A Lebanese activist is speaking out in defense of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose alleged involvement in the Sabra and Chatilla massacres is once again in the news following the car bomb death of a Christian militia leader.
Since the murder of Lebanese warlord Elie Hobeika Jan. 24, the Islamic world has been pointing the finger at Sharon. Hobeika was the Lebanese militia’s intelligence chief responsible for the massacres at the refugee camps in Sabra and Chatilla in 1982. After his death, reports from the Arab world say Hobeika had agreed to provide evidence linking Sharon to the killings to an international court in Belgium.
However, Nagi N. Najjar, director of the Lebanon Foundation for Peace, says the real culprits behind Hobeika’s murder are Iran and Syria. Syria, which occupies Lebanon, controls the area of the country where Hobeika was killed.
“Blaming Israel and Sharon was the easy part of the Hobeika assassination. The real mastermind accomplices and executors were Syria and Iran and their proxies in Lebanon, whose agenda involved blaming Israel and destabilizing the entire region,” Najjar says.
Najjar says Syria’s puppet ruler of Lebanon, Ghazy Kanaan, was preparing Hobeika with false allegations concerning the case against Sharon in Belgium. Only after Hobeika’s death was he referred to as the “chief witness” against Sharon.
“That the Lebanese government is a puppet to the Syrian regime is no longer news; neither is the fact that the Lebanese government does nothing without Syrian approval, and that would include the murder of Hobeika,” says Najjar. “It’s politically expedient to blame Israel, as the released information does not substantiate any condemnation of Syria for the murder.”
Najjar points out that Hobeika was murdered in a region known as the center of the intelligence area of Beirut – under the tight control of the Lebanese army and Syrian surveillance.
“The killers are the same ones who gave condolences to the family and walked at his funeral,” charges Najjar.
Hobeika says the murder has all the earmarks of a Hezbollah terrorist operation. Hezbolah is supported by both Syria and Iran.
“This assassination is an old account settled today by Hezbollah to prepare the way for a new regional dynamic, and Iran is responding to today’s realities by flaring up the region, supplying missiles to Hezbollah that could reach deep into Israel,” he says. “These missiles have been used against Israel in an Iranian attempt to kindle a regional war involving Israel after the debacle of the Karine-A weapons ship headed for Gaza. The new Iranian agenda has one goal: the destruction of Israel. … Iran shares with (Osama) bin Laden the same political agenda involving the Islamic takeover of Israel and the removal of all United States presence from the region.”
Meanwhile, a Belgian legal panel is set to rule March 6 on whether Sharon can be tried in the country for his role in the 1982 massacres of Arabs in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The suit against Sharon was brought by 23 Palestinian survivors or relatives of those killed under a 1993 Belgian law that allows war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to be tried in Belgian courts, regardless of where the crimes were committed.
Sharon’s lawyers have denied the competence of the court to judge the affair, saying the killings did not occur in Belgium. An estimated 800 Palestinians were killed by Lebanese militiamen following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Sharon was defense minister of Israel at the time.
