1982 Lebanon War

1982 Lebanon War
Part of the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and the Israeli–Lebanese conflict


Top: Israeli troops invading Lebanon, 1982
Bottom: A map of the military situation in Lebanon in 1983
Map legend
  •   Controlled by the Lebanese Front and allied militias
      Controlled by the Syrian Army
      Controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces
      Administered by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL)
Date6 June 1982 – 5 June 1985
(main phase June–September 1982)
Location
Result Inconclusive
Territorial
changes
Self-proclaimed Free Lebanon State slowly transforms into South Lebanon Security Zone
Belligerents
Commanders and leaders
Israel:

Phalange:
Al-Tanzim:
SLA:
PLO:

Syria:

LCP:
Al-Mourabitoun:
Amal:
ASALA:
PKK:
Others:
Strength
  • Israel:
    • 78,000 troops
    • 800 tanks
    • 1,500 APCs
    • 634 aircraft
  • LF:
    • 30,000 troops
  • SLA:
    • 5,000 troops
    • 97 tanks
  • Syria:
    • 22,000 troops
    • 352 tanks
    • 300 APCs
    • 450 aircraft
    • 300 artillery pieces
    • 100 anti-aircraft guns
    • 125 SAM batteries
  • PLO:
    • 15,000 troops
    • 80 tanks
    • 150 APCs
    • 350+ artillery pieces
    • 250+ anti-aircraft guns
Casualties and losses
  • Israel:
    • 654 killed and 3,887 wounded (1982–85)[4][5]
    • 4 missing
    • 12 captured
    • 1 aircraft lost
    • 2 helicopters lost
  • PLO:
    Syria:
    • 1,200 killed
    • 296 captured
    • 300–350 tanks lost
    • 150 APCs lost
    • c. 100 artillery pieces lost
    • 82–86 aircraft lost
    • 12 helicopters lost
    • 29 SAM missile batteries lost[9]

Total Lebanese: 19,085 killed and 30,000 wounded.[10]
Civilians at Sabra-Shatila massacre: 800-3,500 killed.[10]

Also see Casualties below.

The 1982 Lebanon War began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon and the Israeli military that had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border.[11][12][13] The military operation was launched after gunmen from the Abu Nidal Organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blamed Abu Nidal's enemy, the PLO, for the incident,[14][15] and used the incident as a casus belli for the invasion.[16][17][i]

After attacking the PLO – as well as Syrian, leftist, and Muslim Lebanese forces – the Israeli military, in cooperation with their Maronite allies and the self-styled Free Lebanon State, occupied southern Lebanon, eventually surrounding the PLO and elements of the Syrian Army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy Israeli bombardment, the PLO forces and their allies negotiated passage from Lebanon with the aid of United States Special Envoy Philip Habib and the protection of international peacekeepers. The PLO, under the chairmanship of Yasser Arafat, had relocated its headquarters to Tripoli in June 1982. By expelling the PLO, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel, Israel hoped to sign a treaty which Begin promised would give Israel "forty years of peace".[18]

Following the assassination of Gemayel in September 1982, Israel's position in Beirut became untenable and the signing of a peace treaty became increasingly unlikely. Outrage following the IDF's role in the Israeli-backed, Phalangist-perpetrated Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, as well as Israeli popular disillusionment with the war, led to a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Beirut to the areas claimed by the Free Lebanon State in southern Lebanon, later to become the South Lebanon security belt, which was initiated following the 17 May Agreement and Syria's change of attitude towards the PLO.

Despite the Israeli withdrawal to Southern Lebanon in 1985 being considered the end of the war, Shi'a militant groups began consolidating and waging a low-intensity guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, leading to 15 years of low-scale armed conflict, until Israel's final withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.[19] Simultaneously, the War of the Camps broke out between Lebanese factions, the remains of the PLO and Syrian forces, in which Syria fought its former Palestinian allies. The Lebanese Civil War would continue until 1990, at which point Syria had established complete dominance over Lebanon.

  1. ^ "In the Spotlight: PKK (A.k.a KADEK) Kurdish Worker's Party". Cdi.org. Archived from the original on 13 August 2011. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  2. ^ "Abdullah Öcalan en de ontwikkeling van de PKK". Xs4all.nl. Archived from the original on 15 December 2010. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  3. ^ "a secret relationship". Niqash.org. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  4. ^ Uri Ben-Eliezer, War over Peace: One Hundred Years of Israel's Militaristic Nationalism, University of California Press (2019)
  5. ^ Gad Barzilai, Wars, Internal Conflicts, and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East, State University of New York Press (1996)
  6. ^ Gabriel, Richard, A, Operation Peace for Galilee, The Israeli-PLO War in Lebanon, New York: Hill & Wang. 1984, p. 164, 165, ISBN 978-0-8090-7454-9
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference payment was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ "Israeli General Says Mission Is to Smash P.L.O. in Beirut". The New York Times. 15 June 1982. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  9. ^ Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Race was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Tucker, Spencer C.; Roberts, Priscilla (2008). The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A Political, Social, and Military. ABC-CLIO. p. 623. ISBN 978-1-85109-841-5.
  12. ^ Bickerton, Ian J. (2009). The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-86189-527-1.
  13. ^ Martin, Gus (2013). Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues. Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1-4522-0582-3. The operation was called Operation Peace for Galilee and was launched in reply to ongoing PLO attacks from its Lebanese bases.
  14. ^ [Ze'ev Schiff, Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War, Simon and Schuster 1985 pp.98f:'Argov had been shot by an unusual weapon of Polish manufacture known as a WZ 63, . . Israeli intelligence knew that this late-model weapon had been supplied to Abu Nidal's organization but not yet to other terrorist groups. . . The key point that the intelligence officers wanted to convey to the Cabinet was that Abu Nidal's organization was an exception among the Palestinian terror groups. Once among Yasser Arafat's closest friends, Abu Nidal had over the years turned into the chairman's most vicious enemy . .Abu Nidal referred to Arafat contemptuously as "the Jewess's son" and had made repeated attempts on his life. Arafat, in return, had pronounced a death sentence on Abu Nidal.'
  15. ^ Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, Random House 2014 p.288:'When Prime Minister Menachem Begin was told that the assassins were Abu Nidal's men -sworn enemies of Arafat and the PLO- he reportedly scoffed,"They're all PLO, Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal- we have to strike at the PLO".'
  16. ^ Kahalani, A Warriors Way, Shapolsky Publishers (1994) pp. 299–301
  17. ^ Harvey W. Kushner, Encyclopedia of Terrorism Sage Publications (2003), p.13
  18. ^ Friedman, p. 157
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Morris was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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