Permission to narrate

Edward Said writes about the story of the Palestinians

  • Israel in Lebanon: The Report of the International Commission by Sean MacBride
    Ithaca, 282 pp, £4.50, March 1984, ISBN 0 903729 96 2
  • Sabra et Chatila: Enquête sur un Massacre by Amnon Kapeliouk
    Seuil, 117 pp, ISBN 0 00 000097 3
  • Final Conflict: The War in the Lebanon by John Bulloch
    Century, 238 pp, £9.95, April 1983, ISBN 0 7126 0171 6
  • Lebanon: The Fractured Country by David Gilmour
    Robertson, 209 pp, £9.95, June 1983, ISBN 0 85520 679 9
  • The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventures and American Bunglers by Jonathan Randal
    Chatto, 320 pp, £9.50, October 1983, ISBN 0 7011 2755 4
  • God cried by Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy
    Quartet, 141 pp, £15.00, June 1983, ISBN 0 7043 2375 3
  • Beirut: Frontline Story by Salim Nassib, Caroline Tisdall and Chris Steele-Perkins
    Pluto, 160 pp, £3.95, March 1983, ISBN 0 86104 397 9
  • The Fateful Triangle: Israel, the United States and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky
    Pluto, 481 pp, £6.95, October 1983, ISBN 0 86104 741 9

As a direct consequence of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon an international commission of six jurists headed by Sean MacBride undertook a mission to investigate reported Israeli violations of international law during the invasion. The commission’s conclusions were published in Israel in Lebanon by a British publisher: it is reasonably clear that no publisher could or ever will be found for the book in the US. Anyone inclined to doubt the Israeli claim that ‘purity of arms’ dictated the military campaign will find support for that doubt in the report, even to the extent of finding Israel also guilty of attempted ‘ethnocide’ and ‘genocide’ of the Palestinian people (two members of the commission demurred at that particular conclusion, but accepted all the others). The findings are horrifying – and almost as much because they are forgotten or routinely denied in press reports as because they occurred. The commission says that Israel was indeed guilty of acts of aggression contrary to international law; it made use of forbidden weapons and methods; it deliberately, indiscriminately and recklessly bombed civilian targets – ‘for example, schools, hospitals and other non-military targets’; it systematically bombed towns, cities, villages and refugee camps; it deported, dispersed and ill-treated civilian populations; it had no really valid reasons ‘under international law for its invasion of Lebanon, for the manner in which it conducted hostilities, or for its actions as an occupying force’; it was directly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

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[1] Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1980.

[2] A persuasive study by Mark Heller, an Israeli political scientist at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, A Palestinian State: The Implications for Israel (Harvard University Press, 1983), represents an exception. Heller argues that a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is in Israel’s best interests, and is more desirable than either annexation or returning the territories to Jordan.

[3] The background of collaboration between Zionist groups and individuals and various European fascists is studied in Lenni Brenner’s Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal (Croom Helm, 1983).

[4] There is one exception to be noted: Lina Mikdadi, Surviving the Siege of Beirut (Onyx Press, 1983). This delivers a Lebanese-Palestinian’s account of life in Beirut during the siege.

[5] Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon (New York, 1965), and Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon 1958-1976 (Delmar, NY, 1976).

[6] Elie Salem, Modernisation without Revolution: Lebanon’s Experiences (Bloomington and London, 1972).