Hobeika, Elie

▪ 2003

Elias Joseph Hobeika 

      Lebanese militia leader (b. 1956, Kleiat, Lebanon—d. Jan. 24, 2002, Hazmiyeh, Lebanon), was the ruthless head of the Maronite Christian Lebanese militia (Phalangist) military intelligence and was reportedly commander of the forces who in September 1982 slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The incident triggered international condemnation of the Phalangists and of Israel, which had intervened in the Lebanese civil war and had failed to stop the massacre. Hobeika later switched his allegiance to Syria and went into exile in Paris; after the civil war ended (1990), he was appointed a Lebanese government minister. Hobeika was assassinated by a car bomb shortly after he had agreed to testify against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who, as Israel's defense minister in 1982, was accused of having condoned the massacre.

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