Every Circle of Hell

Tel Zaatar

Your walls have become the

people's newspaper.

The bomb in your hand explodes

into a poem.

The tresses of all the women of

the earth yearn to become

your flag.

All the books of poetry dream of

becoming exploding mines

under your soil.

--Moayin Bseisso, Palestinian poet, 1976

Even in the best of times, the refugee camp at Tel Zaatar, meaning Hill of Thyme, was a terrible place to live. An island of sweltering poverty not far from the high-rises of Beirut's Christian merchants, it had no modern plumbing, and water had to be drawn from wells and carried by hand to the tin-roofed shacks where the refugees lived.

The original Palestinian refugees in the camp--both Christians and Moslems--came from villages along the border of what is now northern Israel. They settled at Tel Zaatar in 1950. Later they were joined by impoverished Lebanese from areas of South Lebanon devastated by Israeli attacks. The flow of refugees eventually swelled to a crushing total of 30,000. At Tel Zaatar they provided a cheap labor force for the Christian-owned factories in the area. For most, it was a sweatshop existence in airless rooms where they rolled tobacco or cut cloth or finished dresses.

Major Offensive. There were skirmishes between the Palestinians and the Christian Phalangists going back to 1969. Eventually the encircled Palestinians began stockpiling arms, food, medicine, ammunition. At the same time, they built underground shelters that were to prove the backbone of resistance. On June 22, as the civil war grew fiercer, the Christian rightists launched a major offensive against Tel Zaatar and its sister camp, Jisr Basha, which fell a week later.

Early in the siege, the Palestinians twice raised--and twice betrayed--the white flag of surrender. They did so with bitter calculation. As the Christians drew near to accept what they thought was Palestinian capitulation, the Palestinians gunned down the would-be victors. "We did this so that there would be no temptation later in the battle to contemplate surrender," one Palestinian commando explained. "By deceiving the enemy, crying wolf, we closed the door on any possibility that our white flag would be honored."

In this all-out struggle, the women fought alongside the men. Carrying field radios on their backs, they acted as artillery spotters, calling in the Palestinian long-range artillery and rockets poised in West Beirut. At least 20 were killed in action. The children, too, joined in. Toward the end, the brunt of the fighting was borne by the Palestinian Ashbals (Sons of the Lion), youthful fighters often no more than 13 years old.

That the Palestinians managed to hold out as long as they did was something of a miracle. TIME'S Dean Brelis cabled: "Overlooking Tel Zaatar from the Christian headquarters, I could not see how anyone remained alive in the camp. The Christians had every kind of artillery piece from 75-mm. howitzers to 155-mm. heavies. The arsenal of machine guns ripped into the fragile tin-roofed shelters of Tel Zaatar with the thundering force of an avalanche. Later, talking to Jean Hoefliger, chief of the International Red Cross, who had just gone into the camp to help the wounded, I asked him what it was like. 'Every circle of hell,' he said."

Last week the Christians' final assault began with a devastating artillery barrage. The defenders were hardly able to resist. Said one of the last radio messages from inside the camp: "We are without water. We are close to the breaking point. Three thousand people are seriously wounded or dying of hunger. Every empty plot of ground is the site of a grave."

Surprise Attack. The breaking point came, according to several survivors, with another trick. Red Cross trucks approached the camp, and the defenders thought they were part of an already settled plan to evacuate noncombatants. They held their fire. Thereupon Christian troopers launched a surprise attack while the trucks fled.

Palestinian youths fought on for several hours in hand-to-hand combat, but by now thousands of refugees were streaming out of the camp through a hail of sniper fire and heading toward West Beirut. There many waited at a sporting center for relocation in empty Beirut apartments and villages in southern Lebanon. Mostly they were the very old, the very young or women. "We ran out of water, out of food, out of everything," said one elderly man, Abdullah Youssif Joumah, as he wiped away tears with his white kaffiyeh. Said another: "The boys who were fighting, may God rest their souls, were all killed."

When the seven-week siege was over, the Christians could claim one of the most decisive victories of the 16-month civil war. A major Moslem enclave in Christian territory had been obliterated, and the tormented nation had advanced one step closer to partition. Although both sides insist they still want a united Lebanon, each has begun setting up a separate administration in its own territory.

On the Hill of Thyme, a steam shovel scooped up a dozen corpses in front of a crumbling building. Its last living inhabitant, a 111-year-old man named Mohammed Selim Kanaan, was carried out as bands of looters wandered through the streets with armfuls of blankets, radios and canned foods. In the distance, a bell slowly tolled.

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