In the aftermath of the first bloody siege of Shatila by the Amal militia in 1985, Umm Muhammad, resident of Shatila, declared that the siege wasn't “the first massacre that has been committed against us. Since 1947 our lives have been affected by them. My four children and husband were killed at the hand of the Israelis and the Kata'ib in the Sabra and Shatila massacres – even those Lebanese who were married to Palestinians were killed there” (al-Hurriyya, 8 Feb. 1985: 14). For Umm Muhammad, the siege was unambiguously one in a long chain of massacres committed against Palestinians. It was the historic persistence of massacres that created an “us” against whom atrocities were committed. This “us” was the Palestinian refugee, whose political identity was so dangerous that even Lebanese citizens married to Palestinians were targets of violence. While Umm Muhammad considered the War of the Camps – as the successive sieges of the camp by Amal came to be known – as one massacre in a chain of massacres, the conflict has also been described as a heroic battle, and as an example of quotidian steadfastness.