News / Palestine

Sabra and Shatila massacre will keep haunting Zionist criminals, says Hamas

Thursday, 16 September 2021 6:00 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 16 September 2021 6:00 PM ]

A file photo shows the aftermath of the 1982 massacre of thousands of civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

Hamas says the massacre of thousands of civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982 will never be forgotten or forgiven with the passing of time.

Marking the 39th anniversary of the massacre, the resistance movement said in a statement that “the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people will continue to haunt the Zionist perpetrators and all those who colluded with them."

"Massacres won’t break the Palestinian people’s steadfastness," Hamas said, adding that the Palestinian people will never forget their martyrs and will exert all efforts to prosecute those who committed massacres against them.

It is time, the statement said, to end the Israeli culture of impunity that permitted the Sabra and Shatila massacre to happen nearly four decades ago.

"The Zionist entity is a criminal entity that is not interested in peace and that the so-called negotiations with it would not lead to any tangible results."

On September 16, 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Phalangist militias stormed the refugee camps in west Beirut and began a massacre of mostly Palestinian civilians.

Sabra and Shatila massacre

On September 16, 1982 Lebanese militias armed by Israel stormed into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut and brutally killed up to 3,500 civilians.

Around 3500 people, including many women and children, were brutally murdered in a depraved three-day killing spree by Christian Phalangist militias, with the cooperation of Israeli forces.

The Israelis fired flares throughout the night to light up the killing field – thus allowing the militias to see their way through the narrow alleys of the camps.

After the Phalangists had finished their orgy of killing, the bodies of dead children littered the streets like discarded dolls, with bullet holes in the back of their heads.

As the bloodbath concluded, Israel supplied bulldozers to dig mass graves. In 1983, Israel’s investigative Kahan Commission found that Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli minister of war affairs, bore “personal responsibility” for the slaughter.

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