Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
19 May
SYRIAN ALLIES ATTACKED PALESTINIAN CAMPS IN LEBANON
On this day in 1985, three years after Israel's allies carried out the massacre in Sabra and Shatilla, the Lebanese Amal Movement attacked Palestinian militias to wrest control of the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and Burj el-Barajneh in Beirut. The Amal Movement was heavily backed by Syria and indirectly supported by Israel. Virtually all the houses in the Palestinian refugee camps were reduced to rubble. The Palestinians were greatly outnumbered. Fighting continued intermittently. In April 1987 Amal finally lifted the siege and handed over its positions to the Syrian Army.
هاجم الحلفاء السوريون في لبنان المخيمات الفلسطينية
19 مايو
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1985 هاجمت حركة أمل اللبنانية الميليشيات الفلسطينية للسيطرة على مخيمات اللاجئين في صبرا وشاتيلا وبرج البراجنة في بيروت. كانت حركة أمل مدعومة بشدة من سوريا وبدعم غير مباشر من قبل إسرائيل. عمليا ، تحولت جميع المنازل في مخيمات اللاجئين الفلسطينيين إلى أنقاض. كان عدد الفلسطينيين المقاتلين أقل بكثيرمن قوات امل. استمر القتال بشكل متقطع. وفي نيسان 1987 رفعت حركة أمل الحصار وسلمت مواقعها للجيش السوري.
19 June 1985, MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project)
"Red Cross workers finally are able to go into the sprawling refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh to carry out the dead and wounded Palestinians following a month of heavy shelling from surrounding Amal militia and Lebanese army troops. Privation and suffering here and in the nearby camps of Sabra and Shatila have been extreme. “For every bucket of water,” says a survivor, Fatima Makkieh, “there were two buckets of blood.” ‘Abd ul-Latif Daib, another survivor, cries, “All there is above our heads now is fear.” In Burj al-Barajneh and nearby Shatila, Palestinian fighters still hold out, but the smaller camp of Sabra has been completely overrun and demolished.
Elie Hobeika, the 27-year-old Israeli-trained Phalangist commander who directed the Sabra/Shatila massacre of September 1982, is now president of the executive committee of the rightwing Lebanese Forces militia, superceding chief-of-staff Samir Geagea. In March, Geagea’s troops fiercely shelled Palestinian camps and Muslim neighborhoods in Sidon and then withdrew. This, and the vengeful rampage of Palestinians and Lebanese into Christian villages in April, displaced tens of thousands, with hundreds of casualties on all sides. As Israeli troops withdraw to their “security zone” on the Lebanese side of the border, the communal homogenization of southern Lebanon seems practically irreversible. Where Geagea had scorned any Lebanese entente under Syrian tutelage, Hobeika proclaimed it time to “return to the Arab fold” and dismissed his alliance with Israel as “a passing cloud.”
"The battle for control of three Palestinian refugee camps grew more intense today, with [Amal] Shiite Moslem militiamen and Lebanese Army troops flattening buildings with tanks and bulldozers, and Palestinian defenders mounting ambushes from tunnels...
Amal has said it is determined to stop the guerrillas from re-establishing their structure in Lebanon; the network was destroyed by the Israeli invasion in 1982. The militia has said it fears that Israel will retaliate against Shiites in southern Lebanon if the Palestinians re-establish a significant military presence in the country...
A total of 30,000 [mainly Palestinians] live in the three camps. The defenders are believed to number about 1,000, including teen-age boys and girls.
At a news conference Thursday in the Jordanian capital of Amman, Yasir Arafat, the PLO chairman, said the Amal leader, Nabih Berri, had struck a secret deal with Israel whereby the Shiite militia would obstruct Palestinian and Lebanese guerrilla activity against Israel from southern Lebanon."
There were many atrocities by the Syrian-backed Amal militia, and cold-blooded killings of Palestinian captives. The quality of the Palestinian resistance was captured in the remark reported by the UK Sunday Times of one weary Amal fighter trying to occupy the camps: “Everytime we relax, a guy jumps out of a drain, throws a grenade and disappears.”
4-minute video: raw footage from 1985 of Palestinian camps in Lebanon inder attack by Lebanese Amal militia
On this day in 2021, police called for fire service support to remove Palestine Action protestors from the roof of the Elbit-owned UAV Tactical Systems factory in Leicester. However, Union Officials immediately reminded Senior Managers that "as firefighters, we are, and remain, a proud humanitarian service and our role does not involve law enforcement." Once the safety of those involved had been confirmed, Fire Brigades Union members withdrew from the incident. Leicestershire Brigade Chair, Graham Vaux added that “the Fire Brigades Union stand in support of Palestinian solidarity and the right to protest.”
The Morning Star noted that Elbit’s five weapons factories are in Leicester, Oldham in Greater Manchester, Shenstone and Tamworth in Staffordshire, and in East Kent. It also has five non-manufacturing sites. Two are headquarters offices in Bristol and London. The other three are at Royal Air Force bases: RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, RAF Valley in Anglesey in north Wales and RAF Barkston Heath in the East Midlands.
"The RAF allows Elbit to use the three bases for testing the drones before they are sent to Israel — another example of the British government’s complicity in Israel’s repression of the people of Palestine."