Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2002, pages 11, 71

Special Report

On Anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, Israel Puts Marwan Barghouti on Trial

By Rachelle Marshall

The first stage of Marwan Barghouti’s trial in a Tel Aviv courtroom began Sept. 5, with Israel charging the 42-year old secretary-general of the Fatah movement with “murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and activities in a terrorist organization.” Barghouti is the second most popular Palestinian leader after Yasser Arafat, and is regarded as Arafat’s most qualified successor. He is also known as a political moderate. It is therefore worth noting that Barghouti will be standing trial on the 20th anniversary of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Although the timing may be coincidental, the two events are closely related.

From Sept. 16 to 18, 1982, Israeli-backed Lebanese Phalangist militias tortured, raped, and slaughtered more than a thousand defenseless Palestinians in crowded refugee camps just outside Beirut. No one was spared—films taken afterward showed the mutilated corpses of babies, children, and even pet animals. While the killing was going on the Israeli army provided the militias with flares, drinking water, and other logistical support. In February 1983 an Israeli Commission of Inquiry found then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and his top generals, who allowed the militias into the camps and did nothing to stop the killing, guilty of “indirect responsibility” for the crime.

The massacre took place while Israeli troops were occupying Beirut, and was the bloody climax of Israel’s massive invasion of Lebanon. When the invasion began in June 1982 Prime Minister Menachem Begin said its purpose was to drive PLO forces away from Lebanon’s border with Israel in order to stop their cross-border attacks. But, in fact, the PLO had scrupulously observed a U.S.-brokered cease-fire with Israel for more than a year. The true purpose of Israel’s invasion, according to Israeli scholar Yehoshua Porath, was to deny the PLO a territorial base in Lebanon in the hope “it will return to its earlier terrorism... undercutting the danger that the Palestinians might become a legitimate negotiating partner for future political accommodations.”

Porath is quoted by former U.S. Undersecretary of State George W. Ball in his 1984 book, Error and Betrayal in Lebanon, published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “By destroying the PLO as a political force,” Ball added, “the Begin government hoped to gain a free hand to impose its will on the leaderless West Bank Palestinians, while restricting the concept of Palestinian ‘autonomy’ to the supervision of such routine tasks as street cleaning and garbage collection.”

There could be no more accurate description of what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, miraculously rehabilitated from his role as facilitator of a mass murder, is trying to achieve today.

The Israelis could have locked Marwan Barghouti away indefinitely without a public trial, but they chose instead to put him in the dock as a stand-in for the Palestine National Council, the Legislative Council, and the Fatah movement. If he is found guilty the verdict will strip the entire Palestinian leadership of its legitimacy. Former South African President Nelson Mandela pointed this out in a statement quoted by the London Guardian on Aug. 15. “What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me,” he said. “The government tried to delegitimize the ANC and its armed struggle by putting me on trial.”

Like Mandela, Barghouti is an especially dangerous adversary because he is anything but an extremist. He was a strong supporter of Oslo and continues to advocate peaceful coexistence with Israel once the occupation ends. As a free man he would be an effective spokesman for the vast majority of Palestinians who are eager to accept a just peace. Consequently the Israelis tried for at least 81 days to force him to confess to being a murderer. During that entire period, according to Barghouti’s attorneys, his head was covered by a filthy hood, and for at least 18 hours a day he was forced to sit in a child’s chair with his hands and feet tied as interrogators questioned him. Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, told the Jerusalem Times that the Israelis also arrested their 16-year old son Qassam and told Barghouti that unless he confessed they would plant a bomb in a car carrying Qassam, blow it up, and claim the boy was a suicide bomber.

Through it all, Barghouti refused to cooperate with his interrogators, maintaining as he will in his trial that he is a political prisoner and that it is the occupation that is illegal and should be punished. Given Barghouti’s importance as a symbol of that resistance, the Israelis will make every effort to find him guilty. It would be a verdict the rest of the world must reject if there is to be a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile, what takes place in the Tel Aviv courtroom is likely to be as much of a political show trial as any that took place during the Stalin era, and have as little legitimacy.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.