absolutely. But it was always a place of trouble in a way, the way it was created. And the first signs of Trouble came in 1969 when Lebanon was press ganged into signing something called the Cairo Accords, which would give Palestinian refugees and Palestinian militants, rather armed guerrillas who were in Lebanon, refugees since 1948 and the creation of Israel and then subsequently after 1970, more influx of Palestinian militants into Lebanon. 1969 was the first sign that something might really go wrong in Lebanon, because you had the rise of armed militancy by Palestinians attacking Israel from Lebanon, particularly
- [02:31]
William Durimo
after Black September, which we talked about in an earlier episode, when they were kicked out of Jordan.
- [02:36]
Kim
Correct. So they were kicked out of Jordan, which crushed them, because the king didn't want a Palestinian state within a state, didn't want his territory used as a launching pad for a war against Israel. He'd already lost one before. And they were pushed into Lebanon. And Syria, put an embargo. Syria, which borders Lebanon, put an embargo on Lebanon, banning all trade, in essence stopping all trade between Lebanon and its neighbors in the Arab World put an embargo for 23 days to make sure that Lebanon would sign that Cairo agreement because no other Arab country wanted the Palestinians to use them as a launchpad for attacks against Israel. So they thought they'd give that task to, to be the launchpad.
- [03:26]
William Durimo
This was Hafez Al Assad using his muscle.
- [03:29]
Kim
At the time, he was still Minister of Defense, but he would soon become president. And I don't know for sure, but I suspect that he already had a say as Minister of Defense into making this happen. You know, my mother came to Lebanon. She was Dutch, from Amsterdam. She came to Lebanon in the 60s, having met my father in the Netherlands. And she met this Lebanon that you described. Of parties, of dinners, of nightclubs, of casinos, of the beach, et cetera. It was a charmed life. It was everything that the Netherlands wasn't.
- [04:02]
William Durimo
Skiing in the morning, sunbathing in the afternoon.
- [04:05]
Kim
They used to say, I don't think she went skiing. But yes, for sure. It was everything that the Netherlands, puritanical Netherlands wasn't. It was everything that Europe wasn't after World War II. And people didn't want to see the signs of trouble. They didn't want to see that potentially this refugee population, which was not just in Beirut, but everywhere, in camps around the country, could become an issue once that 1969 Cairo Accords had been signed. And it becomes really the trigger for the war that erupts in 1975, which many describe as a Lebanese civil war, but which I prefer to describe as the Lebanese war because there were so many outsider elements from the beginning that despite the fact there were many Lebanese factions killing each other, it was really about a bigger issue.
- [05:01]
William Durimo
So we're approaching the moment when Israel decides to intervene. There are cross border raids accelerating. Israel has enough. And the man who takes this as his personal mission is Ariel Sharon. We've met him before in earlier episodes when he leads the tanks deep into Egypt in 1973. But remind us who he is and what he's trying to do in 1982.
- [05:28]
Kim
By 1982, Ariel Sharon is Defense Minister. And there have been, as you said, increasing Palestinian guerrilla attacks against Israel, killing soldiers, but also civilians. There has been already an Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon in 1978, a first invasion which creates a bit of a buffer zone and sets up a proxy militia for Israel in southern Lebanon. Ariel Sharon has this vis. He wants to get rid of this problem once and for all. How many times have we heard this since then, including today in this war? Finish off the problem. Never Quite works. But anyway, Ariel Sharon, a big rotund man, detail obsessed in many ways but also unwilling to listen to outsider advice, decides that he has the plan to invade Lebanon, get rid of the plo, finish them off politically and militarily, which would also help solve the issue of Palestinian political ambitions in the west bank. Install a friendly pro Israel Christian president in Lebanon, the only country that has a Christian president. And at the same time Niqap Hafez Al Assad, who is now president in Syria and has troops in Lebanon with surface to air missiles positioned in the Beqaa Valley that Sharon feels are a danger to Israel. That is his big ambition, to remake the Middle East. He does not have cabinet approval and he hides his intentions from the cabinet so that he can go ahead with his invasion. He pretends he just wants to go 40km in and he insists we're not going to confront Syria, we're not going to get into a war with Syria. This is just a small cleanup operation. He describes it to the US Secretary of State Alexander Haig at the moment as a lobotomy, just something short and quick and will be out in six weeks. But of course a he has much bigger plans to go all the way up to Beirut, which he does not divulge. And of course it all goes wrong.
- [07:34]
William Durimo
So Kim, we should say at this point that there is a Likud government now in charge of Israel, that Barak E. Begin, who has signed the peace agreement with Egypt and stepped up the settlement activities in the west bank and in Gaza, is in charge. And this is a far more uncompromising approach to Israel's enemies.
- [07:56]
Kim
Absolutely, it's a far more uncompromising approach. Although the idea that you could have a friendly government in Beirut and have a peace treaty with Lebanon is one that has been on the minds of Israeli officials for some time. There are two important points to make here. The Christians of Lebanon have already made overtures to Israel right after the civil war erupts in 1975, triggered by the sort of division within Lebanon of being pro Palestinian or pro, let's say Lebanese nationalism. And it's exemplified or embodied by the right wing Christian factions in Lebanon who don't want to have a Palestinian state within a state. But on the left side it's Muslims and Christians, it's Communists, it's Syrian Nationalist Party and it is those two camps that are at war which becomes the Lebanese Civil War. But it's really about what is Lebanon, where does Lebanon belong to? Is it part of the Arab fold fighting for Palestine or Is it just its own thing or is it in the vision of some, an ally of Israel? The second point to mention, as I said, the Christians have been courting Israel before because they are trying to fight the Palestinians. They first think that Syria can help them do that, and then they realize that Syria's coming to Lebanon to control Lebanon, not to assist the Christians. So then they turn to Israel and some of the first conversations between the Christian phalangests and Israeli officials.
- [09:38]
Anita Arnold
So, I mean, we should talk about the Phalangists. You've just mentioned them and this very charismatic leader of theirs, Bashir Gamayel, because the Phalangists do have roots in European fascism. Can you just talk us through who they are and how they come to be in Lebanon?
- [09:51]
Kim
Well, they're Lebanese, so the Jamail family is a well established family in Lebanon, Christian family. And Pierre Gemayel, the founder of the Falangist party, was inspired by the Hitler youths and the phalanx in Italy. And he was impressed by the discipline and all of that. And that party, if my memory serves me right, was founded in the late 30s. And then it becomes eventually a military party, a militia during the civil war.
- [10:23]
Anita Arnold
They have this saying, don't they? Uniting the Christian rifle. There's this very much a, you know, sort of religion at the point of a gun. That's how we're going to make it prevail.
- [10:34]
Kim
So what they were trying to do when the civil war started, and certainly Bashir Jamayel wanted to do, is unite the Christian rifle so that there would be one Christian faction fighting the others, who rather than lots of different Christian factions trying to do their own thing. So that idea of uniting the Christian rifle, tawhid al bunduqiya in Arabic, is something that Bashir Jmayel begins to do as the war unfolds. And he feels that he needs to bring everybody under one umbrella. And it's a very bloody. This is where you have civil war that comes into play because he starts, you know, confronting his own people, killing his own rivals within the Christian parties. But to go back to the Christians courting Syria and Israel, some of the first conversations that happen happen off the coast of Lebanon in a boat between Pierre Jmail, Bashir Jmail Amin Jamail on the one hand, but also Israeli officials like Yitzhak Rabin from Labor. And it's a very interesting conversation because Pierre J. Mayil is quoted as saying, in a way, and I'm paraphrasing, I bow my head in shame that I'm coming to ask you, because I am an Arab and I don't want Israel's help, but that's the only option that we have. And so that is an interesting nuance that is sometimes also lost, sometimes on purpose and sometimes, yeah, it's just how history gets retold. It was a controversial move even within the phalange, but it is one that they embraced later fully.
- [12:13]
Anita Arnold
So this boat diplomacy, Kim, that you've described, is this the beginning of the relationship between. I mean, you mentioned sort of Pierre Jamail, who we should remind people is Bashir, Jamael's father. But Bashir and Ariel Sharon are going to get particularly close. What is the trajectory of that friendship?
- [12:30]
Kim
So it starts with this, yes, boat diplomacy in 1976, I believe, when Yitzhak Rabin and the Labour Party are in power. And the Israelis, in essence, tell the Christian Falangists, Pierre Jmail and his son, whom they describe as a sort of slightly whiny boy, initially, they don't really like him because he's begging for weapons. And their attitude is, we'll help you help yourselves. So here are some weapons, but we're not going to get involved. And all that changes when Begin comes into power in 77, and then Ariel Sharon becomes Minister of Defense, and he sees in Bashir Jmail the man who can help him implement his vision for this transformed Middle east with Israel at the center and a friendly Christian government in Beirut. And so they don't just want to return to that time when the border between Lebanon was fairly reasonably quiet and there was no state of war between the two countries. They want to have an actual official treaty. And most importantly, Anita, they want the Christian Falange and Bashir Jmail to help with the invasion and with their plans inside Beirut. Israel will invade all the way up to Beirut, and Bashir and his men will do the dirty job within Beirut. But it doesn't quite work out like that.
- [13:54]
Anita Arnold
Right, okay, but for an invasion to happen, you need the spark, you need the catalyst. And they get the catalyst, do they not? It's in London, of all places, June 3, 1982, with the attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador in London. Tell us a little bit about that and what that then does to Ariel Sharon's plans.
- [14:13]
Kim
Ariel Sharon is looking for an excuse, any excuse, and he travels to the US in May of 1982 to expose his plans to the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig. Not going into all the details, but again, saying, you know, we could do a lobotomy. We'll clean it up, you know, but will maybe help us. We're not going to go all the way up to Beirut. It'll be quick. Six weeks maximum. Alexander Haig is quite infatuated by this idea. He gives a yellow light a wink.
- [14:46]
William Durimo
Alexander Haig is a bit like Sharon, isn't he? They're both bulldozers, these two men. They're kind of kindred spirits.
- [14:51]
Kim
Absolutely. Bulldozers. Bulldozers. But other people inside the State Department, including Philip Habib, who we'll hear from in a moment, we'll bring him into the story, I'm sure. But also other experts of the Arab world, like Morris Draper, are alarmed by what might happen if Israel invades. And they remind Alexander Haig, who is then told to remind Ariel Sharon that there is a ceasefire in place since a year and that this ceasefire needs to be respected. Unless there is a clear provocation on the ground in Lebanon and Israel. What happens is the Israeli ambassador in London is targeted in an assassination attempt. He survives but is paralyzed.
- [15:37]
Anita Arnold
This is a man called Shloimy Palomo Argov, who is actually shot in the head. I mean, it's a serious attempt on his life.
- [15:43]
Kim
It's a very serious attempt. He does survive. Ironically, the men sent to assassinate him are from a party, from a Palestinian faction, the Abu Nidal faction, that is opposed to Arafat. And that intelligence is brought to Menachem Begin. And he dismisses it. He said, oh, you know, they're all the same. You know, Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal, they're all the same. This is a provocation. The ceasefire is broken. Even though these were not the terms of the ceasefire, the Americans had made clear it had to be something in Lebanon and Israel. This is abroad. And within two or three days, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon starts.
- [16:23]
William Durimo
June 6th is the date when it kicks off, doesn't it? In no uncertain fashion, 40,000 Israeli troops cross the border. This is a major, major invasion.
- [16:32]
Kim
Major invasion. It actually starts, if I may, not to correct you, Willi, but just to add the detail. It starts on June 4th with a military operation from the sky, bombings, et cetera, and the Lebanese. And everybody thinks, oh, you know, more of the same. We've seen this before. The Palestinians are kind of already aware that an invasion is in the works and it's going to be big. And they have actually warned the Americans as well, because there are ties and back channels between the Americans and the Palestinians at the time, much to Israel's displeasure. And believe it or not, there are conversations between the Palestinians and the Phalange. I mean, Arafat and Bashir Jmail are sworn enemies, but they actually talk to each other via back channels. And in fact, at some point, Bashirj Mail sent a warning to a Palestinian official saying, you are at risk. The Israelis are coming to assassinate you to try to save his life. But that came too late. And that's a side story. So even within war, there were certain rules of civility amongst the atrocious orgies of killing, which is really quite incredible. But that invasion starts on the 6th with these tanks rumbling across the border. And there are some incredible footage. There's incredible descriptions, there's reporting, there's also testimonies of Israeli soldiers who, when they get past the 40km that Sharon had said the invasion would stop at, are like, what are we doing? Where is this going? And of course you have, as I retell in my forthcoming book, the Americans still convinced that it's just going to stop at 40 kilometers in Washington. That's their conviction. And the American ambassador in Tel Aviv is relaying that message to Washington as well. But the American ambassador in Beirut calls Washington and says, I can see from my residence Israeli tanks approaching the airport in Beirut. That is way beyond 40 kilometers from the border. That's, I think, sort of 80 kilometers, if not more from the border with Israel. And the response on the other side of the line is no, we've been assured that they're not approaching Beirut by our people in Tel Aviv. And the ambassador is furious. He says, I'm the ambassador in Beirut and I'm telling you, I'm looking out
- [18:59]
William Durimo
the window, I can see them freaking tanks.
- [19:03]
Kim
I can see the tanks. They're actually almost outside my own door. And it just this episode which, you know, I spoke to the American ambassador who was there, Ambassador Robert Dillon, and I love to call him Bob Dylan, which is how he's known as well. And he's above 90 now and still sharp as attack. And I interviewed him in his retirement home in Virginia a couple of years ago, and it was all unfolding as the war in Gaza was happening. And he was saying, I can't believe that we're going through the same thing that diplomats are warning about what this is going to mean for America, that American diplomats are warning about Israeli actions and some officials don't want to listen because they don't want to believe it. Or as he says, and I'm quoting the ambassador, oh, more of that Arab stuff. We don't believe it.
- [19:53]
Anita Arnold
Oh, God. Right, right, right. I mean, it is, I mean, just utter failures of diplomacy with Fingers and ears and saying la la la la la. I can't hear it. It's not happening.
- [20:03]
Kim
But can I add one more thing about the planning for this, which is quite important, which is a meeting in Beirut between Ariel Sharon and Bashir Gemayel. Ariel Sharon travels secretly to Lebanon and is welcomed to the port city of Junia, north of Beirut, and is driven to Ashafiye, the very center of Beirut and Christian area of Beirut. And this is where he overlooks Beirut from the little hilltop of Ashrafiyeh with Bashirjmayil by his side and his commanders, etc. And there is kind of an agreement that, you know, as I said, they will invade and Beshishmail and his men will do the ground to will do the street by street operations in the city. One of these commanders says, this is a terrible idea. We're going to be bombing an Arab capital. We're going to besiege an Arab capital. This has never happened before. There have been wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors before, but never had Israel bombed an Arab city. I mean, there was a brief moment of bombings of Cairo, but a sort of intentional sustained bombing of an Arab capital and a full invasion of an Arab country that had not happened before. And it is an infection, inflection point in the national psyche of Israel of what is permissible after that.
- [21:35]
Anita Arnold
So I mean the siege by land, by air, seen through a window, although no diplomats in the State Department want to believe it, this is a siege. It's going to last for 70 days. Now during this siege, Kim, I mean, you know, you were saying that there was some sympathy for the Palestinians, but deep irritation for the Palestinian militant movement that many felt was dragging Lebanon into a trajectory that they had not chosen for themselves.
- [22:01]
Kim
I would say more than irritation if I may, Anita. Well, because we have to remember that by then the Palestinians are very much a party to this war and there are massacres on both sides by both sides. So there's a lot of blood and anger by then.
- [22:15]
Anita Arnold
Okay? But there are also Palestinian civilians who have no choice. They've been shuttled around, they've just landed here. We're talking again of innocent men, women and children who are in camps. Now these camps, can we describe them? First of all, because we're not talking about sort of built up edifices, we're talking about full on shanty towns. You know, the kind of things that if you go to even Mumbai now, you'll see behind some of the five star hotels, these are places where people are just getting BY Right, absolutely.
- [22:45]
Kim
400,000 Palestinian refugees, amongst them civilians and a faction of militants, 15,000 militants, I think, if my math is correct. So a majority of civilians are living in what used to be initially just camps with literal tents and whatever was available in 1948.
- [23:04]
William Durimo
Like in Gaza.
- [23:05]
Kim
Yeah. And then 1967. And then slowly, slowly they became shanty towns with a little bit of brick and mortar and building, little alleyways, etc.
- [23:16]
Anita Arnold
The corrugated roofs, whatever you can get.
- [23:18]
Kim
Women and children live there in dismal conditions because Lebanon also doesn't want them. The reality is that there may have been a lot of sympathy, but there's also a lot of hypocrisy. And the Lebanon, the Lebanese state did not want them. They're not allowed to build up real houses, they're not allowed to bring in construction material, they're not allowed to work, they're not allowed to have jobs, they're not allowed to have residency permits.
- [23:42]
William Durimo
Certainly not citizenship.
- [23:43]
Kim
Yeah, and certainly not citizenship. So what makes me really upset, I don't know if sort of it's on behalf of Palestinians, you know, I'm Lebanese. But what makes me upset. There's a lot of talk about the Palestinian cause, but actually at the end of the day, there's very little really that is done to help the Palestinians in a way that can really advance at least their civil rights.
- [24:05]
William Durimo
We should say that this is the. The Palestinians in Lebanon are the ones from the north of the country. The others are driven westwards into.
- [24:14]
Kim
Into Jordan and into Syria.
- [24:16]
William Durimo
Others are driven eastwards into the west bank of Jordan. And the ones to the south from. From what south of Palestine have ended up in Gaza. And they're the ones being bombed now in Gaza.
- [24:27]
Kim
And some of course also ended up in the west bank itself.
- [24:29]
William Durimo
Exactly.
- [24:30]
Kim
I myself sort of at first struggled to understand why there were refugee camps in the west bank and Gaza. But obviously this is some where they came from within Israel. So these tent cities then turn into shanty towns. They're all over Lebanon. Yeah, they're in the north, they're near Tripoli, they're in the eastern districts of Beirut, in Christian areas. They're in the southern suburbs of Beirut, they're in southern Lebanon. They're everywhere. The Palestinian Organization, organization, Liberation Organization, headed by Yasser Arafat at the time, builds a state with an estate. They have schools, they have TV stations, they have newspapers, they have businesses. It's a multi million dollar enterprise actually. And it brings also a lot of money into West Beirut and Lebanon itself. So it is part of the intellectual life of West Beirut, of the American University of Beirut, the cafes, the diversity of life and cultural and political discourse that is really still, even in the middle of a civil war, only possible in Lebanon.
- [25:32]
Anita Arnold
But we're gonna take a break soon. But in summary, you've described these thriving hubs of Palestinian life, albeit in shanty towns and, by the way, some of them with the grandchildren of those who came over and settled in 1948. I mean, these are people with with roots now for two generations. But these are specifically bombed because it is argued that of these 400,000, what was the number you gave?
- [25:59]
Kim
15,000.
- [26:00]
Anita Arnold
15,000 are fighters, are Palestinian fighters. We're going to take a break. Join us after the break, where we talk about what kind of toll this kind of targeted campaign has not just on the Palestinians, but on the Lebanese, too, who are living cheek by jowl with these people.
- [26:16]
William Durimo
We are now in the middle of the Israeli siege of West Beirut, and it is a siege that contains many horrors. There are stories I remember reading at the time of phosphorus shells being used on natal hospitals and these lines of little coffins being brought out for burials and the phosphorus then reigniting during the funeral. There were these sort of horror stories all over the papers at the time. Tell us, Kim, your memories, because you were actually there.
- [26:43]
Kim
WILLIAM the siege of Beirut was just an atrocious moment in Lebanon's history and frankly, in Israel's history and American history in the Middle east, because it is a siege that is the birthplace of, as I said, a lot of impunity on all sides. It is a siege in which and an invasion generally, in which thousands are killed, as Anita said, Palestinians, but also Lebanese, 17,000 total. Where Israel starts using saturation bombings, as they call them, you know, thousands and thousands of shells landing on Beirut in one night, 11 hours continuous, in the hope of a capitulation, Right. So that pattern of trying to bomb into capitulation, which the Israelis have somehow gotten from World War II and the capitulation of Nazi Germany and and Japan, and which lives on in people's memory of how you can bring a war to an end. But this is not a state you are fighting. You're fighting a guerrilla faction in Lebanon, the first time that Israel engages in war with the guerrilla faction rather than a traditional army. So that's important to note as well. And the images on television are just, as you say, atrocious to the extent that Nancy Reagan, first lady and wife of President Ronald Reagan, who was at the White House at the time, and some of President Reagan's advisors are just app and they press Ronald Reagan to call Menachem Begin and to say, enough, enough. This has been going on now for 30, 40 days and it's enough. And Ronald Reagan calls Begin and he says, Mr. Prime Minister, I have a holocaust on my screen. And that does not go down well with Begin, who is, and his family, a survivor of the Holocaust. And he gets very, very angry. But there is then a ceasefire declared mid August and it is at the beginning of the negotiations for the PLO's exit and Yasser Arafat's exit from Lebanon. Because Yasser Arafat, with all his shortcomings and all the fury and sympathy he elicited in Lebanon, had the, I would say, foresight or decency to listen to even some of his Lebanese allies who said, we can't take this anymore and we need to save Lebanon. So he agrees on the exit and the negotiations around that are very complicated.
- [29:17]
Anita Arnold
So let's talk about those complex negotiations because the one man who is chosen as the Reagan pressure, if it comes right from the top, the pressure is huge to sort this out or to have some kind of exit strategy or release of a valve is this American envoy, Philip Habib, who is actually of Lebanese extraction, Lebanese Mennonite Christian, served during World War II, joined the Foreign Service in 1949, was a key advisor in Vietnam. He's got the pedigree and he's got the chops to do this.
- [29:44]
Kim
A Brooklyn born and also a bulldozer.
- [29:46]
Anita Arnold
So how does Habib go about this and you know, and what does he accomplish?
- [29:51]
Kim
So it's quite complicated to negotiate this exit because the Israelis are adamant that Americans and Palestinians will not sit in the same room, that there can be no direct contact between the Palestinians and the Americans. So all of the back channels that I described in the past are still secret. And during the middle of a war, when you're trying to negotiate something, it really helps to be face to face with the people you're trying to negotiate this with. There was a time when Ambassador Dillon could just call a number and get a Palestinian official on the other line, including sometimes Arafat himself. Something that the Israelis, I'm sure found out about and were furious about out as well. But in this particular situation, they did not want the Americans and the Palestinians to sit in the same room. And actually practically it wasn't possible because by then the Americans had vacated their embassy in West Beirut. They were sitting all working in the residence of the American ambassador outside of Beirut, overlooking the city. It was too dangerous to go in and out of a city that was being bombed by the Israelis. The American officials in Beirut were sending signals back to Washington to say, you know, you've got to stop this. Ambassador Dillon himself told me about how he was trying to plead again with his capital. American made bombs are killing Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. This has got to stop. So the negotiations happen indirectly via Lebanese messengers who go into West Beirut, relay the American proposal, bring back the Palestinian proposal, and there is an agreement that the Palestinians will leave Lebanon. They will leave their weapons behind. They can take a few light arms. There is a lot of talk about bringing on their jeeps or APC or whatever they had at the time. That's a no. They want to bring their families. And there is a real debate about leaving behind civilians. But if you bring the Palestinian militants and their families, you're talking about 100,000 people instead of 15,000 or 30,000, who is going to take in that number of Palestinians. So a decision is made in the end that only the militants will leave and the families will stay behind. And there are American guarantees for the safety of these civilians.
- [32:02]
William Durimo
Arafat is at this moment in a basement under siege.
- [32:06]
Kim
He is in several basements. He moves around because he knows he's targeted. And the Israelis try to kill him several times. So he is on the run. But he is, yes, often, I guess, in a basement, but also, you know, possibly just driving around in a sort of unmarked car because it wasn't as easy to track people at the time as now with mobile phones. And they are definitely trying to kill him. And the Americans are very concerned that as this evacuation might get underway, the Israelis might target whoever is getting on that ship. So the Americans want to make sure that the marines, which they've decided to send in a multinational force, the French, the Italian, the British, the Americans are going to send a multinational force to Lebanon ahead of this evacuation to guarantee the safety of all those who are leaving, because they want to make sure nothing goes wrong. The Israelis are fighting that. They don't want the Americans to deploy too soon either. They send men up north to make sure that the Americans aren't going to come in from the port of Shunya. You can really see some of the tension in these negotiations about the Palestinian departure from Beirut. And it is a moment of defeat for Yasser Arafat. They've lost their base for many of his men. They've lost the only home they've known. They're leaving behind their families.
- [33:29]
William Durimo
They've already left Palestine. They've then left Jordan now they've been kicked out of Lebanon and they're going
- [33:36]
Kim
into exile to Tunis, which has no border with Israel. And Israel thinks that that will be the end of the PLO and political ambitions and militant ambitions. That is not how that plays out. But importantly, in Lebanon, there are two different feelings unfolding here. One is disappointment that Israel was not defeated and that it is Arafat who has to leave. But at the same time, Israel is not victorious either because the Palestinians and Arafat are still alive so they can declare some kind of victory. You know, Beirut, in the words of some of Arafat's allies, stood up to the Israeli military ambition and was not finished off. And there is a famous scene of Walid Jumlat, one of the Druze chieftains and warlords at the time, and Nabi Hibiri, leader of the Amal Shia militia today, speaker of the House, sitting with Yasser Arafat as he's about to depart. And, you know, Wali Jhumblah talks about how, you know, there is no Arab honor anymore. And Yasser Arafat is driven to the Beirut port where the Marines are deployed to secure this evacuation. And he's driven by the Lebanese Prime Minister Shafi' Iwazan in his own armored Mercedes. And the slightly sort of tongue in cheek description of that moment is that Shafi Ozan wanted to make sure that Arafat was going to get on that boat and that this was, you know, this was it. The other moment, the other feeling there in Lebanon is that now that the Palestinian militancy, the guerrilla fighters are gone, that this aspect of the Lebanese war, which was really the trigger for it, is over in a way that perhaps the war in Lebanon is now over as well.
- [35:28]
William Durimo
We should say that an important part of this departure agreement was that the multinational force, including the American Marines, were going to protect the Palestinians after the fighters had gone. This was the crucial sort of pro quo that they would leave only if they were promised this security.
- [35:46]
Kim
Absolutely. This is a crucial point because it goes to America's failed promises. The Marines deploy and they're supposed to stay on for X number of weeks after the departure of the militants. Bashir Jmail has by now been elected president. He's president elect. He's not been inaugurated yet. And there are mixed feelings in Lebanon. The war is over. You know, eight years of war have come to an end. The Palestinians are leaving. It's a shameful moment. The left has failed. There's a president of Lebanon that is allied with Israel. But even in West Beirut, where there was so much sympathy for Palestinian, the Palestinian cause and Palestinian intellectuals. Not all Palestinians, by the way. It's important to mention Anita lived in the camps. They were also well to do intellectuals and officials living very much part of cosmopolitan life in Western. So it's this mixed feelings of the war is over, there's a bit of relief, there's shame, there's hope for the future. The Americans are there, the French are there, they're overseeing this moment of evacuation. There's a sense that there could be a new beginning for Lebanon and we'll bite our tongue and we'll accept this new president. But something goes wrong, but nobody notices what it is. It is that Caspar Weinberger, the Defense Secretary, orders the Marines to leave before the agreed departure day. And they leave very quickly, much quicker than Philip Habib wanted to, because he knew about the dangers that could unfold in Lebanon if the Marines left too soon. So part of the agreement was that they were to stay for an extra number of weeks, but they leave on the 10th of September, and on the 11th, the French leave as well. And they leave civilians unprotected who were
- [37:32]
Anita Arnold
promised so much more. But the man who was this kind of, if you like, the sword arm of Israel, the Phalangist leader who's now the president elect, he's not long for this world either.
- [37:44]
Kim
He gets assassinated on September 14th.
- [37:48]
Anita Arnold
So tell us the circumstances of the end of Bashir Jamael. How does it happen and how unexpected is it to the people of Lebanon?
- [37:56]
Kim
In a country with so much war and so many assassinations, nothing is really unexpected. Just before he is assassinated, towards the end of the month of August, when he is president elect, he gets summoned to Israel by Menachem Begin, who demands a peace treaty and demands that Begin could visit Beirut and Bashirjmayil in the meantime, has moved on from just his ambitions as a Christian Falangist militia leader. He wants to become president of Lebanon during the invasion, this becomes clear. And so he doesn't actually deliver for the Israelis in the way that they have had hoped for, because he has these ambitions and his own people and the Americans are telling him, if you want to become president of Lebanon, you cannot go and massacre people in West Beirut, which is your city, the city over which you will have to rule and be president. He had a lot of shortcomings. He was involved in a lot of massacres. But he does step back a little bit then, and he does become elected president by a majority that was present. Not everyone shows up. He gets elected by Christian and Notably at the time, Shia members of Parliament, the Sunnis don't really show up. And he gets summoned to Israel, to Nahariyya. And he does not like how he's treated there.
- [39:06]
Anita Arnold
Well, like a whiny boy, like the whiny boy that they called him all along.
- [39:10]
Kim
Like a man who is not delivering for the people who helped him. He's no longer seen as a whiny boy, but he's not delivering for the Israelis. On the 14th of September, he's assassinated. And he is speaking at his headquarters in in Christian Ashafiyeh district of Beirut. And the bomb is placed on the second floor of that building and collapses on him. There are wild rumors it's the Syrians, it's the Palestinians, it's the Israelis, it's other Christian factions. We will learn soon enough by the investigation that it was actually the Syrians who ordered this assassination. Because you have to remember that this is already playing out in a much wider geopolitical game where the Syrians don't want to see the Israelis victorious in Lebanon. They don't want to see the Christians become strong in Lebanon with Israel as their backer. They don't want to see an American project succeed in Lebanon. And so they want to get rid of Bashirj Meil. And they do. And those two things, Caspar Weinberger deciding that the Marines should leave early and Bashir Jmail getting assassinated, laid the stage for one of the worst horrors of the Lebanese civil war, which is the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
- [40:20]
William Durimo
So exactly. We're now coming to the darkest of all the moments in this very dark story of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And the first sign that things are going wrong are when the Israelis move in towards the camps. This was breaking the agreement that had been made with the Americans. And that night, Kim, the lights are turned on, there are flares firing into the air. Israeli flares are being pushed into the sky to light up the refugee camps. And there are Israelis at the gates of the refugee camps and they let the militias in, tell us that story.
- [41:00]
Kim
The Israelis start moving into West Beirut. So you have to remember that the southern suburbs and where the camps are is also considered to be part of West Beirut. So they start moving closer and they start positioning themselves on buildings overlooking the camps. They're also on the other side of West Beirut by the sea, by the corniche, where the American embellishments embassy is. And when the Americans learn of that, one of the diplomats, Morris Draper, is actually in Tel Aviv and he's meeting with Begin and Sharon. And he says, you promised us you wouldn't do this. You promised us that you wouldn't go into West Beirut. You have to leave now. And there's a whole back and forth that is very detailed in various accounts of how this unfolds. Bashirjmail has been assassinated, and soon enough, his brother Amin Shmail will become. He's now the leader of the Falange Party. And he is complicit in what unfolds because he is also getting phone calls from the Americans saying, your men are entering the camps. You need to get them out. We're hearing reports of terrible things unfolding in the camps. And he's like, yes, I'll get back to you. From Thursday evening until Saturday morning, there's an orgy of killing inside the camps. It is too gruesome almost to describe what happens. And, yes, Israeli pilots are throwing flares in the air to light up the camps for the Lebanese Forces armed militia leaders who are inside the camps. And just as a short aside, the Lebanese Forces are this new militia created by Bashir Jmail as the sort of his own military faction that is slightly separate from the Falang, but still under the same umbrella. So it's not the Falange Party that is inside the camps, but the Lebanese Forces, which is slightly distinct, and it's led by a man, Bashirj Meyel's right hand, Eli Haubayka. And they are in there, they say, as revenge. But you could also argue that it was always their plan to go in and to finish off whatever they could finish off.
- [43:04]
Anita Arnold
Well, what does that mean, though, camp?
- [43:06]
Kim
Women and children, Anita? Women and children, who are all seen as just part and parcel of what is the enemy, who could be, you know, collaborating or holding weapons or whatever the excuse is. But there are women and children.
- [43:21]
Anita Arnold
I mean, there have been investigations. I mean, I've seen documentaries about this, you know, some of the survivors talking about some of the most hideous atrocities taking place against the elderly and the young and everyone in between, and the
- [43:35]
Kim
mass graves that had to be dug for for that, and the fact that nobody quite understood. And it's incredible to think today in this day and age that three days could go by or 48 hours could go by without a clear understanding of what was happening in the camps in such a sort of connected time that we live in with social media. You know, massacres still happen, of course, but, you know, more quickly what is unfolding. And people were not necessarily able to go in. They weren't being let in. People who were coming out, strangely enough, were not necessarily immediately reporting a massacre. They were reporting some shootings and violence, but the image was very confused. But the one alarming thing was these flares, because you don't light up the sky unless there is a battle. And it was a ceasefire. And that was the real sign that something was off for the Western diplomats in the city and the American ambassador who could see it in front of his window. I read an incredible book which collected the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who were involved in that invasion. I highly recommend it if you have the stomach for it. It is their recollection of that invasion. I'm surprised it is not more widely known. Some of them speak very candidly about how they were out there to kill the enemy and they shot whatever they. They would shoot at whatever they could see, and it was great. And it was like in a film, you know, like a video game. But some became refusenics after this moment.
- [45:03]
Anita Arnold
Some were deeply traumatized. They could not believe that this was being done under their uniform. I mean, I've read the same documents and they are absolutely appalled by what they are expected to do and what's been facilitated.
- [45:15]
Kim
And some of them went to their commanders while this was unfolding and said, something is terribly wrong inside this camp. There are Lebanese Christian forces killing people, civilians. And the answer was, it's not our problem. Arabs will kill Arabs, right?
- [45:35]
William Durimo
And Sharon in particular was approached and didn't do anything.
- [45:39]
Kim
He was approached by the American officials and he said, yes, yes, yes. And then, you know, they were just buying time.
- [45:46]
William Durimo
What were the casualties in the end? How many people were killed in the Sabra and Chatila massacres?
- [45:52]
Kim
The numbers vary from 800 to 3,000. It's very hard to come to a definitive count because so much remains unknown about exactly how it unfolded. And again, it wasn't the first massacre of either Christians or of Palestinians or both. But it was the impunity of it and the way it unfolded and the failed promises of America for safety and the COVID that Israel gave that gives Sabra and Shatila such terrible connotations of tragedy and impunity. There was an investigation into it. The Kahan Commission in Israel said that Israel had clear responsibility, even if it was not directly involved in the actions on the ground, but it had responsibility for what happened and for how it unfolded. Ariel Sharon did not want to resign. Begin did not want him to resign. In the end, the terrible compromise was that he would step down as Minister of Defence, but stayed on as Minister of State and eventually by, within a year, became Minister of Trade and Industry
- [47:02]
William Durimo
and goes on to become then Defence Minister and finally Prime Minister.
- [47:06]
Kim
Some of the commanders who had served, interestingly enough, even the one who had warned against bombing an Arab capital, they oversaw what was happening in Sabra and Shatila. They were demoted or put into early retirement. No one was really sanctioned. Some of the soldiers who wanted to testify in the Kahan Commission to say exactly what they had seen, et cetera, were not allowed to do so.
- [47:32]
Anita Arnold
There is a very interesting Israeli response, though, from Israeli civil society, if you like, because as the details of this massacre become known, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis who take to the streets to say, not in our name.
- [47:46]
Kim
Absolutely. 400,000 Israelis take to the streets to denounce a war that has been turned into a tragedy for everyone, for Israeli soldiers, for Lebanese civilians, for Palestinian civilians. This is not what the Israelis thought they had signed up for. They were in support of the war initially, and then they realized that their country was now involved with a massacre and that's not what they want. It's the largest peace protest in Israel ever. But it doesn't necessarily change the course of history.
- [48:23]
Anita Arnold
We are going to pause here. I won't say end it here, because you're going to join us for another episode. Kim, I know you'll be speaking to Willi, and if you don't want to wait for that, just join the club. Empirepod uk.com empirepod uk.com and you can get that straight away without waiting till the next time we meet, though, Kim, thank you very much indeed. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnold, and
- [48:45]
William Durimo
goodbye from me, William Durimo.