Besieged: A Doctor's Story of Life and Death in Beirut

This book is an account of the seige of Shatila refugee camp in Beirut in 1987-1988. Giannou was sent to the camp by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in 1986 to set up and run a field hospital to serve the camp during the coming siege. Giannou, a Canadian by passport of Greek heritage, had had too much experience serving in war zones before, having been a camp surgeon during the Israeli invasion. In 1986, he flew into Lebanon, was surreptitiously brought into the Shatila camp, and did not leave the camp again for 27 months. As Giannou explains it, the word `camp' is a misnomer, since the refugee families had constructed permanent homes in the district many years before. Shatila was more accurately a ghetto within urban Beirut. The enemy forces surrounding the camp were the Amal militia, a Shi'ite faction who sought to eliminate Palestinian influence in Lebanese politics by attacking the refugee camps in Beirut. The book is a page-turner, leaving the reader constantly wondering whether Shatila will have the wherewithal to survive the siege. The book is quite informative about the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon during the 1980s. I found it quite surprising to read that the enemies of the Palestinians in this battle were other Arabs, rather than Israelis, and that the Palestinians were not united behind the PLO, but rather divided into numerous factions, many of which fought against the PLO forces even during the siege. Giannou does an excellent job of explaining the vastly complicated politics behind the battle as well as describing the horrid conditions that the residents of the camp managed to live through.