Thirty-five years later, for the victims' families of the 1982 Massacre, including 29 Shia, this tragedy is magnified by their impression that the Hezbollah-led "Resistance" has been averting its eyes for more than three decades from their oft-repeated support for the Palestinian cause. And by the "Resistance" failure today, for solely political reasons to give desperately needed aid to slow the deterioration of Lebanon's Palestinian camps.
One urgent question still being put by survivors of the massacre and supporters of Palestine to the Hezbollah led "Resistance" is whether at long last it will put its oft-touted " Moral and Religious Duty" to support the Palestinians goal of Full Return to Palestine " above Lebanon's intensifying Shia-Sunni sectarian politics. If so, Lebanon's Palestinians will finally be granted the elementary civil rights which will expedite their return to Palestine, help grow Lebanon's economy, and give some much needed credence to shop-worn "Resistance" speeches.
Palestinians from Syrian camps also victims of Lebanon's Satilla Massacre
Palestinian refugees from Syria, including the approximately 40,000 who fled to Lebanon from that country's nearly seven year civil war, also share the continuing trauma of the 1982 Massacre at Shatila. One reason is because many Palestinians living in Syria's ten camps lost relatives who were in the Shatila and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood on those fateful days of September 16-18 1982. The Palestinians in both countries are also closely connected by family, with many having been neighbors from among the 531 Palestinian villages Zionist forces ethnically cleansed during the three year Nakba (1948).
Historically, since the 1970's when the PLO held broad powers in Lebanon, Syria based Palestinians refugees passed relatively easily across their border crossings for visitations. The largely unimpeded Syria-Lebanon border passages continued as Syria occupied Lebanon essentially unimpeded with as many as 40,000 troops from the beginning of Lebanon's civil war in June of 1976 until UN Security Council Resolution 1551 was enacted in September of 2004. Just five months later the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others affected this arrangement as it ignited the so-called "Cedar Revolution" and forced Syria's occupation forces and many of its intelligence operatives back into their own country. Syria retaliated by tightening border crossings.
Today, Palestinian refugees in Syria who back in 2011 represented approximately 3 % of Syria's population continue fleeing their war-torn host country and are one of the refugee groups most urgently seeking to find new homes in Europe. Palestinians are proportionally the most over-represented minority of all those escaping the carnage across Syria. UNRWA estimates that as of this month more than 20% of Syria's pre-war estimated 450,000 Palestinians have fled the country. Some estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 have taken the death boats to Europe with hundreds dying en route. The Syrian war has also driven all but approximately 7000 Palestinians out of the Yarmouk neighborhood south of central Damascus. Yarmouk was Syria's largest 'camp' with a pre-war population of nearly 150,000. The fact that they, among others, are risking their lives on various dangerous sea and land routes towards Europe reflects a realization among many Palestinians that, 95% being non-Shia, there is no future for them in a "Resistance" Iranian-Shia dominated Middle East.
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