Dbayeh R.C. (needs verification): Massacre of Dbayeh Camp

I was born in Dbayeh camp, another exile for the Palestinians outside our beloved homeland Palestine. It is not a pride to say that I was born in an exile, but I find it a pride to say I was born in a Camp which was renamed after my cousin The Martyr Hanna Eid. This is the same Camp which was the home of many martyrs, who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Palestine, such as Mounir Sabbagh. Here is my testimony to the massacre of Dbayeh Camp by the Lebanese Right Wing.

After finishing the Black Saturday massacres and the Karantina massacre in 1975, in the begining of 1976 the war criminal Bachir Gemayel of the Lebanese Flangist Party , together with Camille Chimoun´s Liberal Party and the murderous gang (The Cedar Guards) personally led an attack on Dbayeh Camp, which was inhabited by around 3000 peaceful and defenseless Christian Palestinian refugees. The Cedar Guards infamous slogan was “It is a must for every Lebanese to kill a Palestinian child”. At that time the only official militants in Dbayeh Camp were three Palestinian policemen armed with pistols and handguns in accordance with the Cairo Agreement of 1969, the few unofficial militants were residents of the camp armed with very light artillery, such as handguns and hand grenades, just for showing off.

The camp was built on a hill near the Beirut-Junyeh road, and it was 100 kilometers away from the Palestinian (Israeli) border, besides the camp was strategically weak, because it was like a tiny island in the middle of the sea, as it had only one entrance, which was the only asphalted road, which passed through the Lebanese town of Dbayeh. The camp residents did not have any quarrel with the neighboring Lebanese citizens. For all these reasons the camp was never used for any military purposes. The Lebanese knew that fact, and the Palestinians knew that too.

Bachir laid siege and bombarded the camp heavily for about five days, as if the camp was a fortress. Even the church of the camp was not exempted of the terror of the Lebanese Right Wing led by Bachir Gemayel. The church (St. George’s Church) was bombarded by many bombs. One of the bombs hit the roof of the church leaving a hole in it. Other bombs exploded in the front yard of the church. The school was also bombarded heavily with bombs and rockets. The fragile houses of the camp were bombarded too, and a number of them were destroyed.

The Palestinian leadership did not have any means of supporting or defending the camp at that time, according to what was declared on the radio. The only support was a moral one aired on the radio personally by Farouk al Qadoumi (member of the Palestinian Central Committee) in the form of words of solidarity. On the last day Bachir and his militants took control of the camp. After the surrender of the camp, the inhabitants were gathered on a muddy field nearby the camp, which was a former French military camp, called by the inhabitants” Il Ishli”. They were held for a whole day from dawn to sunset without any water or food. Bachir ordered his men to separate women and children on one side, while the men on the other side, as he personally ordered the digging of a very big hole in the middle of the field with bulldozers. Other bulldozers were to be used to abolish the camp completely. The hole was to be used as a mass grave for the inhabitants of the camp, off course after killing them. Some women and children knelt down for a last prayer to God. Meanwhile Bachir’s men started sorting and picking some male inhabitants to liquidate them, as a number of Bachir’s men robbed all the houses of the camp. The inhabitants could even see Bachir’s Akkari men loading the stolen things on their trucks. The Akkaris (residents of the Lebanese city of Akkar) stole everything includingn the chicken, which some Palestinians had in their backyards.

As Bachir’s men were digging and deepening the hole, Bachir’s older brother Amin (now ex-president of Lebanon) and a delegate from the Church arrived. Bachir was not pleased to see them, and it was easy to hear Bachir getting angry and swearing in the silence of death, which engulfed the residents of the camp. Amin and the Church delegation held a meeting with Bachir. The meeting took some hours. As the meeting was going on, Bachir’s men circled around the inhabitants of the camp. They humiliated them by kicking the men, who were gathered like cattle and forced to sit on the muddy ground, spitting on them, harassing the women with words and sexually, and even terrifying and bullying the children. One of Bachir’s men kicked one of the children on his back, the mother shouted:” Are not you afraid of God? We are Christians like you, he is only a kid”. That man answered her by saying, your "Palestinian" Christ is a one-eyed-Christ, and your "Palestinian" Virgin Mary is a whore. For some time, these words became like a new slogan for the Lebanese Christian Militia, as those words were repeated by more than one of Bachir’s militants, who were surpassingly Christian. Even the retired Orthodox priest, who lived in a house nearby the road leading to the Monastery, he was not exempt from insults. Bachir´s men took him too with his family to il-Ishli Field. In the beginning he was ordered to sit on the muddy ground, then another militant came with a chair, and he ordered him to sit on it, as he said to him: "This is out of respect to the dress, which you are wearing and not to you". A helicopter with an Israeli TV-crew was allowed to fly over and report this. One of Bachir’s men, who was guarding the women and children, waved with his hand towards the helicopter and said loudly to the women:” Smile whores, these are your cousins, they came to take pictures of you”. After the meeting with Amin and the church delegates was over, the angry Bachir fired few shots in the air. Some of the kids put their hands on their ears out of fear. Then Bachir unwillingly gave orders to his men to stop digging the mass grave and to release the inhabitants. Some bulldozers crashed some houses to the ground on their way out, especially those houses, which were nearby the field.

In total there were over 60 Christian Palestinian men, young and old, who were slaughtered in cold blood. Earlier a group of young Palestinian men, mainly teenagers, tried to flee to Tel el Za`ater Camp or Beirut, in order to escape being murdered by the Lebanese Christian Militia. The furthest point which they reached was the outskirts of the camp near the so-called Protestant school. That school was built and owned by three German missionary women, who were in Al Bassa in Palestine, and then they followed the refugees to Dbayeh. Near that school there were high buildings owned by Lebanese. The group divided into two smaller groups, one took refuge in the Protestant School (known too as The Evangelical School), while the other took refuge in one of those buildings. The owner of that building (Manawel/Manuel) was at one time friendly with the Christian Palestinians of Dbayeh Camp. Manawel´s wife hid them, but less than an hour later he delivered all of them to Bachir’s militia to be slaughtered in cold blood. Bachir’s militants tied their hands behind their back with metal wires before killing them, and then they cut off their ears. Bachir’s militants carried the ears around as medallions. Some old and sick men did not go to the shelters, instead they remained in bed, where they were shot and killed. Others were killed by hitting them on their front head with an ax. Abu al Heija, one of the three Palestinian Policemen, he was shot several times, and then he was hit with an ax on his head. An old blind man was shot with his retarded son in the darkness of the night, as they were trying to find their way back to the shelter. These two got lost after going to the public toilets, which were built for the Palestinians by the UNRWA, because the Lebanese Government did not allow the Palestinians to build toilets in their houses. I find it very sarcastic that, The Bachir’s militants declared these two as Libyan Militants. Another old man was killed by driving an armored tank over him alive, a twelve year old girl was raped to death in front of her family, and then Bachir’s men burned her body in the back yard of her house. That girl was the daughter of the owner of the only modern two-storied building near Il Ishli at that time, the same building which Bachir turned as his temporary headquarters, where he held a meeting with Amin and the Church Delegate. An old shopkeeper and his crippled wife were killed in cold blood, as Bachir’s men robbed their little shop. Bachir’s men dumped their bodies in the old French shelters near Il Ishli. Their bodies were discovered few weeks later by one of the kids, who were playing nearby. With difficulty the priest of the church in Dbayeh Camp (St. Georges Church) was granted permission at the evening of the massacre to gather the bodies of those, who were slaughtered. Some of the camp´s inhabitants were allowed to help. They gathered the bodies at the altar of the church, while the bodies were wrapped in white sheets. As the priest was holding the funeral mass, one of Bachir’s men, who used to have friends in this refugee camp, he stormed like an animal inside the church. Then he started disrespectfully disgracing the corpses of the murdered Dbayeh Camp inhabitants by stepping on the bodies and heads of the dead, as he spit and swore at them.


Earlier on the 4.th of December in an unsuccessful attempt to invade the Camp, or an attempt to know the strength of the Camp´s defense, my 16 years old brother Rashid Haddad was killed. Two days before holding the 40- day’s funeral mass for my brother, the camp got invaded by Bachir and his forces.


The names of the slaughtered Palestinians of Dbayeh Camp on the hands of Bachir’s militia are: Rashid Haddad, Asa´ad Il-Banna, Habib Jarjura, Abu George and Um George Il-Sha´er, Abu Ilyas Il-Ammouri and his son Gerius Il-Ammouri, Zikar Eid, Gabby Eid, Adib Il-Masri, Mounir Rayya, Salim Mondos, Adib Il-Shayeb, and the three Palestinian policemen, one is called Abu Il-Heyja, and the other is Abu Hadeed..... And the list of the names goes on.


For more about the massacre of Dbayeh Camp, you can also read another testimony by another witness on link: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/9948