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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
Figure 12. Israel's 1982 Invasion of Lebanon
Since 1970, Israeli settlements near the southern border of
Lebanon had been exposed to harassing attacks from forces of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been driven out
of Jordan. On three occasions, in 1970, 1972, and 1978, Israel had
retaliated by ground operations carried out up to Lebanon's Litani
River. The inhabitants of southern Lebanon deeply resented the
conversion of their region to a battlefield by the PLO. Supported
by Israeli arms and training since 1973, they formed a militia
under Saad Haddad, a major in the Lebanese Army. Israeli support
was gradually extended to other Christian militias, including the
Phalangist movement of Pierre Jumayyil (also seen as Gemayel), as
the Christian Maronites increasingly found themselves pressured by
the involvement of the PLO in the 1975 Lebanese Civil War. A
complicating element was the presence of the Syrian army in
Lebanon, tolerated by Israel on the understanding that Israel's
security interests in southern Lebanon would not be threatened.
The Israeli government rejected appeals by Maronite Christians
for direct Israeli military intervention to evict the PLO and
Syrians from Lebanon. Pierre Jumayyil's son Bashir, however,
determined to embroil Israel against Syria, staged an incident in
1981 in the city of Zahlah using approximately 100 Phalangist
militiamen who had been infiltrated to attack Syrian positions.
Jumayyil persuaded Israel to honor an earlier pledge for air
strikes, which resulted in the downing of two Syrian helicopter
transports. Syrian President Hafiz al Assad responded by stationing
SA-6 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the vicinity of Zahlah.
Other SAMs and surface-to-surface missiles were deployed on the
Syrian side of the border. Although the Phalangists abandoned
Zahlah, the net effect was that Syrian air defense missiles were
deployed in Lebanon, a situation that Israel regarded as an
unacceptable shift in the balance of power in the area.
Meanwhile Israel had conducted preemptive shelling and air
strikes to deter PLO terrorist attacks on settlements in Galilee in
northern Israel. The PLO fought back by shelling Israeli towns in
Upper Galilee and coastal areas, especially after a devastating
Israeli air raid against a heavily populated Palestinian
neighborhood in West Beirut that killed more than 100 people and
wounded more than 600. In July 1981, United States Middle East
Special Ambassador Philip Habib negotiated a truce in the artillery
duel. During this cease-fire, PLO leader Yasir Arafat reinforced
his position by purchases of artillery rockets and obsolete tanks
of Soviet manufacture. The forces under his control, the Palestine
Liberation Army (PLA), were transformed from a decentralized
assemblage of terrorist and guerrilla bands to a standing army.
When, in early June 1982, terrorists of the Abu Nidal
organization, a PLO splinter group, badly wounded the Israeli
ambassador in London during an assassination attempt, Israel seized
the pretext for launching its long-planned offensive. The Israeli
cabinet's authorization for the invasion, named Operation Peace for
Galilee, set strict limits on the incursion. The IDF was to advance
no farther than forty kilometers, the operation was to last only
twenty-four hours, there would be no attack on Syrian forces and no
approach to Beirut. Because of these limits, the IDF did not openly
acknowledge its actual objectives. As a result, the IDF advance
unfolded in an ad hoc and disorganized fashion, greatly increasing
the difficulty of the operation.
When IDF ground forces crossed into Lebanon on June 6, five
divisions and two reinforced brigade-size units conducted the
three-pronged attack. On the western axis, two divisions converged
on Tyre and proceeded north along the coastal highway toward Sidon,
where they were to link up with an amphibious command unit that had
secured a beachhead north of the city. In the central sector, a
third division veered diagonally across southern Lebanon, conquered
the Palestinian-held Beaufort Castle, and headed west toward Sidon,
where it linked up with the coastal force in a pincer movement. The
PLO was the only group to resist the IDF advance. Although many PLO
officers fled, abandoning their men, the Palestinian resistance
proved tenacious. In house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat in the
sprawling refugee camps near Tyre and Sidon, the Palestinians
inflicted high casualties on the IDF. In the eastern sector, two
Israeli divisions thrust directly north into Syrian-held territory
to sever the strategic Beirut-Damascus highway. A brigade of Syrian
commandos, however, ambushed the Israeli column in mountainous
terrain, approximately five kilometers short of the highway.
Syria's strong air defense system prevented the Israeli air force
from attacking the entrenched Syrian positions. Nevertheless, in a
surprise attack on Syrian SAM sites in the Biqa Valley, the
Israelis destroyed seventeen of nineteen batteries. The Syrian air
force was decimated in a desperate air battle to protect the air
defense system.
With total air superiority, the IDF mauled the Syrian First
Armored Division, although in the grueling frontal attacks the
Israelis also suffered heavy casualties. Still stalled short of the
Beirut-Damascus highway, the IDF was on the verge of a breakthrough
when, on June 11, Israel bowed to political pressure and agreed to
a truce under United States auspices
(see
fig. 12).
Data as of December 1988
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