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Israel
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 .
Data as of December 1988
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