Stop the Oil – Stop the Genocide - The Moral Rot of the Arab and Islamic World

 But for the Corrupt, Client Arab Regimes, Israel’s Holocaust in Gaza Could Have Been Prevented

As Rumy Hassan, an Emeritus Associate Professor at Sussex University explains, there was nothing inevitable about Israel’s Holocaust in Gaza. It could have been prevented from the start if the Arab regimes had exercised their economic and political power to prevent it.

Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman, Qatar’s Al Thani clique, Kuwait’s Sabah dynasty and all the other corrupt cliques that rule the Middle East are more afraid of their own people than the imperialist powers. These Arab elites are parasites who rob their people of their wealth. They prefer to fete and fawn over Trump than insist on an end to Israel’s genocidal rampage.

One of the ways that the West has achieved domination is by playing on the divisions in Islam. They have used the Islamic religion in order to divide and rule, playing on the differences between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam.

Ibn Saud was plucked out of the desert in the early 20^th century and both armed and funded by British imperialism. The austere Wahabi sect was used to attack Arab nationalism and Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz. Islam was their justification for repressing their own peoples. We have seen many iterations of this subsequently.

ISIS under its original name, Al Qaeda of Iraq, was a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq. Al Qaeda itself was a product of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and consisted of the fighters that Saudi Arabia exported to that country at the US’s request. As Hilary Clinton admitted Al Qaeda too was a creation of the US funding all manner of Islamic Fundamentalist groups as was the Taliban (in concert with Pakistan’s ISI – intelligence agency). See Whose Monster? A Study in the Rise to Power of al Qaeda and the Taliban

Hamas are exceptional in being from the Sunni branch of Islam although originally they were intended by Israel, which supported their creation, as a counter-weight to secular Palestinian nationalism.  Netanyahu in particular made support for Hamas an integral part of his opposition to a 2 State Solution. It is because they morphed into becoming a resistance organisation that Saudi Arabia has become their bitter enemy.

In the Yom Kippur War in 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, hoping to reconquer the territories they lost in the 1967 War. After initial successes they were pushed back by Israel with the help of the US Administration under Henry Kissinger.

Egypt’s Third Army, having crossed the Suez Canal, was surrounded in the Sinai peninsula. The Americans under Henry Kissinger applied extreme pressure on Israel not to attack them.

The Arab regimes, led by Saudi Arabia, instituted an immediate halt to oil supplies. There were 50% cuts in the first week increasing after that. Oil prices rose four-fold and the United States got the message and forced Israel under Prime Minister Golda Meir to call a halt.

The same could have been done anytime during the current Holocaust if the client Arab regimes had done the same. Unfortunately the situation in the Middle East today is not what it was in the wake of the disastrous Oslo Accords that Yassir Arafat signed up to which normalised relations with the Israeli state.

Having recognised Israel the PLO gave the green light to the Arab regimes to do the same. It is unfortunate that it was the leadership of the PLO led by Fatah who paved the way for America’s client regimes in the Arab East to also recognise and normalise relationships with the Israeli state, in what became known as the Abraham Accords.

It is significant that no Palestinian faction has made the demand to stop the oil (as far as I’m aware). This disastrous attitude to the Arab masses, who hold the key to the situation, has allowed Israel to attempt to complete the Zionist project unopposed by ethnically cleansing Gaza. The West Bank is set to follow if they are successful in Gaza. Indeed it is already happening.

It is a matter of shame that the Arab masses and the working class in particular have sat idly by watching the unfolding horror in Gaza. The death of these wretched regimes is long overdue. Not only are the Palestinians experiencing Genocide and unspeakable horrors but the Arab masses also have an interest in seeing that the wealth of the region is not squandered by their rulers in the casinos of the West and in buying up prestigious parts of London and Paris.

The Arab Spring of 2011 needs completing. The key Arab regimes that need to be deposed are those of Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Al Qaeda HTS regime in Syria, which the West has given its full support to, should be next in line. The United States and the West are doing all they can to force the Lebanese state to disarm Hezbollah in order that Israel can have free reign to reconfigure Lebanon according to their confessional plans and no doubt begin to colonise the southern part up to the Litani river.

So far Hezbollah have rejected calls to disarm, knowing full well that if they do so they will leave Lebanon defenceless against Israeli attacks. Those, led by President Aoun, who are trying to strong arm the Shi’ite militias are doing Israel’s work for them. So far Hezbollah has refused to disarm.

All the Arab Kings and Sheiks, from the UER and Kuwait to Qatar need to be overthrown and the Arab people can then take their destiny in their own hands. Instead we saw, with Trump’s visit to the region, the Arab regimes from MBS in Saudi Arabia to the al-Thanis in Qatar fawning over Trump, a political gangster and felon.

Amazingly these regimes offered Trump trillions of dollars in arms contracts. The Al Thanis of Qatar outdid themselves in their fawning obeisance, obscenely offering Trump a new $400m presidential jet. The thanks that the Qatari Emir got was Israel’s bombing of the Hamas delegation in Doha.

Rumy Hasan’s article lays bare the fawning and treacherous behaviour of the Arab  regimes in all its gory detail.

Tony Greenstein

This article first appeared in Savage Minds, September 2025

The Moral Rot of the Arab and Islamic World

These Countries Have Been Complicit in the Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza

Rumy Hasan

Sep 21, 2025

Outside the mainstream media, there has been much commentary on the inaction of western governments regarding Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, many of whom are complicit, and in the case of the USA, not only complicit but a participant joined at the hip with Israel. So, when it comes to Israel, they are morally bankrupt and rank hypocrites by their complete disregard for international laws and conventions that they implore other countries, such as Russia, to follow. But there has been little comment on the role of the Arab and Islamic world—this is important because Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs. This article provides a small contribution to filling this lacuna.

On 11 November 2023, just over a month after the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel, Arab and Islamic countries held an extraordinary summit in Jeddah with the objective of discussing “the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people” (OIC, 2023). By then, it was clear that Israel was not just going after Hamas but systematically destroying Gaza and its citizens: the commencement of genocide. The lengthy resolution (which does not have paragraph numbers; Saudi Press Agency, 2023) that was adopted on 12 November stipulates:

We decide to: Condemn the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the war crimes as well as the barbaric, inhumane and brutal massacres being committed by the colonial occupation government against the strip and the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds. We demand ceasing this aggression immediately.

It further states:

Inaction is considered a complicity that allows Israel to continue its brutal aggression that kills innocent people, children, the elderly, and women, and turns Gaza into ruin.

Call upon member states of the OIC and the Arab League to exert diplomatic, political, and legal pressures, and take any deterrent actions to halt the crimes committed by the colonial occupation authorities against humanity (emphasis added).

So, these two paragraphs point for the need for concrete actions to halt Israel’s “brutal aggression” and “crimes”. It further makes this commitment:

Activate the Arab and Islamic Financial Safety Net … to provide financial contributions and support — economic, financial, and humanitarian — to the government of the State of Palestine and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

It sets out this precondition: “The precondition for peace with Israel and the establishment of normal relations rests on ending its occupation of all Palestinian and Arab territories.”

So, what happened in the weeks and months after this summit? Pretty much nothing as no concrete actions were ever taken. Hence, no deterrence was provided and the slaughter and destruction continued. The countries which had normalised relations—Egypt, Jordan, and the signatories to the Abraham Accords (UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco)—did not rescind these. UNRWA was banned by Israel in early 2025 without a peep from the Arab and Islamic world.

The resolution makes this reference to Egypt: “Support all steps taken by the Arab Republic of Egypt to confront the consequences of the brutal Israeli aggression on Gaza. We support its efforts to bring aid into the strip in an immediate, sustainable and adequate manner.”

This was a grotesque distortion of the truth as Egypt, the largest Arab country with a population of over 100 million, has been complicit in the blockade of the Gaza strip: it has allowed Israel to control its border with Gaza, so that little aid has been allowed through, contributing to starvation and disease. Moreover, like Jordan, it ruthlessly represses public anger at the genocide. Egypt’s priority has been to ensure that it continues to receive the almost $2 billion aid from the USA each year, so adheres to the Camp David Accords and, accordingly, refrains from challenging Israel.

Leaving aside the actions of the non-state actors Hezbollah and the Houthis, since the 2023 summit, true to form, the governments of Arab and Muslim countries continued to do nothing despite the mounting toll amounting to over 200,000 deaths and injuries, the vast majority civilians, and Gaza being reduced to an uninhabitable rubble. A glaring example of their moral rot came in September 2024 when, during a meeting with the then US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman confessed: “Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do …” (The Atlantic, 2024).

A further example is that of the UAE which had kept a deafening silence throughout Israel’s assault and never hinted at leaving the Abraham Accords, when suddenly, following Israel’s announcement of more Jewish settlements in the West Bank in August 2025, its foreign minister Lana Nusseibeh piped up by proclaiming “Annexation in the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE” (BBC News, 2025). It beggars belief that the genocidal assault on Gaza and the killings and destruction in the West Bank did not cross a red line.

Wind the clock forward by 22 months, on 15 September 2025, the Arab and Islamic countries again held an extraordinary summit—this time in Doha, Qatar. The trigger for this summit was the bombing by Israel on 9 September of premises in Doha where Hamas representatives were deliberating upon a ceasefire deal. The Qataris naturally reacted with fury; housing the USA’s largest military base in the Middle East, they felt betrayed by the Americans, a supposed ally, for not preventing the attack. They now know that future Israeli attacks are possible and will, again, be greenlighted by the Americans.

There was some hope, even expectation, that this time, the summit would agree on concrete measures against Israel. The Final Communique makes many forceful points including:

1. Reaffirm that the brutal Israeli blatant aggression against the sisterly State of Qatar, and Israel's continued aggressive practices, including crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation and siege, as well as settlement activities and expansionist policies, undermine prospects for peace and peaceful coexistence in the region.

Paragraph 6 stipulates:

6. Support the efforts of States engaged in mediation, in particular the State of Qatar, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the United States of America, to end the aggression on the Gaza Strip, and, in this context, to reaffirm the constructive role played by Qatar and its valued mediation efforts with their positive impacts in support of endeavors to establish security, stability, and peace …

The truth is that the USA is militarily and diplomatically assisting Israel in its aggression on the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been complicit in the blockade—hence, notwithstanding Qatar’s mediation efforts, there is no “security, stability, and peace” in the Strip. Quite the opposite.

There is as usual much condemnation and appeals to international law. Paragraph 14, however, makes a general reference to “urgent action”:

14. Reaffirm the necessity of urgent action by the international community to halt Israel's repeated aggressions in the region and to stop its ongoing violations of the sovereignty, security, and stability of States …

This is naïve and self-delusional as the “international community” (a meaningless epithet) has never taken any action “to halt Israel's repeated aggressions in the region” especially in the past two years when Israel’s actions reached genocidal levels.

Finally, paragraph 15 does advocate concrete action:

15. Call upon all States to take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people, including by supporting efforts to end its impunity, holding it accountable for its violations and crimes, imposing sanctions on it, suspending the supply, transfer, or transit of weapons, ammunition, and military materials — including dual-use items — reviewing diplomatic and economic relations with it, and initiating legal proceedings against it (emphasis added).

But there is no sign of any sanctions being imposed. The “supply, transfer, or transit of weapons, ammunition, and military materials” is done by western countries, above all the USA, which has shown no interest in halting this nor of ending economic relations. There has been no indication that the Arab countries who normalised relations with Israel, are reviewing, let alone terminating, these.

Paragraph 20 makes this false statement:

20. Commend the pivotal role played by the representatives of Arab and Islamic States that are members of the Security Council, foremost among them Algeria, Somalia, and Pakistan, in defending the Palestinian cause, in putting an end to the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, securing a ceasefire …

These countries certainly argued for it, but they decidedly did not put an end to the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and secure a ceasefire. As usual, the USA blithely ignored such overtures.

Paragraph 24 is, to put it euphemistically, economical with the truth:

… calls upon OIC Member States to exert diplomatic, political, and legal efforts to ensure Israel’s compliance, as the occupying power, with its binding obligations under the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice on 26 January 2024 in the case concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

There is no mention that the ICJ’s ruling stemmed from the initiative of South Africa—not of any Arab or Islamic country—to charge Israel for violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

So, just as in the 2023 summit of Arab and Islamic states, no concrete actions were set out in the communique of the 2025 summit for OIC members to take. With 57 member countries, comprising of an estimated 1.8 billion people or nearly a quarter of the world’s population, the Organisation of Islamic Countries boasts that after the UN, it is the largest bloc of nations. But when it comes to these countries’ co-religionists being mercilessly starved and slaughtered in Gaza, they have proved resolute in not taking any actions that could put real pressure on Israel and its backers to stop the genocide.

In May 2025, US President Donald Trump visited the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. While some $2 trillion of investment deals were reached, there was no mention by the Gulf leaders of Gaza, let alone their leveraging this enormous commitment, to pressure Trump to stop Israel’s assault. Qatar could also have used its personal “unconditional” gift to Trump of a Boeing aircraft valued at $400m to apply pressure but refrained from doing so. It acted as a US vassal and was rewarded by being bombed by Israel four months later with Trump’s knowledge

By wilfully ignoring a key point of the 2023 summit, Arab and Islamic countries thereby acknowledged their complicity in the genocide: Inaction is considered a complicity that allows Israel to continue its brutal aggression that kills innocent people, children, the elderly, and women, and turns Gaza into ruin.

Concrete actions that could have been taken

The most effective measure, with an immediate impact, would have been the Gulf states halting exports of oil and gas, and they could have asked other OPEC member states to join the embargo: spot prices would have shot up with governments becoming worried about the deleterious impact on their sluggish economies. There would have been inevitable anger from consumers, already suffering from high energy prices caused by the Ukraine war, and pressure on their governments to take firm measures. In turn, real pressure would likely have been applied to Israel to stop its offensive and withdraw from the Strip. This has a precedent: the 1973 OPEC oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel during the 1973 October (Yom Kippur) war.

Furthermore, they could have threatened to not follow through with investments promised to Trump with a further threat of disinvesting. This would certainly have concentrated western leaders’ minds, and the penny would have dropped that support for Israel was having a profound cost.

Another important measure would have been the annulling of all treaties with Israel: Egypt rescinding the Camp David agreement and Jordan annulling its peace treaty. True, the USA would have threatened to withdraw aid, but they could have retorted that stopping genocide is more important. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco could have annulled the Abraham accords and so ended normalisation. The Palestine Authority could have terminated the Oslo Accords, thereby stopped being a quisling entity—and started to vigorously lobby Arab governments to take these actions, as well as lobbying western governments, especially the USA, to stop supporting Israel’s genocide and other myriad crimes.

The Arab League and OIC could have submitted a motion to the UN General Assembly similar to that of resolution 3379 of 1975 which deemed that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”—this would have doubtless again been adopted. They could also have called for an annual public holiday on May 15^th to commemorate the Nakba demonstrating that the Palestinians are not isolated.

Not only were these actions of solidarity not taken but there is little sign of their even being seriously considered. The ineluctable truth is that over the genocide in Gaza, the Arab and Islamic world has demonstrated a deeply set moral rot.

---

References

BBC News (2025) September 4, UAE warns Israel that annexing West Bank would cross 'red line' - BBC News

Final Communique Issued by Arab-Islamic Emergency Summit in Doha (2025) September 15, Qatar news agency

OIC (2023) Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit, November 11,

https://www.oic-oci.org/

Saudi Press Agency (2023) November 12, Joint Arab Islamic Extraordinary Summit Adopts Resolution on Israeli Aggression against the Palestinian People

The Atlantic (2024) Franklin Foer, September 25, The War That Would Not End - The Atlantic

Previous articles by Rumy Hasan on Savage Minds:

The Gaza War - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

Free Speech and Hypocrisy - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

An Assault on Free Speech - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

(3) The BBC’s Coverage of Israel - by Rumy Hasan - Savage Minds

In Memory of the 2,000+ victims of Sabra & Chatilla who died when the Zionists set the Fascist Phalange on unarmed and defenceless women and children

The Night that Arik Sharon and the Zionists set the fascist wolves onto Palestinian women and children

Perhaps the most haunting memory I have concerns the visit I made to Lebanon in the summer of 1979 at the invitation of the PLO. We were refused visas by the London Embassy of Lebanon and instead had to travel via Syria across the land border. I was on a delegation from the British Anti-Zionist Organisation.

At that time Lebanon was still in the throes of a civil war. In June 1976, with the United States and Israel having given the green light, Syria invaded Lebanon in order to ensure that the Phalangists and their Maronite allies weren’t defeated by the combined forces of the left in the Lebanese National Movement, which the PLO supported, somewhat reluctantly at first.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

There are still some fools who have illusions in the Syrian Ba’ath Government.  But when the Palestinians and their allies were on the brink of power in Lebanon Syria, with the full blessing of Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, invaded Lebanon to prevent their triumph.

In 1979 there was a vacuum in Lebanon. No group held power. The leftists, Druze, Palestinian, Shi’ite and Murabitoun, the Sunni Nasserist militias held power in West Beirut. The Phalange and Christians occupied East Beirut.

Ariel Sharon, Defence Minister and mass murderer who was personally responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla.  He was also best friend of Shimon Peres, leader of the Israeli Labour Party

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

A member of our delegation and myself decided to visit what remained of the refugee camp Tel al-Zatar in East Beirut. It had been subject to a 3 month siege from June till August when it fell to the fascist forces aided by Syria. Up to 50,000 lived in the refugee camp and an estimated 4,000 Palestinians were massacred by Syria’s ‘Christian’ allies.  To this day thousands of the dead remain unaccounted for.

Our delegation to the PLO in 1979

In order to see what remained of the camp it was necessary to cross the border, a veritable no-man’s land with the Lebanese Army dug in, between West and East Beirut and we had to get 2 taxis as no taxi would cross into hostile territory.  On our way back we were detained by the Lebanese army because we had no visas in our passports.

Beirut synagogue at Wadi Abu Jamil which I visited in 1979 - during Lebanon's civil war it came under siege from Israel's Phalangist friends - it was relieved by troops of the PFLP

We explained to them that we had come to Lebanon at the invitation of the Syrian occupying power, which was technically true! After about an hour or so we were released since the Lebanese army was de facto under the control of the Syrian military.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Whilst in Beirut we were given tours of the camps including sewing and woodwork workshops. There are a couple of photographs here.  It is a sad and sobering thought that most of those we met would have been butchered just 3 years later because of the utter stupidity of the PLO and Arafat in leaving the camps undefended and taking the word of the Zionists and their American backers to protect the camps. It was criminal irresponsibility not to ensure that if they had to leave, that sufficient arms weren’t left behind to ensure that the camps would remain protected.

children playing in the streets and alleways of the refugee camps - 3 years after this photo was taken most if not all of them would have been slaughtered by Israel's Phalangist allies

On 6^th June Israel invaded Lebanon. The pretext was the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov.  In fact the assassination attempt had nothing to do with the PLO and was the work of the Abu Nidal group, which had been expelled by the PLO and which was the creature of Iraq’s Ba’athist government. In any event it was a pretext and Argov himself later condemned the invasion.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Israel's invasion of Lebanon began June 6, 1982. Following the assassination of the Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel on September 14^th, whom Israel had imposed on Lebanon and who Syria is widely suspected to have assassinated in a car bomb, Israeli troops entered and occupied West Beirut, contrary to all its previous promises.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

A deal was reached between the PLO and Americans whereby the PLO troops left for Tunisia by ship and the US promised to defend and protect the Palestinian refugee camps. Once again the PLO believed American promises although of course their position by then was extremely weak.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

On September 16, 1982, the Phalangists, fascists who were known to harbour a deep hatred for the Palestinians, entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut. The excuse for allowing the Phalange to enter the camps was that the PLO had left hundreds of ‘terrorists’ behind. The Phalange massacred an estimated 2,000 civilians.

The Israelis fired flares throughout the night to light up the killing fields - thus allowing the militiamen to find their way through the narrow alleys of the camps. The massacre went on for two days. When the massacre had Israel supplied the bulldozers to dig mass graves. Refugees who had escaped to the perimeter of the camp were turned back by the Zionist soldiers.

Israel in the form of its Prime Minister, Menachem Begin tried to excuse their behaviour by blaming it on the ‘Christians’ but it was like putting a rattlesnake in a baby’s cradle. It was inevitable that the Phalange would perpetrate a massacre. 

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Israeli troops surrounded the camps to prevent the refugees from escaping. In Israel a 300,000 demonstration was held to protest the massacre and the government set up the Kahane Commission. In 1983 Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister, was held to bear "personal responsibility" for the slaughter. However this was a whitewash.  The decision to invade Lebanon and then Beirut was a collective decision of the Israeli cabinet, not least its Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Many people thought that Sharon’s career was over but I predicted, and unfortunately I was right, in an article in Tribune, that Sharon would sooner or later come back as Prime Minister. I was right and this most bloodthirsty of monsters came back in time to trigger of the Al Aqsa Intifada.

It is worth reminding ourselves that all the Israeli Zionist parties, from Likud to the ‘leftist’ Mapam and what became Meretz, supported the invasion of Lebanon. Only Israeli anti-Zionists were opposed from the start though, as the Lebanese resistance took its toll, more and more people began to oppose what happened. 

Dov Yermiyah, dissident Israeli Colonel who was dismissed for his criticisms of the Zionists' barbarity

Perhaps the most famous opponent of the war was Dov Yermiya, a reserve Lieutenant Colonel who openly condemned Israel’s bombing of Ain al Hilweh refugee camp.  He said it reminded him of World War II. Because of his open criticisms of the war he was dismissed and he later wrote a War Diary of describing what he had seen. Dov died aged 101 and shortly before his death he announced that he had rejected Zionism. He said of Israel that ‘we have become a nation of savage thugs.’

For further information see Sabra and Shatila:  New Revelations on America’s complicity in what happened.

Below is a personal testimony as to what happened by Dr Alfout Mahmoud.

Two Palestinian women walk past the dead bodies

Continuous Terror

by Dr. Olfat Mahmoud

It was 10 am on Wednesday, September 16, 1982 and I was on duty at Accra Hospital, one of the Palestinian hospitals for Palestinian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon was ongoing and the camps were surrounded by Israeli troops. Throughout the night we had heard stories of terrible things happening in Sabra and Shatila camp just adjacent to us but did not believe them.

“Suddenly we were interrupted by the sound of intense gunfire at the hospital entrance. The foreign nurses urged us all to leave immediately as they were not in danger and could care for the patients. The Lebanese militia were attacking from the position the Israelis had just vacated. Several other nurses and I were on the ground floor. We ran to a window at the back of the hospital, with seconds to spare we clambered out and ran into the garden of a villa behind the hospital. The front gate of the villa was locked; the only way out was over the fence. Once over this, we ran for our lives towards the bridge and then scattered.

We heard that Lebanese militiamen had also killed nurses at Gaza Hospital located inside Sabra and Shatila camp. The foreign nurses and doctors there testified on the Saturday morning, as militiamen were marching them down the camp's main street, they saw hundreds of mainly women and children under guard sitting by a large and recently dug pit. Soon after this, they heard repeated shooting for 10 minutes or more, accompanied by screams and cries.

For two days and nights after the massacre, I slept as if in a coma. I had nightmares filled with the people who'd been slaughtered, all the people I'd known and loved and who were no longer there. When I finally woke up, I found a black cloud of grief and despair had settled around me. Nothing could shift it. It was shot through with flashes of terror that at any moment soldiers would come crashing through the door to kill me and my family. I couldn't bear to listen to the news, and I would cry easily. I just wanted to run away from everything, but my limbs felt too heavy to move. My body was like lead. And my throat was constricted constantly.” *

This is part of my memory of the massacre that took place in the Sabra and Shatila camp in Beirut, Lebanon 38 years ago. Over 2,000 women children and old men were massacred. I can never forget this and nor can all those who witnessed it and were survivors like me.

The tragedy of Sabra and Shatila was and still is a powerful reminder of the occupation of Palestinian land. It is a powerful reminder of the failure of international efforts to find a peaceful settlement to Israeli illegal occupation and to the Palestinian refugees’ endless cycle of displacement. This massacre is only one of the terrible massacres that have affected Palestinians but for me it was and is still an unforgettable traumatic event. Many survivors continue to live in Sabra and Shatila, struggling to make a living and haunted by their memories of the slaughter. To this day, justice has not been served for the war crimes that took place there despite efforts to take this massacre to the International War Crimes Tribunal. It serves as a powerful and tragic reminder of the vulnerability of Palestinians and Palestinian refugees.

On August 4, 2020, the Beirut port suffered from a terrifying and devastating blast that killed over 200 people, made homeless around 300,000 and caused extensive damage to the city. I have been through wars and the massacre but as I heard the shattering of glass, and the movement of the house, I was truly terrified and initially thought that the house was collapsing around me. Just few weeks after that, a new fire erupted in the port. All what happened and is still happening, brought back the painful memories of Sabra and Shatila massacre.

When Sabra and Shatila massacre happened and the killing and slaughter ended, its effects lived on. People were terrified and children would scream whenever they saw the army passing by. Now, after these recent tragic events in Beirut the consequences remain. The sound of breaking glass causes my heart and others to stop with fear. When the fire erupted in the port last week, we all started to open the windows and doors hoping to minimize damage from an expected blast. Many left their houses in terror. Even though we were still under the pressure of widespread cases of COVID-19 and the streets were crowded.

As years pass people in Lebanon, including us Palestinian refugees, continue to witness tragedies that bring back terrifying and tragic memories. I always ask myself, why are innocent people dying because of greed, negligence, corruption, brutality, and lack of humanity? In the face of this ongoing and overwhelming despair my solace comes through my humanitarian work to fight for justice and dignity for Palestinian refugees. I call on people everywhere to fight for justice in whatever way what they can. I have also found strength in prayer and my religious beliefs and so I pray daily for peace and justice for my people and for the other 80 million of refugees and displaced people in the world.

*This is an excerpt from Tears for Tarshiha by Olfat Mahmoud