“Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round-about her.” - Ezekiel 5:5
This is part twenty-two of the FAI Publishing series Center of Nations which examines the history of the modern State of Israel in the midst of an increasingly hostile world.
THE CIVIL WAR
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fled Jordan in early 1971. Humiliated by their defeat in the Black September conflict, Arafat’s Fatah Party, the largest faction of the PLO, resettled and regrouped in Lebanon, where they found shelter and support within the communities of more than 300,000 Arab Palestinians who had fled from the First Arab-Israeli War (1948-49). Lebanon was an ethnically and religiously diverse society, made up Sunni and Shia Muslims, different Arab Christian denominations, and a Druze minority. Originally designed by the French colonial government as an enclave for Christian Arabs, Lebanon had gained independence during the Second World War with a government dominated by Maronite Christians who shared parliamentary power with Sunni and Shia Muslims. This tenuous arrangement had persisted for almost 30 years, but the injection of the PLO into Lebanese society began to tip the fragile scales of political balance.
Just as they had done in Jordan several years before, the PLO militias settled into Palestinian refugee communities across Lebanon and began building a shadow state; collecting taxes and policing the neighborhoods of major Lebanese cities. Lebanese Sunni Islamist groups such as a Tawhid were encouraged by Fatah to co-opt the secular Sunni parties in the Lebanese parliament, exacerbating tensions with the Christian and Shi’a factions. By the mid-1970’s, the PLO had developed strongholds in in Western Beirut, Tyre, Tripoli, and Sidon, including control of major ports from which it could receive aid from friendly Arab governments in Libya, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia.
The PLO occupation drew the ire the Maronite Christian parties and militant groups, leading to the outbreak of hostilities that would eventually grow into the Lebanese Civil War. On January 18, 1976, an alliance of Christian militias led by the Kataeb Party raided a mostly Sunni Muslim enclave of East Beirut named Karantina. They reportedly separated Muslim men and male teens from women and children before massacring the former while raping and robbing the latter. Just two days afterward, PLO units invaded the Maronite Christian town of Damour just south of Beirut. Lining up men, women, and children in front of firing squads, the fedayeen murdered somewhere between 250-500 Lebanese Christians throughout the town while raping young women and pillaging homes. Survivors were forced to flee, making Damour the first town of many to be ethnically cleansed during the war. The town subsequently became a base of PLO operations.
Also in January 1976, Christian militants in league with the Lebanese military blockaded the Palestinian refugee community of Tel al-Zaatar, which acted as a hub for PLO operations in Beirut. Surrounded and greatly outnumbered, Yasser Arafat nonetheless ordered his militants to refuse a ceasefire offer and continue fighting. This was hugely unpopular with most Palestinians in Lebanon and led to infighting between the PLO and Syrian-sponsored Palestinian groups, prompting Syrian president Hafez al-Assad to intervene on behalf of the Christian militias. Eventually, the PLO was forced to withdraw and over 2,000 Palestinian civilians were massacred in the ensuing occupation of the camp.
While the PLO traded tit-for-tat atrocities with Christian Maronite militias in Beirut, the fedayeen was also wreaking havoc across Southern Lebanon. Establishing bases of operation in Palestinian communities, Palestinian militants began firing small arms, artillery shells, and rockets across the Israeli border into the Northern Galilee. Several cross-border firefights with the Israeli military resulted in casualties, and the IDF responded with bombing raids in Southern Lebanon that completely leveled several Palestinian refugee camps, leading to the displacement of thousands of Palestinians and nearby Lebanese Shi’a Muslim communities. By early 1978, the Israeli-Lebanese border was a powder keg, and it would only take one spark of tragedy to ignite a full-scale war.
FROM THE COASTAL ROAD TO THE LITANI RIVER
On March 9, 1978, a group of Palestinian and Lebanese militants sailed from a Lebanese port near the PLO stronghold of Damour. They were led by Dalal Mughrabi, an eighteen-year-old female lieutenant in the PLO. The group was personally briefed by Abu Jihad, a leader in Fatah and a lieutenant of Yasser Arafat, who wanted to scuttle ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. The objective was to occupy an Israeli hotel and take hostages, to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. After two days at sea, a capsized boat, and two deaths, the remaining 11 terrorists landed on an Israeli beach north of Tel Aviv.
After murdering an American tourist on the beach who happened to be niece of a US senator, the terrorists ran to nearby Highway 2, the coastal route to Tel Aviv. They murdered a taxi driver and several passengers before forcibly boarding a charter bus. Ordering the driver to continue towards Tel Aviv, they threw grenades and shot at passing cars on the highway while also murdering at least one bus passenger. Eventually they exited the bus and commandeered a different bus traveling the opposite direction from Tel Aviv to Haifa, firing at a passing vehicle and killing an Israeli teenage boy who was travelling with his family. The Israeli police were alerted of the ongoing attack and responded, forcing the bus to stop at Glilot Junction just north of Tel Aviv. In the ensuing firefight, several Israeli civilians were able to escape through bus windows before the terrorists exploded the bus with hand grenades. In the end, 38 Israeli tourists were killed and over 70 injured. Nine of the eleven terrorists were killed, including Mughrabi. Since then, the young female jihadist has become an icon in Palestinian society, with a women’s center, a public square, schools, a soccer tournament, and a youth summer camp bearing her name in the Palestinian territories.
The Coastal Road Massacre sent shock waves throughout Israeli society. Just three days after the attack, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Litani. The objective was to surround PLO militants in Lebanon based south of the Litani River while supporting Lebanese Christian militias. On March 14, 1978, intense Israeli bombardment began along the southern border of Lebanon from land, air, and sea, followed by a multi-pronged IDF ground offensive into Southern Lebanon that included 25,000 IDF personnel. Israeli paratroopers also dropped along the Litani in an effort to cut off the PLO escape, but the majority of fedayeen managed to retreat north of the river.
Despite 550 PLO militants killed (among 500-1500 civilian deaths) and despite the IDF securing the Litani River, Operation Litani was a mixed success. Over 200,000 civilians were displaced, the Jimmy Carter administration threatened to cut off military aid to Israel, and the PLO continued to attack Israeli positions from the other side of the Litani. In addition to this, the United Nations Security Council (comprised of the United States, Britain, France, the USSR, and China, along with 10 other rotating members) passed UNSC resolutions 425 and 426 demanding a cessation of hostilities and creating the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL). By the end of March, both Israel and the PLO had agreed to a ceasefire, and a multi-national military observer force was deployed in Southern Lebanon under the UN flag. Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon later that year, but not for long. The PLO remained in Lebanon, and the Lebanese Civil War was escalating, as both sides entrenched along sectarian lines. It was just a matter of time before the State of Israel was dragged back into the conflict.
Peace for Galilee
The ceasefire between Israel and the PLO in Lebanon in March, 1978 was clearly a temporary respite. By the end of the year, Israel was fully engaged in the Lebanese Civil War, training Maronite Christian militiamen inside Israel with the hopes that a pro-Israeli Christian government might take power in Lebanon and suppress the enemies of the Jewish State. By the beginning of 1981, these Christian militias were actively engaging the PLO in Southern Lebanon, and the IDF resumed airstrikes against PLO positions soon afterward. The newly installed administration of US President Ronald Regan managed to broker another ceasefire in July, 1981, followed by a brief interim of calm along the Lebanese border. But this did not prevent more radical factions of the PLO from conducting attacks in the West Bank, or against Israelis abroad, even against the orders of Yasser Arafat. The Israeli government counted at least 270 attacks in the nine months after the establishment of the ceasefire. Accordingly, the government of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin applied the conditions of the ceasefire beyond the Lebanese border to the Palestinian territories and Israeli citizens and interests around the world. But Southern Lebanon remained tensely quiet through the spring of 1982, until a single incident re-ignited the powder keg.
On April 21, 1982, an IDF officer was visiting the position of a Lebanese Christian militia in Southern Lebanon when he inadvertently stepped on a landmine. It was unclear who had planted the landmine or when, but the Israeli government’s policy was to hold Yasser Arafat and PLO leadership responsible for any fedayeen attack on Israelis, whether it was under their direct orders or not. This policy brought the conflict to a head just six weeks later when three would-be assassins shot Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, as he was entering his vehicle in London. Argov was critically wounded in the head but survived. It was later determined that the three assassins were part of a Palestinian splinter group that had broken away from Fatah, and that the attack has been facilitated by the Iraqi government, with one of the assassins exposed as an Iraqi intelligence agent. Arafat did not authorize the attack and publicly distanced himself from it, but it didn’t matter. One day after the attempted assassination, the Israeli cabinet authorized another ground invasion into Lebanon. But this time, the scale of the conflict would be much larger, its impact much greater, and its consequences far more enduring for Israelis and Lebanese alike.
Under the direction of Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, the hero tank commander of the Arab-Israeli Wars and the founder of the controversial counter-terrorist Unit 101, the IDF launched Operation Peace for Galilee on June 6, 1982. Over 60,000 Israeli troops and 800 tanks crossed the Lebanese border in three prongs, supported by the Israeli air force and navy. Israeli Mossad documents declassified 40 years later showed that preparations for the invasion had been made much earlier in coordination with Christian militia allies in Lebanon. Sharon’s stated objectives in the war were to dismantle the PLO in Lebanon, drive the Syrian army out of Lebanon, which had intervened during the early days of the civil war and occupied the eastern provinces, and to install a Maronite Christian government which would conclude an Israeli-Lebanese peace agreement.
in its first two weeks, Operation Peace for Galilee was victorious. All three IDF prongs were successful in reaching and completing their objectives in the west, center, and east of the country. PLO bases in Palestinian refugee camps throughout Lebanon were dismantled. Thousands of fedayeen were killed and thousands more captured by the IDF. An amphibious landing force took the coastal city of Sidon, then Tyre fell, followed by an Israeli siege of PLO camps on the outskirts of Beirut itself. IDF tank brigades won a major battle against Syrian forces at Jezzine in the east, forcing the Syrians into retreat. But the PLO and Syrian army dug in at Beirut. By late June, the Israelis were forced into a grinding urban conflict throughout the city, fighting from street to street, and sometimes from house to house. In spite of thousands of fedayeen and Syrian army casualties, and even more captured by the IDF, the PLO continued its fight to preserve its presence in the capital city.
The siege of Beirut reached a stalemate and continued until mid-August, when a ceasefire was negotiated that allowed the PLO safe passage to evacuate the country. Fedayeen left to spread out across the Middle East and Europe, although the top leadership were relocated to Tunisia in Northern Africa, far from the Israeli border, where Yasser Arafat and Fatah leadership built a new headquarters. Operation Peace for Galilee was ended, but unfortunately, the bloodshed was not over.
On September 14th, the newly elected president of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, who was a Maronite Christian ally of Israel, was assassinated in Beirut. The IDF pushed further into Beirut, and Christian militias entered the mostly Palestinian and Shi’a Muslim neighborhoods of Sabra and Shatila, systematically murdering between 1,500-3,000 people. A later investigation by the Israeli government found that defense minister Sharon bore personal responsibility for greenlighting the massacre, earning him the title “The Butcher of Beirut.” The IDF withdrew from the capital just two weeks later, eventually followed by the other coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon, as well as the Bekka Valley in the East. By 1985, the Israeli military had withdrawn to positions south of the Alawi River in Southern Lebanon, where it would remain for another fifteen years.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Civil War was finally ended in 1990 with another power-sharing agreement that guaranteed governmental leadership to Christians, Sunnis and Shi’a. The IDF continued its occupation under the observation of UNFIL. Seemingly, the First Israeli-Lebanese War had achieved its military objectives by expelling the PLO and defeating the Syrian army, which had suffered over 20,000 casualties compared to less than 700 Israeli deaths. However, a Maronite Christian government had not been successfully installed, and most parties in the new government were not interested in a peace deal with Israel.
But most of all, the Lebanese Civil War and the suffering of Lebanon’s Shi’a minority had led to the rise of a new militant party in the mid-1980’s. Calling themselves the “Party of God,” or Hezbollah in Arabic, they found a powerful ally in the region’s newest regime, the Shi’a dominated Islamic Republic of Iran. While the IDF had decisively won the first Israeli-Lebanese War, a new threat was rising, native to Lebanon, which would become more powerful than the PLO. The stage was set for a cycle of Israeli military intervention in Lebanon which continues to this day.
Gabe Caligiuri is the editor of THE WIRE, as well as an occasional contributor to other FAI digital content on the subjects of history and geopolitics as they relate to the Great Commission. Gabe and his family live in California.