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Israel
The Siege of Beirut and Its Aftermath
The cease-fire signaled the start of a new stage in the war,
as Israel focused on PLO forces trapped in Beirut. Although Israel
had long adhered to the axiom that conquering and occupying an
Arab capital would be a political and military disaster, key Israeli
leaders were determined to drive the PLO out of Beirut. Israel
maintained the siege of Beirut for seventy days, unleashing a
relentless air, naval, and artillery bombardment. The Israeli
air force conducted what was called a "manhunt by air" for Arafat
and his lieutenants and on several occasions bombed premises only
minutes after the PLO leadership had vacated them. If the PLO
was hurt physically by the bombardments, the appalling civilian
casualties earned Israel world opprobrium. Morale plummeted among
IDF officers and enlisted men, many of whom personally opposed
the war. Lebanese leaders petitioned Arafat, who had threatened
to fight the IDF until the last man, to abandon Beirut to spare
further civilian suffering. Arafat's condition for withdrawal
was that a multinational peacekeeping force be deployed to protect
the Palestinian families left behind. Syria and Tunisia agreed
to host departing PLO fighters. An advance unit of the Multinational
Force, 350 French troops, arrived in Beirut on August 11, followed
within one week by a contingent of 800 United States marines.
By September 1, approximately 8,000 Palestinian guerrillas, 2,600
PLA regulars, and 3,600 Syrian troops had evacuated West Beirut.
Taking stock of the war's toll, Israel announced the death of
344 of its soldiers and the wounding of more than 2,000. Israel
calculated that hundreds of Syrian soldiers had been killed and
more than 1,000 wounded, and that 1,000 Palestinian guerrillas
had been killed and 7,000 captured. By Lebanese estimates, 17,825
Lebanese had died and more than 30,000 had been wounded.
On the evening of September 12, 1982, the IDF, having surrounded
the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, dispatched
300 to 400 Christian militiamen into the camps to rout what was
believed to be the remnant of the PLO forces. The militiamen were
mostly Phalangists but also included members of the Israeli-sponsored
South Lebanon Army (SLA). The IDF ordered its soldiers to refrain
from entering the camps, but IDF officers supervised the operation
from the roof of a six-story building overlooking part of the
area. According to the report of the Kahan Commission created
later by the Israeli government to investigate the events, the
IDF monitored the Phalangist radio network and fired flares from
mortars and aircraft to illuminate the area. Over a period of
two days, the Christian militiamen massacred 700 to 800 Palestinian
men, women, and children.
Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, the architect of Israel's war
in Lebanon, was forced to resign his portfolio in the wake of
the Sabra and Shatila investigation, although he remained in the
cabinet. He was replaced by former ambassador to the United States
Moshe Arens, who wanted Israel to withdraw promptly from Lebanon,
if only to avoid further antagonizing Washington.
Israel withdrew its forces to the outskirts of the capital but
it no longer had a clear tactical mission in Lebanon. Israel intended
its continued presence to be a bargaining chip to negotiate a
Syrian withdrawal. While awaiting a political agreement, the IDF
had to fight a different kind of war. Turned into a static and
defensive garrison force, it was now caught in a crossfire between
warring factions. Its allies in Lebanon, the Christian Maronite
militias, proved to be incapable of providing day-to-day security
and holding territory taken from the PLO. The hostility engendered
among the predominant Shia population of southern Lebanon over
the prolonged Israeli occupation was in some ways potentially
more dangerous than the threat posed by Palestinian guerrillas.
In November 1983, the blowing up of the Israeli command post in
Tyre signaled the beginning of full-scale guerrilla warfare by
Shia groups, some of which were linked militarily and ideologically
to Iran. During 1984, more than 900 attacks--hit-and-run ambushes,
grenade assaults, and antipersonnel mine detonations--took place
upon Israeli troops. Realizing that to attempt to hold a hostile
region like southern Lebanon indefinitely contravened its basic
strategic doctrine, the IDF pulled back its forces between January
and June 1985, leaving only a token force to patrol a narrow security
zone with its proxy, the SLA.
Data as of December 1988
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