“Rape”

By Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj

I thought that the most brutal war was in Vietnam, hunger only spread in Africa, refugee camps in Gaza an insult to humanity, Nazism forever gone, and apartheid abolished.

Then, I saw her, a Palestinian woman still in shock from the trauma she was subjected to eighteen years ago. Garbage lined our way to where she lived. As we reached the camp, alleys were so narrow that only one person could walk at a time. We saw a funeral procession take the body out of the coffin to pass through one such alley. We entered what once was a very modern hospital, which is now converted to a place for the homeless. A family of men, women, children and elderly was crowded in a single room. The smell of cooking issued from the common kitchen. A child was screaming, another asking for food, and others playing. The wife quarreled with everyone in the room.

Suad begged, “Please do something! Please stop them from coming at night. I am scared.” I looked around and her mother whispered in my ear, “She imagines that they attack her every night.” Suad was shaking as she said, “They will kill me after they killed the rest.”

Suad and her old mother are the only survivors of an entire family wiped out with machine guns in Shatila refugee camp. When the killers found out that she did not die, they raped her despite her wounds.

I left saddened and burdened by questions looking for answers. I stopped as a girl screamed in my face, “Where are those to whom we were soldiers? How did they abandon us and leave us to the wolves?” I could not reply. I felt dizzy as I repeated her questions, “Where are the Arabs? Where is the homeland? Where are the freedom slogans? Where is international law? Where are human rights?”

The situation in the refugee camps in Lebanon is beyond description. What is going on there is an organized crime. It is unknown who is committing the crime. And everyone has abandoned them. The governments of Syria and Lebanon have forsaken their human responsibilities. We are not talking about political complications, alliances, and conspiracies. We are talking about humanity!

The PLO has abandoned them. Despite the abundance of Palestinian political factions, their main concern is competing with one another, not serving the people in the camps. The main faction in the PLO looks after some of its leaders only.

The Arab countries have abandoned them. None have a benefit in supporting them or helping them. At the same time, many countries contribute to rebuild Beirut and compensate Lebanon for the losses resulting from Israeli bombardment. No one is thinking of compensating the Palestinians for the massacres, terror, uprooting, poverty, disease, and rape they have been suffering from. Beirut has become alienated from herself trying to flee its sad memories and regain its cultural status that distinguished her from other Arab capitals of oppression. It is alienated and needs a lot of money. What it needs more urgently is humanity.