Tel al - Zaatar massacre The Tel al - Zaatar massacre ( ) took place during the Lebanese Civil War on August 12 , 1976 . Tel al - Zaatar ( The Hill of Thyme ) was a UNRWA administered Palestinian Refugee camp housing approximately 50 , 000 - 60 , 000 refugees in northeast Beirut . Background . With the breakdown in authority of the Lebanese government the militancy of radical faction increased . After , Guardians of the Cedars and Tiger militia forces took control of the Karantina district on 18 January 1976 by committing a massacre known as The Karantina Massacre . On 4 January 1976 , a thin cordon was established around the camp by 300 fighters from the Al - Tanzim and 100 fighters from the Maroun Khoury Group in an effort to contain the Palestinians . The Maroun Khoury Group was a Dikwaneh based militia . One road was left open to allow Palestinian evacuation towards Aley but the Palestinians refused to enter into dialogue with the Lebanese Front . Ahrar forces surrounded and attacked Jisr al Basha and Kataeb and Guardian of the Cedars troops engaged the adjacent , mainly Shiite , area of Nabaa , which contained large numbers of leftist forces . The battle for the camps had started and was the final showdown between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Front in Beirut . It was one of the hardest battles fought during the war . Syria put itself forwards as a " mediator " on the basis of historic claims . Syrian forces with As - Sa ' iqa units were intervening on behalf of hard presses Christian militias by April . The influence of Syria led to the election of Elias Sarkis . By the first week of June , Syrian forces had applied a blockade of West Beirut , a predominantly Muslim section that contained the Palestinian headquarters , leaving only the southern route open . From 22 June the Christian Phalangist forces , Many Christian residents of Ras el - Dekweneh and Mansouriye controlled by Maroun Khoury with Syrian backing intensified the blockade to a full scale military assault that lasted 35 days . Christian militias had laid siege to the refugee camp for 7 months . When the camp fell , the Palestinian victims numbered in the thousands . The Christian militia loss was around 200 armed men . The massacre and its aftermath . On August 12 the camp finally fell , following an on - and - off siege of several months . During the last two months , the siege had tightened . Heavy artillery shelling damaged much of the camp and killed a number of inhabitants . John Bulloch , " The Daily Telegraph " correspondent in Beirut at the time wrote , " In their bitterness the Palestinian commanders ordered their artillery to open up on the fringes of the camp with the ostensible objective of hampering the attackers and helping those inside ; instead the shells were landing among the hundreds who had got through the perimeter and were trying to escape . When they were told of this , the Palestinians made no attempt to lift their fire : they wanted martyrs " . Robert Fisk wrote in his biographical profile of Yasser Arafat , " The Broken Revolutionary " , " When Arafat needed martyrs in 1976 , he called for a truce around the besieged refugee camp of Tel el - Zaatar , then ordered his commanders in the camp to fire at their right - wing Lebanese Christian enemies . When , as a result , the Phalangists and " Tigers " militia slaughtered their way into Tel el - Zaatar , Arafat opened a " martyrs ' village " for camp widows in the sacked Christian village of Damour . On his first visit , the widows pelted him with stones and rotten fruit . Journalists were ordered away at gunpoint . " In an " L . A . Weekly " interview published May 30 , 2002 , Fisk recalls " Arafat is a very immoral person , or maybe very amoral . A very cynical man . I remember when the Tal - al - Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut had to surrender to Christian forces in the very brutal Lebanese civil war . They were given permission to surrender with a cease - fire . But at the last moment , Arafat told his men to open fire on the Christian forces who were coming to accept the surrender . I think Arafat wanted more Palestinian " martyrs " in order to publicize the Palestinian position in the war . That was in 1976 . Believe me that Arafat is not a changed man . " The massacre is said to have contributed to the mounting Sunni Muslim dissent within Alawi - ruled Syria . As a result , Syria broke off its offensive on the PLO and the LNM , and agreed to an Arab League summit which temporarily ended the Civil War . The PLO used the former Christian town of Damour to house survivors of the Tel al - Zaatar massacre . Damour , a Christian town on the main highway south of Beirut , had been the site of a massacre by PLO military units on January 20 , 1976 . The populace not killed in the massacre had been forced to flee the town . The split in the PLO leadership was ended when the Syrian backed As - Sa ' iqa movement was expelled from the PLO , leaving Fatah as the dominant party . Hafez al - Assad received strong criticism and pressure from across the Arab world for his involvement in the massacre - 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 .