Middle East: Sharon Takes the Stand

Israel's Defense Minister spreads the blame for the massacre

He spoke calmly and deliberately, never raising his voice or losing his temper. Ariel Sharon, Israel's embattled Defense Minister, was on the witness stand, testifying before the commission of inquiry that is investigating the circumstances surrounding the Beirut massacre of Sept. 16 to 18. Since the hearings were being held in a lecture hall of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the setting seemed as relaxed as a college seminar. In fact, it was a tension-charged inquiry that could lead, in a few months' time, to the resignation of the tough and ambitious Sharon and perhaps even to the fall of the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Sharon had intended to deliver his 20-minute opening statement in a public session as a way of demonstrating that, according to one of his aides, he had "nothing to hide." After that, he had planned to submit to questioning by the three-man panel behind closed doors. But the members, sensing the intensity of Israeli interest in the subject, ignored Sharon's repeated appeals for privacy and continued to interrogate him for 2½ hours. Only later in the day, when Sharon discussed such sensitive matters as the covert dealings between the Israeli government and the Lebanese Forces, the Phalangist-dominated coalition of Christian militias, did the panel members allow him to testify for an additional three hours in private session.

In an address to the Knesset only four days after the massacre, Sharon had acknowledged that the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) had given limited field support to the Lebanese Forces' military operation that led to the massacre of at least 400 Palestinian civilians within the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps.

This time, it appeared, the Defense Minister's strategy was to place the primary blame for the events that led to the mass murder on Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan and the Israeli army. Beyond that, Sharon seemed to be implying that the entire Begin Cabinet bore the responsibility for allowing the Lebanese Forces to enter the Palestinian camps.

On several occasions, the panel, headed by Chief Justice Yitzhak Kahan, questioned Sharon on the wisdom of the original plan to send the Lebanese Forces into the camps of their enemies, the Palestinians, in order to clean out any remaining pockets of Palestinian guerrilla resistance. Had the Israeli officials involved not realized that such a massacre of civilians might take place? they asked. Replied Sharon: "I would say that no one thought the Lebanese Forces would behave like us. I didn't think so. Our I.D.F. has its own moral code. But it is a very far cry indeed from that assumption to anticipation of a bloody massacre." Sharon also contended, "On the subject of vengeance as I know it among the Arabs," revenge was not ordinarily directed toward "children, women and old people, nor toward entire populations, or hundreds of people." Later he told the panel that no Israeli soldier or commander "imagined in his worst dream the terrible scenes that were revealed to us in Sabra and Shatila . . . We were surprised, astounded and shocked by the massacre that took place."