The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the Second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, 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 Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border. The Israeli military operation, codenamed Operation Peace for Galilee, 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 the PLO, using the incident as a casus belli. It was the second invasion of Lebanon by Israel, following the 1978 South Lebanon conflict.
The Israelis sought to end Palestinian attacks from Lebanon, destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the country, and install a pro-Israel Maronite Christian government. Israeli forces attacked and overran PLO positions in southern Lebanon and briefly clashed with the Syrian Army, who occupied most of the country's northeast. The Israeli military, together with the South Lebanon Army, seized control of the southern half of Lebanon and laid siege to the capital Beirut. The Lebanese Forces however, despite their clandestine alliance with Israel, refused to participate in the war against the PLO as their leader Bachir Gemayel viewed any direct involvement as assisting an invading army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy Israeli bombardment, the PLO and their allies negotiated a ceasefire with the aid of United States special envoy Philip Habib. The PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, were evacuated from Lebanon, overseen by a multinational peacekeeping force. By expelling the PLO, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel, the Israeli government hoped to sign a treaty that would give Israel "forty years of peace".
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. There was outrage at the IDF's role in the Israeli-backed, Phalangist-perpetrated Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias. This stoked Israeli public disillusionment with the war. The IDF withdrew from Beirut and ended its operation on 29 September 1982. The May 17 Agreement of 1983 ended the state of war between Israel and Lebanon, and provided for an Israeli withdrawal from the country. Amid rising casualties from guerrilla attacks, the IDF retreated south of the Awali river on 3 September 1983.
From February to April 1985, the Israeli military undertook a phased withdrawal to its "South Lebanon security zone" along the border. The Israeli occupation saw the emergence of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia Islamist group. It waged a guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation until the IDF's final withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. In Israel, the 1982 invasion is also known as the First Lebanon War.
During the 1948 Palestine war, 730,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave by Zionist forces, of whom 100,000 arrived in Lebanon. Most of the guerrillas would be recruited from Palestinian refugee camps. By 1969, this population had grown to 235,000 as a result of natural population growth and immigration, including Palestinians who fled or were expelled by Israel during the 1967 war. On the eve of the 1982 Israeli invasion, the Palestinian population in Lebanon was 375,000.
The 1967 Six-Day War stimulated the growth of the Palestinian fedayeen (guerrillas). After 1967, the number of armed Palestinians increased from 200 to 2,000 and by 1968 it had reached 15,000.
Palestinian guerrilla action intended to serve as a war of national liberation for Palestinians. In 1968, PLO's objective was to establish a single democratic state in all of historical Palestine with equal rights for Jews, Muslims and Christians. It was around this time that Palestinians began to conduct raids into Israel. By 1977, the objective had evolved to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, alongside Israel.
Relocation of PLO from Jordan to South Lebanon
In 1970, a large influx of Palestinians from Jordan went into Lebanon after the Black September conflict. This caused an additional demographic imbalance within Lebanese society, and affected its democratic institutions established earlier by the National Pact.
By 1975, the refugees numbered more than 300,000 and the PLO in effect created an unofficial state-within-a-state, particularly in Southern Lebanon, which then played an important role in the Lebanese Civil War. There had been continual violence near the Lebanon-Israel border between Israel and the PLO, starting from 1968; this increased following the relocation of PLO bases to Lebanon after the civil war in Jordan.
The violence between Israel and the PLO peaked during Operation Litani in 1978, provoked by the Coastal Road Massacre which was carried out by Palestinian militants. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created after the incursion, following the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 in March 1978 to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, restore international peace and security, and help the government of Lebanon restore its effective authority in the area.
As early as 1976, Israel had been assisting Lebanese Christian militias in their sporadic battles against the PLO. During Operation Litani in 1978, Israel established a security zone in southern Lebanon with mostly Christian inhabitants, in which they began to supply training and arms to Christian militias which would later form the South Lebanese Army. But Israel's main partner was to be the Maronite Phalange party, whose paramilitary was led by Bashir Gemayel, a rising figure in Lebanese politics. Gemayel's strategy during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War was to provoke the Syrians into retaliatory attacks on Christians, such that Israel could not ignore.
In 1978, Menachem Begin declared that Israel would not allow a genocide of Lebanese Christians, while refusing direct intervention. Hundreds of Lebanese militiamen began to train in Israel, at the IDF Staff and Command College. The relationship between Israel and the Maronites began to grow into a political-strategic alliance, and members of the Israeli government like Ariel Sharon began to conceive of a plan to install a pro-Israel Christian government in Lebanon, as it was known that Bashir wanted to remove the PLO and all Palestinian refugees in the country.
From June to December 1980, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) recorded an increase in activities along the border zone. No attacks by Palestinian forces on Israel were recorded, while the IDF incursions across the armistice line into Lebanon increased markedly, with minefields being laid, gun posts established, and generally involving numerous violations of Lebanese air-space and territorial waters. This was formally protested by the Lebanese government to the UN Security Council and General Assembly in several communications as violations by Israel of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. During the same period Israel protested numerous attacks by Palestinian forces, unrelated to the Lebanese border zone.
In his report for the period of 12 December 1980 to 12 June 1981 on UNIFIL activities, the Security Council Secretary General noted that infiltrations into the border zone by Palestinian armed forces had decreased relative to the previous six months. Indeed, the PLO had recognized their vulnerable position, and avoided overtly provoking Israel. In contrast the IDF had launched various attacks on Lebanese territory often in support of the Lebanese Christian militia. In doing so Israel had violated UN Security Council resolution 425 on hundreds of occasions [paragraph 58]. Where the initiator(s) of attacks could be identified in the report, in 15 cases Palestinian militants were to blame while on 23 occasions the Militia and/or the IDF were the instigators, the latter also being responsible for the most violent confrontation of the period on 27 April [paragraph 52].