Several hundred Palestinian refugees demonstrated Tuesday in front of the UN offices in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, calling both candidates in Israel's election for prime minister "butchers".
"No to Ehud Barak, the Verdun butcher; no to Ariel Sharon, the Sabra and Shatila butcher,” the protestors chanted.
Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is also Israel's most decorated general, headed the commando unit that slayed three Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders in Beirut's Verdun district in 1973.
Likud leader Ariel Sharon, the frontrunner in Tuesday's poll, was found by Israel's Kahane investigation commission to be "personally and indirectly responsible" for the 1982 massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, carried out by Lebanese Christian militias, which infiltrated with the help of the Israeli army occupying Beirut.
Ariel Sharon, was defense minister at the time.
The demonstrators handed a letter to the representative of the UN interim force in Lebanon addressed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, demanding their right of return to their homes in Palestine be respected, as stipulated in UN security council resolution 194 -- TYRE, Lebanon (AFP)
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