The Sabra and Shatila Massacres: Eye-Witness Reports

These painful and detailed eye witness testimonies, collected in the immediate wake of the 1982 massacres by Leila Shahid (the Palestinian ambassador to France since 1993) and never before published in English, provide a cross section of experiences and vantage points of the four-day killing spree in the camps. The lengthy introduction, based on contemporary chronologies, newspaper accounts, and documents as well as subsequent historical works, discusses Sabra and Shatila against the background of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon as well as the hour-by-hour evidence concerning Israel's involvement.
Leila Shahid, Palestinian ambassador to France since 1993, was living in Beirut at the time of the massacres. The six interviews published here, conducted in the immediate wake of the events, were published by our sister quarterly, Revue d'etudes Palestiniennes, Vol. 6 (Winter 1983), and have never been published in English. They are part of a larger study conducted by the author. Linda Butler is associate editor of JPS.