Her life since then, she says, has been a daily reminder of the horrors she witnessed as a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee from Jaffa living in the camps at the height of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

"This was my father," Khalife said, pointing to a black and white photo of a man lying face down in a narrow street. "They shot him in the head."

Three of her relatives were also killed. "After it was over, on the way to find my mother at the nearby hospital, I saw a woman on the street, her intestines were spilling out. She died holding her baby," Khalife recounted.

In September 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters evacuated from their Beirut barracks, and the Israeli army surrounded the refugee camps.

On the afternoon of Sept. 16, 1982, Israeli forces allowed members of the Lebanese Forces (LF) - an offshoot of the Phalange party - into the camps, allegedly to search for suspects in the slaying of Bashir Gemayel, then-Lebanese president.

Gemayel, who also headed the LF, had been killed by a car bomb outside his office a day earlier. Palestinian forces quickly distanced themselves from Gemayel’s death, but it did not save the camps from reprisals.

Khalife says she remembers seeing both Israelis and Phalange party members inside the camps that day. "The Israelis were wearing military uniforms. The Phalange wore jeans, normal clothes and military arm bands. They swore at us in Lebanese Arabic," she said.

Most aid organizations working in the camps in 1982 say around 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days.

A former LF fighter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, insisted the Israeli military shoulder full responsibility for the killings.

He admitted that the LF was angered by the assassination of Gemayel but had no idea what was planned at Sabra and Shatila. "It was not the LF [who were responsible for the killings]. It was the Israeli soldiers who went inside those camps," he said.