crowded. I heard the first rumors from a staff officer in military intelligence

crowded. I heard the first rumors from a staff officer in military intelligence, though neither he nor anyone else I asked was sure if they were true. But it seemed that the Phalangists had been sent into Sabra and Shatila. And that they had begun killing people. I'd like to think that, in Amos Yaron’s or Amir Dori’s place, I’d have been sufficiently wise not to have allowed the Phalangists into the camps in the first place. But the truth is that I’m not sure. If the decision was to send someone in, I certainly wouldn’t have sent in Israeli troops. But unlike other Israeli generals, my first-hand knowledge of the Phalangists was limited to a single lunchtime encounter in Tel Aviv. My impression from that meeting was that they were overblown, post-adolescent thugs, not murders. I did, of course, know the milita’s reputation for untrammelled violence in the Lebanese civil war. Still, I might conceivably agreed to have the Phalangists go in — under strict orders to limit themselves to keeping order — in the knowledge that our own troops were stationed in the area immediately around the camps. Yet from the moment of the first rumors — as soon as I heard even the hint that killings were underway — I had not a second’s doubt about what had to be done next: get the Phalangists out. Immediately. I felt a particular urgency because of the rooftop gripe I’d heard the day before, about our troops having to do their fighting for them. That made me pretty certain that, at the very least, we had indeed sent the Phalangists into the camps. I tried to reach Arik, but couldn’t get through to him. I contacted Oded Shamir, the former intelligence officer who was his main liaison with the army. I told him that if the Phalangists were inside the camps, he had to urge Arik to get them out. Then I called Tsila Drori, Amir’s wife. I asked whether she’d spoken to him that morning. She said no. He’d called her the day before, however, and she was sure he’d be in touch before the New Year. “Please, swear to me, Tsila, you'll give him a message,” I said. “I was there yesterday. Tell him please do whatever he can to stop this action. It will end very, very badly.” I told her he would know what I meant. It was too late to stop it altogether. The slaughter — the round-ups and the beatings and the killings of Palestinians in the two camps — had indeed begun the night before. Amir found out about it late on Friday morning. Not from me, I believe, but from his staff officers. He ordered the Phalangists to stop. But they didn’t. No one in command acted, at least successfully, to make sure that the militiamen got out of the camps. The atrocities went on. It was another 24 hours before the militamen finally withdrew. 206 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011677