Arab - Israel War (1982)

War that began with Israel's invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.

Israel invaded Lebanon on 6 June 1982 in order to destroy the infrastructure and leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and to install in Lebanon a Maronite-dominated government, led by the Phalange Party, which would ally itself with Israel. Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan believed that the elimination of the PLO would convince West Bank and Gaza Palestinians to seek an accommodation on Begin's terms of limited autonomy, thereby preempting the establishment of a Palestinian state, which was gaining international support.

The timing of the invasion favored Israel. The Arab world was in disarray. The most powerful Arab country, Egypt, had made peace with Israel in 1979 under the terms of the Camp David Accords. Support for Israel in the Reagan administration was strong. Israel's border with Lebanon had been quiet since July 1981, when U.S. emissary Philip Habib negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and the PLO. The invasion, however, was triggered not by a border incident, but by the attempted assassination on 3 June of the Israeli ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov. This was a pretext for invasion, though, because the attacker belonged to the anti-PLO Abu Nidal group, and PLO officials were also on the hit list.

The invasion might have been regarded in Israel and the United States as a necessary preemptive invasion (Israel called it "Operation Peace for Galilee") if it had been confined to "surgical" action against PLO forces within the 25-mile belt south of the Litani River, as Sharon had declared. However, once the invasion began on 6 June, Sharon ordered the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to proceed north to Beirut, defeated Syrian forces in the air and on the ground, and drove the PLO forces back to Beirut. The IDF reached Beirut in mid-June, laid siege to and shelled West Beirut for seven weeks, and linked up with Israel's Lebanese allies, the Phalange.

Originally, Sharon had hoped that the Phalange forces (rather than the IDF) would enter PLO strongholds in West Beirut. Phalange leader Bashir Jumayyil and his aides had sought Israel's intervention and shared Sharon's goal of eliminating the PLO, especially from South Lebanon and West Beirut. Sharon's advisers, who lacked confidence in Phalange military ability, rejected such an operation; but fearing a high level of Israeli casualties, they also counseled against an Israeli assault. The result was a stalemate, and heavy Israeli bombardments and air strikes against West Beirut led to heavy civilian casualties. The nightly television pictures of death and destruction caused disquiet in the West. Although U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig seemed to acquiesce, the White House in fact disapproved of the bombing of civilians. Haig resigned shortly thereafter, and the U.S. government sent Habib to Beirut to try to reach an agreement on PLO withdrawal.

An accord was reached wherein a multinational force, including U.S. Marines, would supervise an orderly PLO evacuation and safeguard civilians in the refugee camps. By 1 September, about 14,420 PLO fighters and officials had departed West Beirut for various Arab locales - particularly Tunis, which became PLO headquarters. About 3,000 Syrian troops were withdrawn from the city; U.S. troops were also removed. The same day, the United States announced the Reagan Plan, which opposed Israel's annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and called for a freeze on Israeli settlements there. The plan also declined to support the establishment of a Palestinian state. Instead, it supported Palestinian autonomy in association with Jordan, which the United States urged to begin negotiations with Israel. Some Arab states, the PLO, and Israel rejected the plan.

Much of Sharon's grand design seemed to have been realized, including the election in late August of Bashir Jumayyil as president of Lebanon. However, Jumayyil resisted Begin and Sharon's demands for an immediate Lebanese - Israeli treaty and rejected Israeli insistence that their proxy in the South, Saʿd Haddad and his troops, remain under Israeli authority. Then, on 14 September, Jumayyil was assassinated - according to some, with Syrian help. Two days later, Sharon and Eitan ordered the IDF into West Beirut, in violation of the U.S.-brokered truce agreement.

Sharon approved the entry of Phalange forces into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, provided them with light at night, and extended their stay in the camps. The Phalange proceeded to kill between 800 and 1,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians from 16 to 18 September. An Israeli commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission (1983), found that Israeli officials, in particular Sharon and Eitan, were indirectly responsible for the killings. An international commission chaired by Sean MacBride charged that Israel was directly responsible because it had been the occupying power and had facilitated the actions of its ally. In 2001 both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for an investigation of Ariel Sharon's involvement into the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

In late September 1982 the IDF evacuated Beirut and were replaced by the multilateral force that included the U.S. Marines. The Arab - Israel War of 1982 was costly for all involved. According to Lebanese authorities, 17,825 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, 84 percent of whom were civilians. Israel lost more than 1,000 soldiers by 2000, and spent $3 billion on the three-month operation. The war hurt Israel's international image and divided its own people; 400,000 Israelis (8 percent of the population) demonstrated against the war. Even the United States, which had sent the Marines to help fill the vacuum left by the Israeli departure from Beirut, got mired in Lebanese politics. The new secretary of state, George Shultz, engineered a security agreement between Israel and Lebanon that ignored Syria's interests in Lebanon, ratified Israel's control of South Lebanon, and hinted at U.S. support for Maronite primacy. Lebanese Muslims responded by bombing the U.S. embassy in Beirut, and after the White House approved naval shelling of Druze villages, a suicide bomber attacked the Marine naval barracks, killing 241 Marines. U.S. forces were withdrawn four months later, and the Lebanese - Israeli agreement was aborted on 5 March 1984. Similar attacks took place against the French and the Israelis, who finally withdrew from Lebanon in 1985 after establishing a six-mile security zone patrolled by Haddad's army.

In 1999 a new Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, sensed the growing unpopularity of Israel's protracted involvement in southern Lebanon. In May 2000 Barak unilaterally and unconditionally withdrew all Israeli troops from Lebanon, except for those in a small disputed area called Sheba Farm.

Bibliography

Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Atheneum, 1990.

Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1989.

Khalidi, Rashid. Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking during the 1982War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Rabinovich, Itamar. The War for Lebanon, 1970 - 1985. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Schiff, Zeʾev, and Yaʾari, Ehud. Israel's Lebanon War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab - Israeli Conflict. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004.

Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

— PHILIP MATTAR