Tel al-Zaatar massacre

In 1976 Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp was home to more than 30,000 people; mostly Palestinians but also Lebanese. Initially established as a refugee camp to accommodate Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, the camp was administered by UNRWA from 1952 until the Cairo Agreement of 1969, which put the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in charge of the camp. This attack led to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Following a killing of five Phalangists in the Christian controlled area of Fanar on December 6, 1975, Maronite local militia captured hundreds of Muslims in East Beirut at random and massacred 150 to 200 of them in what became known as Black Saturday. This led to more fighting between the rival factions. Tel al-Zaatar camp became a target of both the Phalangists and the NLP Tigers. Christian militias such as the Kataeb Regulatory Forces and the Guardians of the Cedars began attacking Palestinian refugee camps shortly after the war began due to the PLO's support for Muslim and leftist factions. On January 18, they forcibly took control of the Karantina district and carried out the Karantina Massacre. The Christian forces were initially leery of escalating PLO involvement in the war, but Karantina was inhabited partly by Lebanese Muslims and was located along the main road they needed to resupply their positions in Beirut, so it was considered a legitimate target. Tel al-Zaatar was immediately surrounded by 500 troops from the Kataeb Regulatory Forces, 500 from the NLP's armed wing (the Tigers Militia), and 400 others from various other militias, namely the Guardians of the Cedars. There were 1,500 armed PLO fighters inside the camp at the time. They were mostly affiliated with As-Sa'iqa and the Arab Liberation Front. There were also smaller groups of fighters from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command. To complicate matters further, there were unaffiliated fighters present who fought under the PLO umbrella but did not support any one faction, mostly foreign fedayeen. Factionalism within the camp contributed greatly to the success of the siege, as most of the As-Sa'iqa militants and As-Sa'iqa supporters left. == Siege and massacre ==

Tel al-Zaatar came under siege in early January 1976, when Maronite Christian militias blockaded the camp, preventing food, medicine, and water from getting to the camp's inhabitants. The PLO leadership capitulated and the camp fell on 12 August. Approximately 12,000 Palestinians were displaced from the camp after its conquest and destruction. == Aftermath ==

According to Robert Fisk, many of the survivors of the massacre blamed Yasser Arafat for the high death count. When Arafat visited the survivors, who had been relocated to Damour after Palestinian militias had massacred the civilian population there, he was reportedly shouted down as a "traitor" and pelted with rotten vegetables. The siege enabled Bachir Gemayal to strengthen his position as the head of the Unified Military Command of the Lebanese Front militias. The siege of Tel al-Zaatar also softened the LNM's friction with the Lebanese-led army and as a result, Syria broke off its offensive on the PLO and the LNM, and agreed to an Arab League summit which temporarily suspended hostilities in Lebanon. Hafez al-Assad received strong criticism and pressure from across the Arab world for his involvement in the battle. This criticism, as well as the internal dissent it caused as an Alawite ruler in a majority Sunni country, led to a cease-fire in his war on the Palestinian militia forces. The fall of the camp resulted in commando migration to the south, particularly to the central enclave of Bint-Jubail-Aytarun and the eastern enclave of Khiam-Tayiba where tension escalated. ==Historiography and analysis==

Bassam Khawaja wrote that "As with much of Lebanese history from the civil war period, the details of the massacre are difficult to pinpoint with satisfactory reliability due to a scarcity of sources, as well as contradictions among the sources that do exist." Female political activism Lebanon, at this time, was experiencing a period of “gender anxiety” characterized by a struggle among paternal privilege. The siege of Tel al-Zaatar was a key moment that had women participating in political activism. == See also ==