More of the same
Jim Carroll

"What Mr. Sharon described to Parliament as a process of ''checking and clearing out'' the refugee camps was, he said, a job that was to be performed by the Phalangists or the Lebanese Army.
By Wednesday afternoon, sniper fire and Israeli shelling had begun around the Sabra and Shatila camps, and it was intensifying. Dr. Per Maehlumshagen, a Norwegian orthopedic surgeon at Gaza Hospital, not far from the Shatila camp, recalled that ''there was a lot of sniping and some shelling'' around the hospital.
''Around noon on Wednesday,'' Dr. Maehlumshagen recalled, ''the first wounded started to be brought in. That was the first time we began to hear - I don't remember how - that the Israelis were surrounding the camp and setting up checkpoints.''
Zaki F., a Palestinian whose concrete-block home is only a few hundred yards from the hospital, said that by Wednesday afternoon, ''no one was moving in or out of the camps.''
The Israelis Make a Request
At roughly the same time - the precise hour is uncertain - Mr. Sharon said that the Israeli command in West Beirut contacted the Lebanese Army operations chief for the sector to ASK WHETHER THE LEBANESE WERE WILLING TO GO INTO THE CAMPS ON WHAT WERE TERMED SEARCH-AND-DESTROY MISSIONS.
A Lebanese colonel, Michel On, rejected the Israeli proposal. This was corroborated in Mr. Sharon's subsequent statement. Colonel On explained in an interview that his refusal was based on the fact that the Lebanese Army was just then reconstituting itself as an organization. He said it was also then beginning to win the confidence of the Moslem militiamen, Moslem residents and Palestinians of West Beirut."

"The artillery fire, many of these patients later said, appeared to be coming from Israeli positions overlooking the camp to the west. Armed elements inside Sabra may also have been firing at targets outside the camp."

"Mr. Gerti wrote in Haaretz that at one point he had been approached by Israeli soldiers stationed outside Shatila. They told him that on Thursday evening, several Palestinian women ran out of Shatila crying hysterically that their children were being butchered."