transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[00:48] You were a kid, 25 years old, in 1982, and your family lived on the front line. Kim, 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 were there, you knew it. Describe what Lebanon was in 1982.

Speaker 4:
[01:09] So 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, Lebanon was this cosmopolitan place. The culture of the Levant exemplified at its best in Lebanon. There was trade and a casino, when the International Festival of Baalbek with international singers and performers and musicians and dancers, ballet and others all coming to there.

Speaker 1:
[01:56] Best food in the Middle East, still.

Speaker 4:
[01:59] That is still true of Lebanon.

Speaker 1:
[02:01] Best wine in the Middle East, best arak in the Middle East, place of many pleasures.

Speaker 4:
[02:05] 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, you know, after 1970, a 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.

Speaker 1:
[02:59] Particularly after Black September, which we talked about in an earlier episode when they were kicked out of Jordan.

Speaker 4:
[03:05] 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 launch pad for attacks against Israel. So they thought they'd give that task to poor Lebanon to be the launch pad.

Speaker 1:
[03:55] This was Hafez al-Assad using his muscle.

Speaker 4:
[03:58] At the time he was still Minister of Defense, but he would soon become president. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that he already had a say as Minister of Defense into making this happen. 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, etc. It was a charmed life. It was everything that the Netherlands wasn't.

Speaker 1:
[04:31] Skiing in the morning, sunbathing in the afternoon, they used to say.

Speaker 4:
[04:35] 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. 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.

Speaker 1:
[05:30] 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.

Speaker 4:
[05:57] 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 vision. 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, kneecap Hafez al-Assad, who is now president in Syria and has troops in Lebanon with surface-to-air missiles positioned in the Bekaa 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 40 kilometers 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 Haik 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.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] So Kim, we should say at this point that there is a liquid government now in charge of Israel, Malach and 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.

Speaker 4:
[08:26] 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 leftist 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 is 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 phalangists and Israeli officials.

Speaker 3:
[10:07] 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?

Speaker 4:
[10:20] Well, they're Lebanese. So the Juma'il family is a well-established family in Lebanon, Christian family and Pierre Juma'il, the founder of the phalangist party, was inspired by the Hitler youths and the phalanx in Italy. He was impressed by the discipline and all of that. That party, if my memory serves me right, was founded in the late 30s. Then it becomes eventually a military party, a militia during the Civil War.

Speaker 3:
[10:52] They have this saying, don't they? Uniting the Christian rifle. There is very much a sort of religion at the point of a gun. That's how we're going to make it prevail.

Speaker 4:
[11:03] So what they were trying to do when the Civil War started, and certainly Bashir Jumail wanted to do, is unite the Christian rifle so that there would be one Christian faction fighting the others rather than lots of different Christian factions trying to do their own thing. So that idea of uniting the Christian rifle, in Arabic, is something that Bashir Jumail 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 in to play, because he starts 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 Jumail, Bashir Jumail, Amin Jumail on the one hand, but also Israeli officials like Yitzhak Rabin from labor. It's a very interesting conversation, because Pierre Jumail 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.

Speaker 3:
[12:42] So this boat diplomacy, Kim, that you've described, what is the beginning of the relationship between, I mean, you mentioned sort of Pierre Jemayel, who we should remind people is Bashir Jemayel's father. But Bashir and Ariel Sharon are going to get particularly close. What is the trajectory of that friendship?

Speaker 4:
[13:00] So it starts with this boat diplomacy in 1976, I believe, when Yitzhak Rabin and the Labour Party are in power. And the Israelis, in essence, tell the Christian phalangists Pierre Jemayel 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 Jemayel, 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 Jemayel 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.

Speaker 3:
[14:23] 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 3rd, 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.

Speaker 4:
[14:42] 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 Shijmeil 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.

Speaker 1:
[15:15] Alexander Haig is a bit like Sharon, isn't he? They're both bulldozers, these two men, they're kind of kindred spirits.

Speaker 4:
[15:20] 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 Maurice 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.

Speaker 3:
[16:06] This is a man called Shlomo Aagov, who is actually shot in the head. I mean, it's a serious attempt on his life.

Speaker 4:
[16:13] It's a very serious attempt. He does survive. Ironically, the men sent to assassinate him are from a party, from a former Palestinian faction, the Abu Nidal faction that is opposed to Arafat. And that intelligence is brought to Manachem 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.

Speaker 1:
[16:52] June the 6th is the date when it kicks off, doesn't it? In no uncertain fashion, 40,000 Israeli troops crossed the border. This is a major, major invasion.

Speaker 4:
[17:02] Major invasion. It actually starts, if I may, not to correct you, Willie, 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, 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 Falange. I mean, Arafat and Bashir Juma'il are sworn enemies, but they actually talk to each other via back channels. And in fact, at some point, Bashir Juma'il 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 40 km 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 km in Washington. That's their conviction. And the American ambassador in Tel Aviv is relaying that message to Washington as well. 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 km from the border. That's, I think, sort of 80 km, 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 at the window.

Speaker 5:
[19:29] I can see the freaking tanks.

Speaker 4:
[19:32] 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 Dillon, which is how he's known as well. And he's, you know, above 90 now and still sharp as a tack. I interviewed him in his retirement home in Virginia a couple of years ago. And he was, 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, so more of that Arab stuff, we don't believe it.

Speaker 3:
[20:22] 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.

Speaker 4:
[20:32] 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 Jemayel. Ariel Sharon travels secretly to Lebanon and is welcome to the port city of Jounieh, north of Beirut and is driven to Ashrafiyeh, the very center of Beirut and Christian area of Beirut. And this is where he overlooks Beirut from the little hilltop of Ashrafiyeh with Bashir Jemayel by his side and his commanders, etc. And there is kind of an agreement that, you know, as I said, they will invade and Bashir Jemayel 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 inflection point in the national psyche of Israel of what is permissible after that.

Speaker 3:
[22:04] 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 that's going to last for 70 days. Now, during this siege, Kim, I mean, you were saying that there was some sympathy for the Palestinians, but deep irritation for the Palestinian militant movement that many felt were was dragging Lebanon into a trajectory that they had not chosen for themselves.

Speaker 4:
[22:30] 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.

Speaker 3:
[22:44] OK. 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?

Speaker 4:
[23:13] Absolutely. 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.

Speaker 1:
[23:33] Like in Gaza.

Speaker 4:
[23:34] Yeah. And then 1967. And then slowly, slowly, they became shanty towns with a little bit of brick and mortar and building little alleyways, et cetera.

Speaker 3:
[23:45] Corrugated roofs, whatever you can get.

Speaker 4:
[23:47] 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.

Speaker 1:
[24:11] Certainly not citizenship. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[24:12] 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.

Speaker 1:
[24:34] 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...

Speaker 4:
[24:43] Into Jordan and into Syria.

Speaker 1:
[24:46] Others are driven eastwards into the West Bank of Jordan and the ones to the south from what had been the south of Palestine have ended up in Gaza and they're the ones being bombed now.

Speaker 4:
[24:56] And some of course also ended up in the West Bank itself.

Speaker 1:
[24:59] Exactly.

Speaker 4:
[24:59] 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. 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, liberation organization headed by Yasser Arafat at the time, builds a state within a state. They have schools, they have TV stations, they have newspapers, they have businesses. It's a multimillion-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.

Speaker 3:
[26:02] But we're going to take a break soon. But in summary, you've described these thriving hubs of Palestinian life, albeit in shantytowns. And by the way, some of them, you know, 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, you know, of these 400,000, what was the number you gave?

Speaker 4:
[26:28] 15,000.

Speaker 3:
[26:29] 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.

Speaker 6:
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Speaker 1:
[27:01] 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 re-igniting 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.

Speaker 4:
[27:27] William, the siege of Beirut was just an atrocious moment in Lebanon's history and frankly in Israel's history and an 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. It is 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. 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 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 this is 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 appalled. 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 Bacon and he says, Mr. Prime Minister, I have a Holocaust on my screen. And that does not go down well with Bacon, 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.

Speaker 3:
[30:01] So let's talk about those complex negotiations. Because the one man who's chosen, you know, as the Reagan pressure, you know, if it comes right from the top, the Reagan 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.

Speaker 4:
[30:28] A Brooklyn born and also a bulldozer.

Speaker 3:
[30:31] So how does Habib go about this? And you know, and what does he accomplish?

Speaker 4:
[30:35] 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 would 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 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, you know, 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.

Speaker 1:
[32:46] Arafat is at this moment in a basement under siege.

Speaker 4:
[32:50] 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 possibly just driving around in an 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 Juni. 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.

Speaker 1:
[34:14] They've already left Palestine. They've then left Jordan. Now they've been kicked out of Lebanon.

Speaker 4:
[34:19] And they're going into exile to Tunis, which has no border with Israel. And Israel thinks that that will be the end of, you know, the PLO and political ambitions and militant ambitions. That is not how that plays out. But importantly, you know, in Lebanon, there are two different feelings unfolding here. One is disappointment that, you know, 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 Waleed Jumlat, one of the Druze chieftains and warlords at the time, and Nabi Hibiri, leader of the Amal Shi'a militia today, speaker of the House, sitting with Yasser Arafat as he's about to depart. And, you know, Waleed Jumlat 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 Wazzan, in his own armoured Mercedes. And, you know, the slightly sort of tongue in cheek description of that moment that Shafi Wazzan wanted to make sure that Arafat was going to get on that boat. 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.

Speaker 1:
[36:13] 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 are gone. This was the crucial sort of pro-quid quo, that they would leave only if they were promised this security.

Speaker 4:
[36:30] 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 Jemayel has by now been elected president. He's president-elect. He's not been inaugurated yet. And there is the 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 West Beirut. 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 Casper Weinberger, the Defense Secretary, orders the Marines to leave before the agreed departure day. 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.

Speaker 3:
[38:16] Who were promised so much more. But the man who was the, kind of if you like, the sword arm of Israel, the phalanges leader who is now the president-elect, he's not long for this world either.

Speaker 4:
[38:29] He gets assassinated on September 14th.

Speaker 3:
[38:32] So tell us, tell us the circumstances of the end of Bashir Jamail. How does it happen and how unexpected is it to the people of Lebanon?

Speaker 4:
[38:41] 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 he, Begin could visit Beirut. And Bashir Jemayel, in the meantime, has moved on from just his ambitions as a Christian phalangist 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 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 Nahariya. And he does not like how he's treated there.

Speaker 3:
[39:51] Well, like a whiny boy, like the whiny boy that they called him all along.

Speaker 4:
[39:54] 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 Christian Ashrafieh 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 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 Bashir Jemayel. And they do. And those two things, Casper Weinberger deciding that the marines should leave early and Bashir Jemayel getting assassinated, lay the stage for one of the worst horrors of the Lebanese Civil War, which is the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Speaker 1:
[41:04] 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 there. 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.

Speaker 4:
[41:44] 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 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 Bacon 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. Bashir Jumail has been assassinated and soon enough, his brother, Amin Jumail will become president. 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, you know, 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 Jemayel as the sort of his own military faction that is slightly separate from the Falange party, 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, Bashir Jemayel's right hand, Eli Hawbaika. 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.

Speaker 3:
[43:48] Well, what does that mean, though, Kim?

Speaker 4:
[43:50] 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 they are women and children.

Speaker 3:
[44:05] 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.

Speaker 4:
[44:18] And the mass graves that had to be dug 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 would shoot at whatever they could see and it was great and it was like in a film, like a video game. But some became refuseniks after this moment.

Speaker 3:
[45:47] Some were deeply traumatised. They could not believe that this was being done under their uniform. I've read the same documents and they are absolutely appalled by what they are expected to do and what's been facilitated.

Speaker 4:
[46:00] 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.

Speaker 1:
[46:19] And Sharon in particular was approached and didn't do anything.

Speaker 4:
[46:24] He was approached by the American officials and he said, yes, yes, yes. And then, you know, they were just buying time.

Speaker 1:
[46:31] What were the casualties in the end? How many people were killed in the Sabra and Chattila massacres?

Speaker 4:
[46:36] The numbers vary from 800 to 3000. 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 cover that Israel gave that gives Sabra and Chattila 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 Defense, but stayed on as Minister of State and eventually by within a year, became Minister of Trade and Industry.

Speaker 1:
[47:47] And goes on to become then Defense Minister and finally Prime Minister.

Speaker 4:
[47:51] Some of the commanders who had served, interestingly enough, even the one who had warned against bombing in 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 Qahan Commission to say exactly what they had seen, et cetera, were not allowed to do so.

Speaker 3:
[48:16] 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.

Speaker 4:
[48:31] Absolutely. 400,000 Israelis take to the streets to denounce a war that has 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.

Speaker 3:
[49:08] 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 Willie, and if you don't want to wait for that, just join the club, empirepoduk.com, empirepoduk.com, and you can get that straight away without waiting. Till the next time we meet, Kim, thank you very much indeed. It's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.

Speaker 1:
[49:29] Goodbye from me, William Durham.

Speaker 7:
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