Lawyers representing 28 Palestinian who hold Sharon responsible for the 1982 Beirut massacres finished presenting their case before a Belgium court this week. The court must now decide whether a 1993 law giving the Belgian judiciary authority to prosecute persons accused of war crimes outside the country can be used to summon Sharon before a Belgian judge. A 1999 amendment to the law already ruled that heads of state, traditionally immune from prosecution, could be tried under the provisions of the Belgian law.
The group of Palestinians, some of whom bear visible scars of the massacre carried out by Christian allies of the Israelis in 1982, originally filed their case in the summer. The Belgian prosecution accepted the complaint and began to process it, but these actions ceased in September, when the basic question of whether the Belgian court has authority to put Israeli Prime Minister Sharon on trial was referred to the Belgian court. Having argued their case, the Palestinian plaintiffs and their lawyers now wait to see what the court’s decision will be. In any event, the decision is expected to take several weeks, and the court may summon lawyers representing Sharon for to hear their arguments as well.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Having reached the large Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila near Beirut, the Israeli army encircled the camps and than sent in Lebanese Christian militias to rout the Palestinian fighters they believed to be in the camps. The Christian militias, with years of bitter enmity to the Palestinians and particularly incensed over the recent assassination of their leader, went into the camps and engaged in an orgy of destruction, savagely murdering hundreds of Palestinians. The Israeli army, which was just outside the camps, did not intervene for several crucial hours, during which the militias ran amok.
Sharon was cleared by an Israeli commission of inquiry of direct involvement, but was found indirectly responsible, and forced to resign as Israel’s Minister of Defense. In 1986, Sharon sued Time magazine for claiming that he knew of the planned massacres in advance. Sharon won the case, and Time was forced to apologize and pay damages. Due to this outcome, it seemed that no further public accusations against Sharon would take place – until Belgium’s extraordinary law enabled Palestinians to once more accuse a man they hold responsible for the Lebanon tragedy. (www.albawaba.com).
