The Tortuous Road to the Lebanon War
By Yossi Melman
Ha'aretz, January 30, 2001
Ariel Sharon has found himself embarrassed in the past few weeks
over his involvement in the Lebanon War of 1982. One of his
arguments was that he had only pursued the same line taken by
previous governments, and it was clear from the context that he was
referring to the first government of Yitzhak Rabin (1974-1977), in
which Shimon Peres served as defense minister. He then corrected
himself, telling the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, "I did not say I was
putting the blame on Rabin and Peres. I said, first you have to
understand the facts. Our presence in Lebanon went back 25 years [to
1975].".In terms of the facts, there is some degree of accuracy in
what Sharon said.
Israel has been involved in Lebanon since the state came into being
and even before that, during the period of the British Mandate. But
there is no similarity between that involvement and the moves Sharon
initiated and pushed as defense minister in the second government of
Menachem Begin, which led to the invasion of Lebanon by the Israel
Defense Forces in June 1982 and afterward to the siege of Beirut.
Those actions and their consequences constituted a sharp divergence
from the policy of previous governments.
Israel's involvement in Lebanon began during the pre-1948 period of
the state in the making. The Information Service ('Shai' in the
Hebrew acronym) of the Haganah (the underground force that was the
precursor to the IDF), the Jewish Agency's Political Department and
the Mossad L'Aliyah Bet (which smuggled Jews into Palestine)
maintained contacts in Lebanon, which gained its independence from
France in 1946. The contacts, which were conducted via paid agents
as well as by means of meetings and ties with Lebanese politicians
and officials, had a triple aim: to obtain intelligence about the
capability of the Lebanese army, to understand the frame of mind in
the Beirut government, and to assist the illegal immigration to
Palestine of Jews from Lebanon and Syria. This pattern of activity
continued to be pursued even after Israel's establishment in 1948
and the War of Independence that followed.
In the 1950s diplomats of the Foreign Ministry also continued to
meet with diplomats and statesmen from Lebanon in Western European
capitals and at United Nations headquarters in New York. That
activity gave birth to the "peripheral" conception. The idea was
based on the view that Israel, which confronts a hostile Muslim Arab
world, should seek allies among non-Arab states on the fringes of
the Middle East, such as Turkey and Persia, and among ethnic or
religious minorities in Arab states. Among the minorities were the
Druze in Syria, the Kurds in Iraq and the Christians in Lebanon. The
formulators and spearheads of the peripheralist policy as an
instrument of strategic policy were also the implementers of
Israel's secret diplomacy in those years, such as Ziama Divon from
the Foreign Ministry (and later, Uri Lubrani) and the country's
intelligence community headed by Military Intelligence and the
Mossad espionage agency.
These secret contacts reached a peak in July 1958. At the time, the
Arab world was being swept by a wave of nationalism and pan-Arabism
under the inspiration of the Free Officers' revolt in Egypt and
their leader, Colonel Gamal Abd el-Nasser. Pro-Nasserist forces
threatened to foment revolution and seize power in Lebanon as well.
France, Britain and the United States acted in concert to ward off
the danger that pro-Western regimes in the Middle East would be
toppled. Taking a coordinated stand, they decided to rush troops to
the assistance of the regime led by the president of Lebanon,
Camille Chamoun, a Christian. At the order of U.S. president Dwight
Eisenhower, Marines landed on the shores of Lebanon, and British
paratroops were placed on a state of alert in Jordan.
Israel was made privy to the secret coordination. The British,
through Israel's military attache in London (Colonel Yuval Ne'eman),
asked the government of David Ben-Gurion for permission to use
Israeli airspace in order to move their forces. Israel gave its
consent. At the same time, Israel utilized its Lebanese agents to
send truckloads of weapons from southern Lebanon to Beirut and to
Chamoun's bastions. Chamoun's regime was saved and the ties between
the Lebanese president and Israel grew stronger. Using messengers,
Chamoun and his aides maintained contacts with Israel; the two sides
exchanged messages and situation appraisals about trends and
developments in the two countries and in the Arab world.
Responsibility for maintaining the ties with the Christians in
Lebanon devolved on Military Intelligence.
Israel's intelligence interest in its northern neighbor deepened
after the events of September 1970 ("Black September") in Jordan,
when King Hussein expelled the Palestinian organizations from his
country. Yasser Arafat and his staff moved to Lebanon and set up
their headquarters in refugee camps close to Beirut, Tyre and Sidon.
The result was that Lebanon, particularly its southern border,
became what Jordan was supposed to have been for the Palestinians:
the base for the war of liberation against Israel.
The consolidation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in
Lebanon upset the delicate balance of forces between the Christians
and Muslims which had been created during the French occupation but
no longer reflected the demographic and political changes that had
occurred in the 30 years since then. The Christians began to feel
threatened by the Muslim-Palestinian coalition, while the Muslims
felt they were discriminated against in the division of power and in
control over the country's power centers.
Civil war brings closer ties
In 1975 a civil war erupted in Lebanon. The Christian community,
its stronghold in northern Lebanon, was led by three families -
Chamoun, Jemayel and Franjiyeh - that took two parallel steps. They
asked the Syrian army to intervene (Israel sent a message of consent
to Syrian President Hafez Assadvia King Hussein) and at the same
time made a secret approach to Israel. The Lebanese Christians
wanted arms and military advice from the Israelis. The government,
led by the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the defense minister,
Shimon Peres, gave the go-ahead. Light weapons, mortars and
ammunition began flowing to the Christian militias in northern
Lebanon. One of the first military advisers sent by Israel was
Brigadier General Binyamin ("Fuad") Ben-Eliezer, today a cabinet
minister in the government of Ehud Barak and then the IDF's
commander in the South Lebanon District. Ben Eliezer noted that his
aim was "to examine first-hand the Christians' fighting ability." In
January 1976, he was present at the battle in which Christian forces
massacred Muslims at Tel al Za'atar, near Beirut.
The ties between Israel and the Lebanese Christians were further
bolstered when prime minister Rabin, accompanied by officers from
Military Intelligence, boarded a Navy vessel which made its way to
the Lebanese coast. They were met by a yacht which set sail from
Lebanon, carrying President Chamoun and senior aides. At this
meeting and in later contacts, Rabin formulated his policy toward
the Christians in Lebanon: Israel would help them to help
themselves, would assist them with weapons and advisers, but would
not send troops to fight alongside them or for them.
The Israeli involvement increased together with the intensification
of the civil war and spread to the south of the country as well.
According to testimony presented in an affidavit to the High Court
of Justice by Major General (Res.) Meir Dagan (who was appointed
commander of the South Lebanon District in 1978) and by Colonel
(Res.) Yaakov Zohar (then the deputy commander of the Northern
District in Unit 504), on March 10, 1976, three Christian master
sergeants of the Lebanese army from the village of Klea in southern
Lebanon, showed up at the border crossing point in Metulla, Israel's
northernmost town. (Years later, this point would be dubbed "Fatma
Gate," after the nickname IDF soldiers conferred on the daughter of
the owner of a nearby house.)
The three sergeants reported on the dismantling of the 1st Infantry
Battalion, stationed in the nearby village of Marjayoun, and added
that they wanted the IDF's assistance in defending the residents of
the Maronite Christian villages in the region. They were handled by
the commander of the Northern District in Unit 504, Lt. Colonel Yair
Ravid-Ravitz, but the decision concerning their request was made at
the highest levels of the Northern Command, the General Staff, the
defense minister and the prime minister. Rabin, Peres and the chief
of staff, Mordechai Gur, decided to assist the master sergeants.
About three months later, the head of Northern Command, Major
General Rafael ("Raful") Eitan, and Lt. Colonel Ravid-Ravitz
initiated wider ties with the Christian villages in the central
sector across the border (Ramish Devel, Ein Abel) and with the
Christian village of Alma al Sha'ab (across from Kibbutz Hanita) in
the western sector. At the end of the process, three enclaves of
Maronite villages were established. They received weapons, medical
assistance and food from Israel and were effectively cut off from
the Lebanese army, becoming ever more dependent on Israel. Entry and
exit gates were established along the border fence (at Metulla and
two other points), and Shimon Peres named it the "Good Fence."
To beef up the Christian forces in the enclaves, reinforcements,
particularly officers, were brought in from the north of Lebanon.
One of them, who was brought personally by Lt. Colonel Ravid-Ravitz
in an Israel Navy missile boat, was Major Sa'ad Haddad. An officer
who was close to the Chamoun family, Major Haddad was given command
of the units in the enclaves. Thanks to the reinforcements, the
enclaves were able to expand at the expense of adjacent areas.
The Likud government tightens the bond
The policy formulated by the Rabin government continued to be
maintained after the 1977 elections, which brought the Likud, under
Menachem Begin, to power in Israel. In early 1978, in the wake of a
terrorist attack in which a bus was hijacked on the coastal road
between Haifa and Tel Aviv - 35 passengers were killed in the
ensuing events - the cabinet ordered the IDF to launch a large-scale
retaliatory operation in southern Lebanon. "Operation Litani," as it
was known, was intended to strike at PLO bases and lasted three
months. It was only following the adoption of Security Council
Resolution 425 and the dispatch of a multinational force - UNIFIL
(United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) - to the region that the
IDF withdrew to the international border.
Resolution 425, which served as the basis for the decision of the
Barak government to withdraw from south Lebanon in May 2000 - did
not put an end to the Israeli involvement in the south of Lebanon.
On the contrary, the military involvement increased. The three
Christian enclaves forged territorial continuity, and Sa'ad Haddad's
forces were joined by Muslim Shi'ite villages such as Itaroun and
Baldoun, and by Druze troops. The foundation was thus laid for what,
in the 1980s, would become the Israeli-controlled security zone and
the South Lebanon Army, headed by Antoin Lahad. All these changes
and developments were brought about by the policy principles
espoused by Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ezer Weizman,
with the support of chief of staff Gur.
Beginning in 1977, the Mossad assumed responsibility, in place of
Military Intelligence, for maintaining the ties with the Christian
forces in northern Lebanon. The Mossad established a branch in the
town of Jouniyeh in northern Lebanon and cultivated not only
political and Intelligence relations but also social and personal
ties with the Christian forces in the north of the country. The
Christians' main force was the "Phalanges," controlled by the
Jemayel family, which grew increasingly more powerful at the expense
of the units led by Camille Chamoun and Suleiman Franjiyeh.
The Mossad, contrary to the assessment of Military Intelligence,
believed that the Christian forces were true allies and found
support for this approach in the person of Ariel Sharon, who was
appointed defense minister following the elections of June 1981.
Sharon, with the backing of the chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, other
General Staff officers and senior personnel in the Mossad, planned
and initiated diplomatic, military and strategic moves which
ultimately brought about the war in Lebanon. Those moves were
substantively different from the actions taken by the Rabin
government, in that they deviated from the principle that Israel
would help the Christians to help themselves and limit its
involvement as much as possible.
The new policy sought to forge a strategic alliance that was
intended to expel the PLO from Lebanon, weaken the Palestinian
community and enable the Christians, under the Jemayel family, to
seize the power centers in Lebanon. "Menachem Begin was ready to
grant the Christians direct Israeli aid. He did not make do with aid
in the form of weapons and ammunition, but sent the IDF deep into
Lebanese territory to assist the Christians in their struggle, at
first in an air clash with the Syrians and then by going to war,"
emphasizes the historian Dr. David Tal, who wrote a comprehensive
study of the subject for the IDF's History Department. The war
itself achieved only one goal: Arafat and his followers were
expelled from Beirut to Tunis. However, Israel paid a heavy price:
more than 1,000 killed, a military entanglement that lasted until
eight months ago, and instead of the PLO, a new enemy arose in
Lebanon in the form of Hezbollah.
