THE INTERVENTION OF WORLD POWERS IN ISRAEL'S WARS - IV

 

Since their expulsion from Jordan in 1970, a force of close to 18,000 PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) members were encamped in scores of locations in Lebanon. It was estimated that 5,500 were foreign mercenaries from Libya, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka, Chad and Mozambique. Israel later discovered enough light arms and other weapons to equip five brigades: Katyushka rockets, anti-aircraft network, hundreds of tanks. Syria brought surface-to-air missiles – creating yet another danger for Israel.

Israeli strikes and commando raids were unable to stem the growth of this PLO  army. The situation in northern Israel became a living hell. Thousands of residents either had to flee from their homes, or to spend large amounts of time in bomb shelters. Israel was not prepared to wait for more deadly attacks to be launched against its civilian population before acting against the terrorists.

Following the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, Israel attacked PLO targets in Lebanon on June 4, 1982. The PLO responded with rocket and artillery barrages, and Israel retaliated by sending ground troops into Lebanon, in a mission titled “Operation Peace for the Galilee.”

To prevent civilian casualties, Israel agreed to a cease-fire to enable the US to mediate a peaceful PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. Israel even agreed to permit PLO forces to leave Beirut with their personal weapons. But the PLO continued to make new demands. They also adopted a strategy of controlled violations of the cease-fire, with the purpose of inflicting casualties on Israel and provoking Israeli retaliation – sufficient to get the IDF blamed for disrupting the negotiations and harming civilians.

For more than a month, the PLO tried to extract a political victory from its military defeat. Arafat declared his willingness “in principle” to leave Beirut, then refused to go to any other country. He also tried to push the US to recognise the PLO. The whole time they hid behind innocent civilians, accurately calculating that if Israel were to attack it would be internationally condemned. Israeli intelligence told of a huge network of underground PLO storage facilities for arms and munitions, that was later found by the Lebanese army. They would fire at the Israelis with moveable artillery equipment and then move. When the Israelis fired back they sometimes missed and inadvertently hit civilian targets.

In numerous instances international media mistakenly reported that Israel was hitting civilians. When the NBC aired a report that Israeli shells needlessly hit seven embassies in Beirut, after the PLO claimed it had no military positions in the area – Israel released reconnaissance photos showing the embassy area, honeycombed with tanks, mortars, heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft positions.

Israel was determined to drive the PLO out of Beirut. An international contingent was created to supervise the evacuation of PLO forces from Beirut. Eight countries agreed to grant asylum to the Palestinians. 14,000 PLO fighters left, with Arafat leaving for Tunisia in August 1982.

In 1983, Israel signed an agreement with Lebanon terminating the state of war between them. While the PLO state-within-a-state had been dismantled, Syrian troops remained in Lebanon and the Christian-dominated Lebanese Government was too weak to control rival factions from attacking each other, and Israel. A year later, under pressure from the Syrian government, Lebanon reneged on its agreement - and the country remained volatile.

The US President, Ronald Reagan initially referred to Israel’s action as an “invasion”, and his chief advisors wanted the IDF to withdraw immediately and to sanction Israel if they did not. Israel’s PM, Menachem Begin, answered: “For god’s sake, we did not invade Lebanon; we were being attacked by bands operating across our border and we decided that we had to defend ourselves against them. What would you have done if Russia was still occupying Alaska and permitting armed bands to operate across your border?”. He also pointed out that this area of Lebanon had become a giant Soviet base, supervising Soviet activity in the region.

Israeli troops completed a phased withdrawal from Lebanon in June 1985, and created a 9-mile-wide security zone in southern Lebanon along the border. The zone was intended to shield Israeli civilian settlements in the Galilee from cross-border attacks, and facilitated the capture of many terrorists. However, many Israeli soldiers continued to be killed in the security zone by terrorist groups, supported by Iran and Syria - particularly Hezbollah.

The failure of “Operation Peace of Galilee” to achieve its objective prevailed upon the new national coalition government, which took office in 1984, to withdraw forthwith from Lebanon. Together with multinational forces, Israel remained in the security zone in southern Lebanon - eventually unilaterally withdrawing with no security arrangements at all, in May 2000.

The area where the Palestinian terrorists operated from until 1982 now became the stronghold of Iranian-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah.