The New York Times · 13 August 1976

CP-1976-034

Hundreds of Embittered Palestinian Refugees From Tell Zaatar Camp Gather at School in Beirut

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BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 12 (Reuters)—Hundreds of Palestinian refugees from the Tell Zaatar camp assembled by the truckload at an empty school in southwestern Beirut today.

There were old people and children, and many of the women were weeping over the fate of their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers who had died fighting or had been taken from them by the right-wing Christians who have had the camp under siege. Elderly women in black, their faces tattooed, sat surrounded by children, clutching bundles containing all they could bring with them.

A helper handing out packets of food from a cardboard box was mobbed by scores of ravenous children, eager for their first peaceful meal after 52 days under siege. A middle-aged woman wearing a black headscarf wandered around gesticulating wildly. Her companion said she had been deafened by shellfire.

A teen-age girl burst into tears, crying out her troubles in the school hallway. Her father and brother had died in the camp. A little girl ran up to an interpreter, clutched him tearfully by the arm and said her father was dead and she wanted to see her mother, who was in a hospital.

Some of the 2,000 refugees at the school sat apart, silent and stunned, keeping their shock and grief to themselves, ignoring the furor echoing down the corridors. For a few there was the joy of finding a friend or relative who lived in western Beirut and had gone to the school hoping for a reunion. “One or two from every family have been killed,” an old man said.

He had just arrived from the camp after being robbed of his watch and money by what he described as rightist gunmen. He had been making his way through rubble-filled alleys toward safety. He was taken to a point outside the camp where all male prisoners were being collected, he related.

There young men were picked out, he said, and someone was told to take them away and shoot them. Almost every group had a similar tale: While making their way from the camp their men were taken away by right-wing gunmen and they did not expect to see them again. But no one said they had actually witnessed men being shot.

Though scores no doubt died in the final hand-to-hand battle for the camp, it was impossible to tell whether unarmed inhabitants had been killed. Another old man said he thought many young men had been saved by the arrival of Amin Gemayel, a son of Pierre Gemayel, head of the Phalangists, the leading right-wing Christian group.

He said Amin Gemayel saw the men being rounded up and ordered his militia not to shoot them. But by then, the old man said, he had already seen a good number taken away and heard the sound of shooting. For the thousands at the school, today marked the end of a bitter experience.

It also marked the destruction of the only home many have known, even though it was a squalid shantytown. The weeping will stop but the bitter memories will remain. Palestinians and Lebanese alike will find it hard to forget the siege of Tell Zaatar.

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