The War of the Camps was a subconflict within the Lebanese Civil War in which Palestinian refugee camps were besieged by the Shiite Amal militia.
Sometimes described as being Muslim versus Christian, the Lebanese Civil War was actually a multifaceted conflict in which there was nearly as much intraconfessional violence as there was violence between Muslims and Christians. The War of the Camps was one of several of these small wars fought between members of the same religion.
Background
In the wake of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 tens of thousands of Palestinians came to live in southern Lebanon. Palestinians with skills and capital were allowed to reside in cities and live dignified lives, those who could offer little to the Lebanese economy were kept into squalid refugee camps.
After the establishment of Palestine Liberation Organization Palestinians in Lebanon began to form paramilitary brigades in Lebanon which alienated the native population. These brigades would create roadblocks where regular Lebanese would be made to pay “tolls” to support the Palestinian cause. Beginning in the late 1960s, Palestinian groups also gradually turned South Lebanon into a de facto state of their own used for launching attacks on Israel. Although in time the Shiites of Lebanon would come to support the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel, while the PLO controlled South Lebanon, Lebanese Shiites resented the Palestinians.
Israel had driven Yassir Arafat and thousands of Palestinian fighters out of Lebanon in 1982 but Arafat actually returned the next year, this time settling in Tripoli. By this time, however, Hafez al-Assad resolved to expel Arafat from Lebanon.
Assad himself sought to control the PLO and Lebanon. Thus, Assad recruited Saeed Musa, also known as Abu Musa, to drive Arafat out of the country which Assad hoped to dominate. Musa was a fellow Palestinian, he used Arafat’s public willingness to negotiate as a pretext for war. In November 1983, Musa fought Arafat’s faction for a month at Tripoli until Arafat once again was on his way to Tunisia.
Unfortunately for Assad, Arafat’s Fatah forces crept back into Lebanon over the next two years, esconsing themselves in the many refugee camps in the South. This time, Assad recruited the more powerful Amal militia to dislodge Arafat’s loyalists.
The benefit for Assad of this alliance was more complete control of Lebanon. The benefit for Amal was 1. revenge for decades of Palestinian arrogance 2. further control of Lebanon.
By 1985 Amal was also in conflict with Druze militias in the Shouf region of Lebanon. The Palestinians were allied to the Druze.
The Events
The War of the Camps began in May 1985 Amal began to seal off refugee camps, including Sabra and Shatila, in Beirut, and began shelling. Virtually all the houses in the camps were reduced to rubble and the inhabitants were reduced to eating rats, dogs, and cats. There were even requests made to religious authorities for permission to eat the dead. Death tolls are imprecise, but many thousands died. In all likelihood the death toll was higher than in the better known Phalange Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The most intense fighting took place in 1985, but continued for three years.
In Pity the Nation Robert Fisk quotes a fellow Times of London correspondent:
- The destruction of Sabra is so great that few not living below ground can have survived. The way in which Amal and the Palestinians fought in the corridors of the hospital for the old in Sabra while the patients were still there indicates that neither side cares too much for civilians caught in crossfire. The way in which the Palestinians build their houses over the bunkers must make civilian casualities inevitable. But they want it both ways. If you ask how many fighters they have they say all Palestinians are fighters, men, women, and children. But then they yell if a woman or child gets killed. (610)
The siege of the camps ended in 1988 because Amal needed to divert resources to its gunbattles with Hezbollah. Also, the Intifada in the West Bank renewed the Palestinian issue as a pan-Arab cause. Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal, who until that time that been trying to kill Palestinians, announced “Amal has decided to lift its military siege around the camps as a gift to our brothers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
Later, in the summer of 1988, Abu Musa returned to the camps. Another 127 people were killed before Fatah surrendered. The camp wars ended in July 1988, by which time only seven families were left.