On January 24th,2002, Elie Hobeika
one of the most ruthless political survivors of Lebanon's bloody civil war of 1975-1990) was killed in massive car-bomb explosion at his house in the Beirut suburb of Hazmiyeh.
(1)

Robert Fisk, an astute observer of the Middle East, wrote
“Last message from Elie was that bottle of champagne: a magnum of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame Rosé 1988. I never drank it. I felt it was contaminated. It lay in my fridge here in Beirut last night. I know many in Lebanon would like to drink it in celebration. But I suspect that, if I uncorked it, blood would spurt out.”
(2)

Two days before his death, he had met with three visiting Belgian senators from the Sabra and Shatila committee, created after the filing of the complaint in the Court of Appeals in Brussels, Belgium   The senators stressed Hobeika’s willingness to testify in the landmark Belgian case against Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister for his role in the  September 16-18, 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. Mr Hobeika had several times expressed his wish to assist the Belgian inquiry on the massacres at Sabra and Chatila. After Hobeika’s assassination, a statement from the lawyers in the case against Sharon said. "His determination to do so was reported widely on the eve of his assassination. The elimination of the key protagonist, who offered to assist with the inquiry, is an obvious attempt to undermine our case”. Chibli Mallat, the lawyer, said yesterday that Hobeika was a key witness. “We've obviously lost a key character in the story of Sabra and Chatila “
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Speculation about who killed Hobeika started to flow. At last count , there were more than 30 different articles on the subject. They all point the finger at Israel. Four people died in the blast. According to Nasri Lahoud, prosecutor of military tribunal in Lebanon, and the brother of Lebanon's Prime Minister Emile Lahoud, the bomb has the power of 10kg of TNT. “The authors wished to destabilize Lebanon, turn world attention from crimes being committed in occupied Palestine and stop Hobeika from testifying  in Brussels” “ “the crime has Israel’s signature and of its agents” added the minister of interior Elias Murr.
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On the 24th of January 2002, Ariel Sharon declared, “We have nothing to do with this allegation and it is not worth a reaction from our part”.
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Israeli denial and deflection  of blame toward  Syria didn’t stick,  because Syria had protected Hobeika and helped him to become a minister in Lebanon, after the defeat and withdraw of Israeli forces from Lebanon, is Syria.
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Can one believe Hobeika’s willingness to testify against Sharon in Belgium? And what are the relationships between both Sharon and Hobeika? After all Hobeika  was tried in Israel, and was found guilty in the same inquiry which said that Ariel Sharon, then Defence Minister and now Israeli Prime Minister, was "personally responsible'" for the slaughter. Hobeika even supervised the massacre according to a historian and journalist
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The Israelis themselves had named him as the principal murderer and war criminal in the Kahan Commission Report. Further more, knowing his violent past and shifting loyalties, some observers wonder whether his words should be taken seriously, and whether such evidence he claimed to have actually existed.

            Hobeika   knew that he would ultimately be killed, but claimed that he was not afraid of being killed. A few days before the explosion, he claimed that his testimony would clearly establish Sharon's guilt. Hobeika also spoke about his growing fears for his own physical safety. 
(8)

Jean Ghanem, once Hobeika's political deputy, died only four days before Hobeika, two weeks after a mysterious car accident in east Beirut.
Mr Ghanem, a medical doctor who became a Phalangist party official and served under Hobeika's ruthless command, supposedly held documents that Hobeika intended to present to Belgian lawyers. Mr Ghanem, who was  56 , drove his car into a tree in the suburb of Hazmieh - only a few hundred metres from the spot where Hobeika was killed. He died on January 14, 2002  after lying in a coma for two weeks. Mr. Nabieh Berri, the Lebanese parliament speaker, sees a relationship between the two deaths.
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Mr. Ghanem's “accident” was a warning to Hobeika. The killing machine didn’t stop on March 12th,  Michael Nassar, who was a former associate of Elie Hobeika was shot dead in Brazil by a man firing a pistol equipped with a silencer. His young wife, Marie, was shot down beside him. Who will be the next?

What Ariel Sharon's supporters and attorneys were afraid of has come to pass . We now know that March 7th, 2002, the Belgian court decided to pursue the case against Ariel Sharon despite the adverse developments. The Israelis claim that he can’t be tried twice (having been “tried” first in Israel), and  that international law protects criminals with diplomatic immunity  We also know that those who lend support to criminals like Ariel Sharon are guilty of war crimes, are themselves accomplices to those crimes, and must accept the inevitability of accusation and judgement. The example of Nazi collaborators apprehended recently in the US and France suggest that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity. The most important the link between Hobeika and Ariel Sharon is clearly expressed in the testimonies of the witnesses and survivors that want to bring criminal indictments against Ariel Sharon in the Belgian courts.

The testimonies show clearly the involvement of Israeli soldiers and commanders.
(10) Ariel Sharon was Chief commander of Israeli Armed Forces in Lebanon, while Hobeika was chief of Intelligence of the Lebanese Forces. Hobeika was the primary liaison between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) officers and personnel surrounding the camps and the Christian militia members inside in the camps under Israeli control. .  On the morning a car bomb killed Elie Hobeika, news reports from Brussels announced that a war crimes case against Sharon and othershad moved one step closer to trial..

Top Lebanese officials and Syrian state-run radio quickly accused Israel of eliminating a key witness. Hobeika, after all, probably knew more than anyone else about what really happened in Sabra and Shatila. Lebanese militia and Israeli soldiers undertook an orgy of murder, rape and torture from the evening of September 16 until the early afternoon of September 18, 1982. In one infamous instance (recounted by an IDF soldier who gave testimony before Israel's 1983 Kahan Commission inquiry), Hobeika coldly commanded a militia member who had radioed to ask what he should do with 40 women and children his unit had rounded up: "You know exactly what to do with them. Don't ask me a question like that again!" (11)

            Recent Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories confirm in many ways Ariel Sharon as a war criminal. Ariel Sharon recently declared: "The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: we must cause them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price." His statement translated into hundreds of Israeli armoured vehicles and tanks pushing their way through crowded Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza and into the heart of Bethlehem and Ramallah, F-16s and Apache gun-ships overhead rained
bombs and rockets on largely unarmed Palestinian civilians. There was use of heavy weaponry in intensive strikes on densely populated civilian areas, utterly disproportionate to any perceived or real threats. This has resulted in high numbers of civilian deaths and injuries: from February 28th,2002 to March 10th alone, more than 113 Palestinians were killed and 368 injured The vast majority were civilians. Children, women and refugees have been indiscriminately attacked, in contravention of international law, which provides them with special protection. Particularly striking have been the mass roundups of Palestinian males between the ages of 14 to 50 in late March.

Since February 28th, 2002  about 2,200 people - including children - have been arbitrarily arrested and detained in camps far away from their own areas. Inhuman and degrading methods routinely used during these arrests and detentions include blindfolding, strip-searching, and writing numbers on detainees' arms. Palestinians have suffered extensive destruction of civilian property, including houses; workplaces, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, schools and universities, churches and mosques - as well as water and electricity supply lines.  Israel also attacked humanitarian agencies, and denies civilian access to medical supplies and treatment. There has been an effective ban on any movement of Palestinian vehicles in the West Bank, including ambulances. They are shot at on sight. This tightens still further restrictions in force since September 2000 - including hundreds of checkpoints, unmanned dirt- blockades and trenches - making access to work, education, food, water and health services extremely difficult, if not impossible. Since February 28 there has also been an alarming increase in the number of attacks on medical staff, ambulances and hospitals and field clinics, with at least six medical staff killed, 12 injured and five ambulances destroyed. The Israeli attack on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, which began on February 28, 2002, marked a clear turning point. The subsequent military escalation has now spread to civilian areas throughout the occupied territories, including Tulkarm, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Beit Jala,

Ramallah, Qalqilya, Hebron, the Gaza Strip and all refugee camps. These acts are in direct violation of the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which is legally binding on Israel. Several are classed as "grave breaches" - in other words, war crimes - including documented cases of murder and manslaughter, instances of intentionally causing "great suffering or serious injury to body or health" and "extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly". www.society.com/~geneva1 geneva

  It is clear, quite to the contrary of those supporting Ariel Sharon, that the Israeli Prime Minister is involved, once again, as with Sabra and Shatila , in war crimes against the Palestinian people. It is abundantly clear that Ariel Sharon has no intention of supporting any attempt to forge a peace process; indeed, it can be assumed that he will continue to do whatever he can to scuttle the possibility. Those who maintain that he is working for peace are either frightfully naive or frightful liars. He used Hobeika and the Phalanges then, and he is using Zinni now, with the consent of his friend G.W.Bush, president of the United States
As a Canadian, of Palestinian origin, I demand that Ariel Sharon be indicted for war crimes committed against the Palestinian people in the current conflict, and for crimes against humanity in the case of the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Chatila for which he bears direct responsibility. I call on citizens' groups to bring criminal indictments against Ariel Sharon and his Cabinet as may be permitted under the legal statutes of their respective countries.

NOTES:

1. Elie Hobeika Lebanese militia leader who massacred civilians  A leader of the Christian Maronite Lebanese Forces (or as Phalange party) during Lebanon’s civil war.. Born in Kleiat 1956,Hobeika joined the Banco di Brazil in 1978; by then, he was already a rising star in the Phalangist movement. He escaped a coup against him by the Phalangist, Samir Geagea, and went to live in Syria. His later notoriety depends on, From Israel To Damascus: The Painful Road To Blood, Betrayal And Deception, Pride Intrenational, 1999” biography by one of his bodyguards, Robert Hatem, otherwise known as "Cobra".  After the civil war ended in 1990, Hobeika became minister for the displaced,ironic given his violent record. He was later given the electricity portfolio. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,638923,00.html

2. Robert Fisk, “Elie Hobeika: lady-killer and blood-soaked war criminal”, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd (2002), January 25.

3. Joneed Khan, Le principal témoin contre Sharon meurt dans un attentat, La Presse, Montréal, vendredi 25 juillet 2002, Monde A7.

4. Khan, p. A 7

5. Khan, p.A.7

6. Aujourd'hui protégé de la Syrie, Elie Hobeika commandait en 1982 les unités des Forces libanaises, responsables du carnage dans les camps de Sabra et de Chatila

http://www.liberation.com/israel/actu/20010731marg.html

7. La commission Kahane avait établi la «responsabilité directe» des FL dans cet «abominable pogrom contre des civils sans défense». Présent sur le terrain, Hobeika supervisait lui-même les massacres et donnait les consignes à ses hommes. C'est en tout cas ce qu'affirment historiens et journalistes de tous bords. (The Kahane commission has established “direct responsibility” of the Lebanese Forces for this “abominable pogrom against defencelesse civilians”. Present on the ground, Hobeika personally supervised the massacres and gave the orders to his men. This is in all cases affirmed by historians and journalists alike.) http://www.liberation.com/israel/actu/20010731marg.htm

8. BBC, Friday, January 25th, 2002, 14:53 GM http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1782000/1782503.stm  

9. Robert Fisk,  “Car crash adds to Lebanese suspicion of Israeli cover-up in Beirut”, Independent, (London) February 1st.,2002.

10. Witness nr.1 Mr. X

"Wednesday we were at home waiting for visitors. I was at Sabra. The roads were deserted. Arriving at Ali Hender Café, I met young men who called me and asked me if I knew. I said ‘No’. They told me that the Israelis and the Phalangists had entered and destroyed. I went directly home, took my wife and left for my brother’s place. We told him "Abou Souheil, let’s get out of here." He answered, "We are Lebanese. They won’t bother us". I went to another relative and told him, "Leave your children and go". He called me a coward. My wife and I started walking until we arrived at the airport bridge. There I saw the Israelis surrounding the area. An Israeli soldier yelled at me. And the Israelis started asking me where I had come from and where I was going. Then they told my spouse and another woman who was passing by to stay where they were and ordered me to follow them. And they put me near a mound. I was directly behind (Harat Horek) and we ran away to Ghobeireh. Saturday, I went back to see my relatives. What can I say? People were lying on their backs with blackened faces. I found my brother-in-law dead. He had been hit on his head with a hatchet. We found thirty- three other members of the family killed."

Witness nr. 8 Mrs. X

"Wednesday, after Bachir (Gemayel) had been killed, we heard Israeli helicopters hovering at low altitude over the area and Wednesday night the Israelis dropped flare-bombs that illuminated the camp as though it were day. Some of my friends went down to the shelter. Thursday night, I went to see my friends with my brother, Maher and told them to come sleep at our house. On the way, the road was full of corpses. I went to the shelter and I didn’t find any one there, so we returned. Suddenly, I saw our neighbour lying on the ground, wounded. I ask him where the friends are. He answers that they have taken the girls and asks me to help him, but I couldn’t assist him and I returned to the house with my brother right away. Immediately, Maher told my father that there had been a massacre. I found out from our neighbour that there were Phalangists. When my father found out, he said that we had to stay in the house. Our neighbour, a woman, stayed with us. We stayed in the house all night. Friday morning, my brother, Bassam and the neighbour-woman went up on the roof to see what was happening, but the Phalangists spotted them right away. They immediately went back down into the house. A few moments later, around 13 men came to the house. They knocked on the door. My father inquired as to their identity. They answered, "Israelis." We got up to see what they wanted. They said, "You are still here," and they asked my father if he had anything. He said he had some money. They took the money and they struck my father. I asked them why they had hit an old man. They then hit me. They lined us up in the living room and started to discuss whether they would kill us. They lined us up against the wall and shot us. Those who died died. My mother and I survived. My brothers Maher and Ismail had hidden themselves in the bathroom. When they walked out of the house I started to call out to my brothers by their names. When one of them answered, I knew he wasn’t dead. My mother and sister were able to escape from the house but I was unable to. A few moments later as I was moving they came back. They said to me, "You are still alive," and they fired again. I pretended to be dead. I stayed awake all night and I stayed there until Saturday. I dragged myself across the floor to the middle of the room and came upon the corpses. As I reached out for the pitcher of water they immediately fired. I felt only a bullet strike my hand and the man started to swear. The second one came and hit me on the head with the gun. I fainted, losing consciousness and the capacity to speak. I remained like that until Sunday when our neighbour came to my aid."

11. Laurie King-Irani , “Detonating Lebanon's War Files”, The Belgian Court Case and the Beirut Car Bomb. Found at:  http://www.merip.org/pins/pin83.html