Kim Ghattas

And some of them went to their commanders while this was unfolding and said something is terribly wrong inside this camp.

There are Lebanese Christian forces killing people, civilians.

And the answer was, it's not our problem.

Arabs will kill Arabs.

He was approached by the American officials and he said, yes, yes, yes.

And then, you know, they were just buying time.

The numbers vary from 800 to 3,000.

It's very hard to come to a definitive count because so much remains unknown about exactly how it unfolded.

And again, it wasn't the first massacre of either Christians or of Palestinians or both, but it was...

the impunity of it and the way it unfolded and the failed promises of America for safety and the cover that Israel gave that gives Sabra and Shatila such terrible connotations of tragedy and impunity.

There was an investigation into it, the Kahan Commission

in Israel said that Israel had clear responsibility, even if it was not directly involved in the actions on the ground, but it had responsibility for what happened and for how it unfolded.

Ariel Sharon did not want to resign.

Begin did not want him to resign.

In the end, the terrible compromise was that he would step down as minister of defense, but stayed on

as Minister of State and eventually by within a year became Minister of Trade and Industry.

Some of the commanders who had served, interestingly enough, even the one who had warned against bombing an Arab capital,

They oversaw what was happening in Sabra and Shatila.

They were demoted or put into early retirement.

No one was really sanctioned.