Making Palestine’s History

It is 40 years since the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, which took place over several days in September 1982. Those terrible crimes, committed by Lebanese Forces with Israeli complicity, have largely gone unpunished although not unnoticed. The memories endure, as Jehan Helou records in her landmark oral history now published in English
under the title ‘Making Palestine’s History: Women’s Testimonies’. We include Jehan’s Preface to her groundbreaking book, as well as an excerpt about Sabra and Shatila from Hadla Ayoubi’s testimony. In addition, we republish Tony Simpson’s eyewitness account from Beirut, which he visited a few weeks before the massacres. Subsequent events were to prove far worse than he anticipated for many residents of Beirut.