Part 1 of this series provided a general timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, it’s time to get specific. Today's installment covers the period from 1970 to 1982 because this is the interval when particular atrocities baked long-lasting hatred into both Israeli and Palestinian hearts. Also, during this period, external third parties, the US, Iran, Syria, and the Soviet Union become involved, which, in turn, stokes the conflict. And there’s a new battleground - Lebanon.
But before we get into it, a few words on style and length. Even though these events all took place in the past, I’m writing in the present tense to give the narrative immediacy — history is never far away in Israel. Regarding length, this episode is around 3000 words. While that's around double my usual word count for these newsletters, the complexity (and longevity) of the subject matter demands it. Apologies in advance if you find it daunting.
— David
September 1970. Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has been operating out of Jordan, launching raids with increasing frequency against Israeli citizens and facilities both on Israeli soil and abroad. The Organization has proved an attractive career option for many angry Palestinians and can now call on around 16,000 fedayeen (fighters).
The PLO’s swagger has also blossomed under Yasser Arafat's leadership, operating in Jordan like it owns the place and has launched two failed assassination attempts on the life of the ruling monarch, King Hussein bin Tala.
The King's patience with Arafat finally runs out when five passenger aircraft (four bound for New York and one for London) are hijacked by members of a PLO splinter group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), operating from Jordanian territory. Three of the aircraft make it to the intended destinationDawson's’s Field, a former Royal Air Force facility near Zarqa, in Jordan.
Operating in Jordan like they own the place, the swaggering PLO has launched two failed assassination attempts on the life of the ruling monarch, King Hussein
The increasingly autonomous use of Hussein's kingdom by Arafat for terrorist purposes is seen by the King as a clear threat to his rule. He declares martial law and deploys his armed forces into areas dominated and controlled by Palestinians.
A short sharp war known as “Black September” ensues. The Jordanian victory is swift, and the remaining passengers held hostage in the Dawson Field hijackings are exchanged for three PFLP members kept in a Swiss prison.
Defeated, Arafat and his fedayeen are forced to find a new home. Thousands of PLO fighters join the waves of refugees fleeing the fighting in Jordan and regroup in southern Lebanon. From this new home, the PLO immediately renews its campaign of shelling and kidnapping citizens from Israel's northern border settlements.
May 22, 1970. In an event known as the “Avivum School Bus Attack,” typical of many PLO operations of the time, members of the PFLP General Command, yet another PLO faction (this one based in Syria) cross into Israel and fire two rocket-propelled grenades at a school bus, killing 12, including nine school children, and wounding 25. Israel retaliates, shelling south Lebanese villages. The reprisal kills 20, wounds 40, and sends another wave of refugees north towards Beirut.
The point of the attack is to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the world stage. As a purely public relations tacticit's’s a wildly successful exercise
Munich Olympics, 1972. Eight members of the Black September Organisation, a Palestinian terror group named after the recent brief war that expelled the PLO from Jordan, take 11 Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympics, named the “Games of Peace and Joy,” and eventually kill them along with a German police officer. The point of the attack is to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the world stage. As a purely public relations tactic, it's a wildly successful exercise with images and footage of the ruthless action nightly horrifying TV audiences around the globe.
April 1973. Israel retaliates against the Olympic Games outrage with Operation Spring of Youth, a Special Forces raid on Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon, that kills three top-level PLO leaders: Abu Youssef, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser.
Around this time, the Cold War between the USA and USSR begins to significantly influence events in the Middle East. Arab nationalism, coupled with a rise in religious fervor, increasingly unifies the Pan-Arab world against the West and its support for Israel, pushing it toward Moscow. However, for several years, a joint policy of “Détente” has brought about an apparent outward thaw in relationships between the US and USSR, and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev has little stomach for a destabilized Middle East.
In Egypt, however, President Anwar Sadat, still shamed by his nation's defeat in the Six-Days War, is looking to even the score against Israel. He approaches the USSR for weapons, which Brezhnev agrees to supply — Soviet tanks, SAMs, and fighter aircraft — but the Soviet leader advises against war with Israel, believing Sadat has little chance of victory, and advocates for the status quo.
Angered by Moscow's lack of faith, Sadat responds by expelling 20,000 Soviet advisors. He then approaches Syria to join with Egypt in yet another invasion of Israel. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad readily agrees, seeing a dominant role for Damascus in the Middle East. And, like Assad, Al-Assad has also built up his nation's military capabilities with Soviet weaponry and tactics. Theirs is the ideal partnership.
October 6, 1973. Egypt crosses the Six Days War cease-fire lines at the Suez Canal, invading Israel on the sacred day of Yom Kippur. The invasion initially surprises Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir and her military advisors, landing numerous devastating blows on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The military situation appears so dire that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, fearing Israel will be overrun, canvases the use of nuclear weapons
In the north of Israel, Syria concentrates on securing the Golan Heights, and Egyptian armies also enjoy early successes. In fact, the military situation appears so dire so quickly for the Israelis early in the war that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, fearing Israel will be overrun, canvases the use of nuclear weapons with Prime Minister Meir. But then the United States steps in, offering to resupply Israel's depleted stocks of war-fighting materiel. While Washington is unaware that Dayan has considered the nuclear option, it is concerned about Middle Eastern stability should Egypt and Syria prove victorious. The Pentagon also savors the opportunity of competing militarily against Soviet weaponry and tactics.
The superiority of American weaponry and ammunition, coupled with a virtually unlimited supply, begins to turn the tide.
A change in Israel's battlefield fortunes comes in the form of a spectacular and dramatic counterattack known as the “Battle of Ismaili.” General Ariel Sharon's forces break through enemy containment lines on the east bank of the Suez Canal and encircle an entire Egyptian army. And in the Golan Heights, Israel breaks through Syrian positions, advances rapidly, and begins to shell Damascus with artillery, placing enormous pressure on Assad.
With his army under pressure and the increasing concern that Syria will capitulate, Sadat fears that Egypt will be forced to fight Israel on its own and agrees to a ceasefire.
This brief but intense proxy war involving the US and the USSR war threatens global stability. It also unleashes a tsunami of refugees, joining other waves of refugees that have fled a succession of Arab-Israeli conflicts. Many thousands of these refugees head to Lebanon.
As with much of the Middle East (and covered in Part 1 of this series), Lebanon is a creation of the post-World War I carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, beginning its statehood as a French Protectorate with a Christian majority, a religious demographic unique in the region. However, the large numbers of PLO fighters that have regrouped in Lebanon over recent years have shifted that demographic towards a Shia majority, further destabilizing the Palestinians’ new host nation. The result — Lebanon is fast becoming a powder keg.
Punishing countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, the Arab-led OPEC oligopoly imposes an oil embargo. This triggers a global oil shock as prices per barrel soar 350%. Geared to cheap oil, Western economies collapse into recession.
By 1975, in a repeat of the situation in Jordan, the PLO is displaying increased hostility towards the status quo in its host nation, Lebanon. This time, Arafat's target is the US-backed Lebanese Christian “Maronite” government. Leftist Pan-Arab militias, already emotionally aligned with the USSR, join with the PLO in this confrontation. It's the spark that ignites that powder keg.
Upping the stakes, Soviet Premier Brezhnev is increasingly of the view that the American leadership has gone soft, and he now fully supports Syria when it advances into Lebanon in what is, by 1976, a full-blown civil war waged with unbridled ferocity, its epicenter the capital city, Beirut.
In what will become known as the 100 Days War, a war within a war, the Soviet-backed and supported Syrian army takes up positions around Christian East Beirut and relentlessly pounds the zone with artillery.
The extreme violence engulfing Beirut, primarily caused by the PLO, suits Arafat. The breakdown gives his fedayeen free rein in south Lebanon to conduct unlimited operations against Israeli settlements – rocketing and shelling them continuously and indiscriminately and launching terrorist raids into Israeli territory. In one such attack indicative of many others, thirty-eight civilians, including 13 children, are massacred with 70 more injured when PLO Fatah fighters cause mayhem on an Israeli coastal road, shooting at passing cars, throwing grenades, and hijacking two buses.
Thirteen children are massacred with 70 more injured when PLO Fatah fighters cause mayhem on an Israeli coastal road, shooting at passing cars, throwing grenades, and hijacking two buses
Fatah calls this raid Operation Martyr Kamal Adwan, named for the PLO chief of operations assassinated in the 1973 Israeli raid, Operation Spring of Youth.
The bloody tit-for-tat continues unabated when, just three days after the massacre, Israel launches Operation Litani, the IDF attacking PLO positions in southern Lebanon to push them north of the Litani River. These attacks are also key to bolstering Israel's ally at the time, the South Lebanese Army (SLA), a Christian-dominated militia.
Operation Litani levels numerous Palestinian towns, creating yet another refugee stampede. It also exacerbates tensions between the many Lebanese factions settling in for a civil war that will rage for 25 years (1975-1990).
The SLA shells the UN HQ killing eight peacekeepers, while numerous other UN peacekeepers are routinely shot at, kidnapped, and killed by competing factions
Israeli forces withdraw later in '78, appearing to submit to UN resolutions. A twelve-mile buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon is created and patrolled by UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. But neither the PLO nor the Israeli-baked SLA respect the zone. The SLA shells the UN HQ killing eight peacekeepers, while numerous other UN peacekeepers are routinely shot at, kidnapped, and killed by competing factions. The pointlessness of the UNIFIL operation is laid bare when the frequency and intensity of PLO operations increase further, with 270 documented attacks on Israeli territory and citizens.
Meanwhile, over in Iran, the growing nationalism and religious reawakening responsible for much of the upheaval in Lebanon has touched off the Islamic Revolution where, virtually overnight, a thousand years of continuous monarchy is replaced by a theocracy. The American Embassy in Tehran is occupied by students protesting the US support for the Shah, who is himself now a hated symbol of repression and decades of European imperialism.
The newly minted Islamic Republic cuts oil production, cancels all oil contracts, and nationalizes all oil fields and production infrastructure, ending (finally) the decades-long domination and control of its resources by British and American interests.
In a catastrophic intelligence failure, neither Britain nor the US have seen the Islamic Revolution coming, and the uncertainty it causes, coupled with the sporadic cuts in Iran's oil production, touch off another world oil crisis.
With everything going on at the time, Washington has failed to check Russian interests in Africa. This convinces Brezhnev that American leadership has slipped and that the time is right to invade Afghanistan and prop up its puppet regime.
The CIA responds, secretly stepping up support for Afghan Islamist anti-Soviet insurgent groups, collectively known as “mujahideen,” with weapons and equipment (the man-portable “Stinger” missiles used to take down Russian helicopter gunships is a mujahideen favorite). And in a more public protest, President Jimmy Carter announces a US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Cold War tensions further escalate when the Soviets refuse to eliminate medium-range nuclear weapons from Eastern Europe. At an end is a decade of Détente promoted by US President Richard Nixon and Premier Brezhnev in the early 70s that has reduced tensions between the world's two superpowers. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to halt an increase in nuclear missile launchers, and a joint Apollo-Soyuz space mission, outward signs of this Détente, are by now faded memories.
Despite the contradiction for many Pan-Arab countries following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a profoundly Islamist country, Syria continues to welcome support from Moscow, and in 1980, Hafez Al-Assad signs a 20-year treaty of friendship with the communist superpower. This relationship for Russia is mutually beneficial, Syria providing Russia with its only naval base in the Mediterranean at Tartus, a vital all-weather strategic asset of considerable value.
January, 1980. In what will be his last State of the Union Address, and in recognition of the attempts by Moscow to meddle in the Middle East, President Carter outlines the Carter Doctrine, stating, “The United States will use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.”
June, 1980. The attempted assassination of Schlomo Argov, Israel's Ambassador to the UK, by Palestinian terrorists is the event that prompts Israel to invade Lebanon once more, and with the singular resolve of crushing the PLO once and for all.
Under the direction of Ariel Sharon, now the Israeli Defense Minister, 60,000 troops and 800 tanks with heavy air support sweep into southern Lebanon. The IDF encounters fierce resistance, for the first time encountering Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps units reinforcing PLO fedayeen fighters. The resistance, though firm, doesn't stop the IDF pushing on to Beirut. However, unwilling to sustain the casualties that would be an inevitable feature of street-to-street and house-to-house fighting, Sharon chooses instead to lay siege to the city and bombard it remorselessly from land, sea, and air.
September, 1980. Nervous that Iran's Islamic revolution will spread to its sizeable Shia population, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invades Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, is convinced that the US has given Saddam the green light for the invasion, payback for losing its unfettered access to Iranian oil. The United States denies the accusation.
Khomeini reinterprets Koranic verses to allow for suicide attacks. The suicide soldiers are Iranian boys, each with a key to heaven around his neck.
Initially outgunned by Iraq and with its officer class purged by the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini is in desperate need of effective reinforcements. A solution is found when he reinterprets Koranic verses to allow for suicide attacks and, in an Islamic world first, human waves facing certain death are thrown at the Iraqi lines. The suicide soldiers are Iranian boys, each with a key to heaven around his neck.
Preoccupied with the debilitating war, Iraq cuts oil production, exacerbating the oil crisis and further deepening recession in the West.
January, 1981. President-elect Ronald Reagan assumes power as America's 40th President at a time when the nation is suffering from a depressed economy and a new phenomenon called “stagflation” – high inflation coupled with high unemployment and stagnant demand brought on by successive oil shocks. There are also a myriad of geopolitical problems to face overseas. (Thankfully for Reagan, however, at least the Hostage Crisis that brought down predecessor Carter isn't one of them, with the 52 Americans held in Tehran by Revolutionary Guards finally released just 20 minutes after the conclusion of his inauguration speech.)
By now, the Ayatollah has fully joined the fight in Lebanon, seeing an opportunity to export the Islamic Revolution to Shia Muslims. Large numbers of Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) are dispatched to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to support the PLO and fight alongside the fedayeen. The IRGC opens terrorist training camps and creates a new joint Lebanese-Iranian terrorist organization that will ultimately come to be known as Hezbollah (the Party of God).
The reaction of the American public to the nightly TV images of shells raining down on Christians in war-torn Beirut, coupled with the desire to be seen as a different style of president to his predecessor, Reagan dispatches representatives to Lebanon to negotiate the withdrawal of PLO fighters.
Arafat initially publicly resists these entreaties. Privately, though, he’s concerned that his fighting force will be systematically annihilated by the incessant Israeli attacks, leaving him powerless. With little choice, the PLO leader finally agrees to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of his men to a number of Arab countries, his main condition of acceptance being that the PLO refugees sheltering in Beirut camps are protected.
Throughout August and early September 1982, a UN Multinational Force (MNF) of American Marines (the Marine's second engagement in the Lebanese civil war after a brief earlier deployment to evacuate at-risk US and foreign nationals), French and Italian troops facilitate the evacuation of the PLO Fedayeen from the Port of Beirut.
But the hope for peace in Lebanon is short-lived when democratically elected Lebanon President Bashir Gemayel, the man credited with unifying various Christian militias and perhaps the main instigator of the removal of Arafat, is assassinated by a car bomb. Bashir is the first leader since Egypt's Anwar Sadat to agree to an accord with Israel.
The Christian Lebanese Military Force enters the Sabra and Shatila camps in east Beirut and murders thousands of predominantly Shia refugees, including women and children. The Israeli guards providing camp security turn a blind eye to the massacre
Two days later, in revenge for the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel, under the guise of rooting out PLO cells left behind, the Christian-affiliated Lebanese Military Force enters the Sabra and Shatila camps in east Beirut and murders thousands of predominantly Shia refugees, including women and children.
The Israeli guards providing camp security under the agreement struck by the US with Arafat turn a blind eye to the massacre.
Israel blames the UN for pulling out its Multinational Force, which had oversight on the camps, but Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the hero of Yom Kippur, is sacked.
Within 48 hours, the UN reforms the MNF for a hurried return to the war-torn country. In Washington DC, however, Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger openly bicker about whether the US military should have a continued presence in Lebanon. Shultz believes the US can provide a secure and steadying hand to the democratically elected incumbent Phalange government, help end the attacks on Israel, and stabilize the region. It’s a big ask.
Weinberger, a known hawk (but from Shultz’s point of view, prone to inaction), feels there is no clear objective for a US military presence in Lebanon and, therefore, no mission. The two top department heads, both advisors to the president, argue openly about the right course of action. Ultimately President Reagan agrees with Shultz, and the United States Marines are again called for duty, their third deployment to Beirut.
By now, the capital of Lebanon is a meat-grinder of snipers’ bullets, artillery shells, rockets, and mines. The Marines choose the Beirut International Airport as their base of operations. On September 30, a day after the Marines arrive, Corporal David Reagan is mortally wounded during mine clearing ops on the Marine’s chosen patch of land. He is the first US Marine to be sent home in a body bag, and he will by no means be the last.
Part 3, GOOD INTENTIONS, coming next week, looks at the involvement of the US and Iran in the Lebanese Civil War. It’s not pretty, especially for the American Marines.
So, until next week…
— David
Did your research uncover anything related to a rumor that in the Yom Kippur war, Nixon was initially reluctant to resupply Israel?
Thanks, Dave. A succinct clarity missing in the mainstream.