The newspaper did not carry the details of the raid, which had occurred the previous day (Friday, September 17), which was the day in which the Israeli forces completed their occupation of Beirut. The newspaper had to cover the sites reached by the Israelis, the battles between the national forces and the invasion forces, the places shelled by Israeli tanks, the fires that broke out, the numbers of killed and wounded, and the arrests and raids, which included homes, hotels, party headquarters, magazines, and news agencies. In short, the newspaper could not dwell on the occupation of the Research Center while the forces of the occupation were penetrating the capital, making fast their grip on the city and the suburbs. The newspaper dedicated a complete page to detailed coverage of the events of Friday (the subject of the headline in the Saturday edition), in which we find the following lines about the Center: “Likewise a number of Israeli officers stormed the Palestinian Research Center in al-Sadat Street. Eyewitnesses reported that the officers stayed about two hours in the Center, after which they emerged, having planted an explosive device in one of the walls. It was ignited electronically from outside, where two tanks and a number of soldiers were in position; then the officers returned to the Center with large sacks. The witnesses reported that they took a large number of documents from the Center.” Here ends the part concerning the Center, which comes within the coverage of the raids and the arrests. If we go to the eighth and last column of the same page, we find a few lines that say: “In the southern suburb also numerous Israeli forces raided private homes in Burj el-Barajneh and the Shatila Camp. Reliable sources have said that elements of Saad Haddad’s militia have entered the Burj and Shatila and Sabra Camps, and reports speak of the torture of Palestinians by the Haddad militias.”
Thus it is clear that the news of the massacre, which had begun on Thursday night and continued throughout the day on Friday, did not reach journalists until Friday night, so they did not learn of the occurrence of “torture” of Palestinians. Only on Sunday, after the end of the massacre, would the news spread and the headline on the first page read:
Massacres in the Camps
After that there were two pictures which had been taken of some of the victims, next to each other, stretching across the entire page, with a smaller headline underneath them:
News of 1, 400 Killed and Wounded in Sabra and Shatila
The Raiders Invaded Houses and Hospitals
and Exterminated Everyone in Them,
Including Wounded, Women, and Children
I apologize for the digression (although it is necessary, at least in my view), and return to the Research Center. The Israeli troops were intent on storming it as soon as they deployed in Beirut. Thus the massacre was simultaneous with the destruction of the Center and the plunder of its contents, the two separated in time only by a few hours, since the massacre began in the evening while the Center was invaded by day (because relative darkness in the first instance was a necessary tool, whereas daylight, in the second instance, was needed to examine the books and documents). They examined, ripped, destroyed, and laid waste, and then they left, having taken what they did. It’s said that the contents of the Center library were transported in a caravan of trucks headed for Israel, and that experts joined the officers and the soldiers in examining what they wanted to plunder. They carried away nearly ten thousand books in Arabic, English, French, and Hebrew, not to mention the manuscripts and rare maps and documents, including the documents of the Supreme Arab Authority and the All-Palestine Government, as well as the papers of the Palestinian secret police during the Mandate and a complete set of statistics and documents from the Land Agency in the government of the British Mandate in Palestine, with a documented register of land ownership in Palestine at the time of the Mandate, together with papers and magazines from the time of the Mandate, and files and microfilm tapes and voice recordings.
Then they smashed the Center’s furniture and the equipment in the reading room — typewriters, copiers, microfiche readers — and left the place completely destroyed.
Dr. Anis Sayigh, director of the Center from 1966 until 1977, says that out of concern for the contents of the library, the Center had prepared four microfilms of the files of information, keeping two copies and giving one to the Arab League and another to Baghdad University. He says that the Center issued a periodical with lists of the library’s acquisitions of new books, which was sent to significant libraries. In addition he put in place a secret plan to preserve the rare books, documents, and maps, which would allow them to be transported rapidly at any sudden danger. He says, “We had a comprehensive secret plan for preserving the contents of the library, known to the Center officials; why did they not carry it out?” Dr. Anis asks the question in his low voice, looking out from behind his thick glasses, and repeats the question calmly, as if the ferment in his breast were a personal matter, something one should not make public or show to others.
Like him, I wonder. I wonder all the more because the researchers in the Research Center and its officials, who returned to work days after the event, did not prepare any lists of the stolen books, documents, and maps with the help of the films deposited with the Arab League or Baghdad University, or with the lists of new books preserved in more than one library.
At the end of 1983 negotiations ended between the PLO and Israel, by means of the International Red Cross, with respect to the exchange of prisoners. The negotiations included the plundered contents of the library, and their return was agreed to. The books arrived in Geneva from Israel in 113 large wooden crates, and were taken by a representative of the International Red Cross to Algeria, in order to deliver them. No one appeared to represent the Center, and the PLO office in Algeria did not have a list of the plundered contents, so it kept deferring the delivery. Then finally it took delivery of them.
After the crates were received they were transported to al-Kharouba Camp, and from there to the Tibissa Camp, which had received the units of the PLO army that had left Beirut with the resistance at the end of August in 1982. Samih Shbeib, a researcher with the Center and the head of its documentation department, says that he went to Algeria at the beginning of March in 1986, in the company of Sabri Jiryis, director of the Center (i.e., two and a half years after the date when they were supposed to be in Algeria), and that they met the Palestinian ambassador there, who informed them that the representative of the Red Cross and the representative of the International Archive had remained in Algeria two weeks, waiting for the director of the Center or his representative in order to deliver the books and documents to him, and that in the end he had been forced to accept the crates by weight without examining what was in them, because of the absence of any list of the contents.
Samih Shbeib says that he traveled to Tibissa to examine the contents of the library. When he arrived he asked the director of the camp about the library of the Research Center, and says that the man was amazed by the question, as he had no knowledge of the matter. After a thorough investigation it became clear that the library was in the custody of an Algerian officer in a camp bordering on the Palestinian camp in Tibissa. Shbeib adds that the officer accompanied him to a large, locked warehouse, and that he found the corresponding crates covered with tarps. The Algerian officer said to Shbeib, “This is the Palestinian archive, which I have been guarding for more than two years, inspecting it daily, fearing rodents and the like. Thank God it has remained just as it was delivered; it is an important trust. God help you and bring you back to your homes!” The next day Shbeib was able to examine twenty crates, all of which were intact.