First published in The Age on September 20, 1982
Massacre stirs world outcry
BEIRUT, 19 Sept. — Israel today began to move its troops out of parts of West Beirut after a furious protest from the US President, Mr Reagan, over the massacre by Lebanese militiamen of hundreds of people in two West Beirut Palestinian camps.
Mr Reagan expressed “outrage and revulsion” at the weekend slaughter of an estimated 1400 men, women and children in the Shatila and Sacra camps. He said, in effect, that the re-entry of Israeli troops into West Beirut last week was responsible for the massacre, although he stopped short of directly blaming the Israelis for the killings.
Peter Cole-Adams reports from WASHINGTON: The Reagan Administration’s statement yesterday was one of the toughest yet issued by Washington in a rapidly mounting crisis in American-Israeli relations.
The US had strongly opposed Israel’s move back into West Beirut “for fear it would provoke further fighting”. Israel, Mr Reagan pointed out, had claimed that the move would prevent “the kind of tragedy that has now occurred”.
In Beirut, Lt. Gen. Raphael Eytan, Israel’s military Chief of Staff, today accused the US presidential envoy, Morris Draper, of refusing to set up direct contact between Israeli and Lebanese armies, which he said could have prevented the massacre. He also said the Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Wazzan, “didn’t want any such contact”.
The announcement of the Israeli withdrawal, leaving the Lebanese army to guard Palestinian refugee camps in the suburbs, came as Israel’s Prime Minister, Mr Begin, ordered a full report on the massacre.
Israeli forces announced that an overnight curfew would go into effect in West Beirut.
Read the article by Peter Cole-Adams in The Sydney Morning Herald.