Lebanon War of 1982
1982 CE
The 1982 Lebanon War, called by Israel the Operation Peace of the Galilee, and later colloquially also known in Israel as the First Lebanon War, begins on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invade southern Lebanon.
The Government of Israel ordersthe invasion as a response to the assassination attempt against Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, by the Abu Nidal Organization.After attacking the PLO, as well as Syrian and Muslim Lebanese forces, Israel occupies southern Lebanon.
Surrounded in West Beirut and subject to heavy bombardment, the PLO and the Syrian forces negotiate passage from Lebanon with the aid of international peacekeepers.
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The Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon is viewed in Egypt as an Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian nationalism, and President Hosni Mubarak is accused by his detractors of allowing Israel to take advantage of Egypt's position of disengagement.
Official relations with Israel are severely strained.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a top-secret finding in 1982 authorizing ten million dollars in covert aid to Bachir Gamayel's Lebanese Christian militia.
Gamayel, President-Elect of Lebanon, is assassinated shortly thereafter.
Within two days, Israeli forces allow Phalangist units to enter Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut on a mission of revenge.
At two of these camps, Sabra and Shatilla, Israeli intelligence will calculate that there were seven hundred to eight hundred Palestinian victims, many of them women and children.
All had been massacred.
One hundred and six people have died in the course of all terrorist activities in the north of Israel since 1967, according to official Israeli army statistics.
The total number of Israelis killed in all acts of terror from 1967 is two hundred and eighty-two, less than the number of killed by Israel's air attacks in Beirut on July 17-18, 1981, in "retaliation" after a PLO response to Israeli bombing that broke the cease fire.
The invasion of Lebanon is the first war fought by the IDF without a domestic consensus.
Unlike the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars, the Israeli public does not view Operation Peace for Galilee as essential to the survival of the Jewish state.
By the early 1980s—less than forty years after its establishment—Israel has attained a military prowess unmatched in the region.
The architects of the 1982 invasion, Sharon and Eitan, seek to use Israel's military strength to create a more favorable regional political setting.
This strategy includes weakening the PLO and supporting the rise to power in Lebanon of Israel's Christian allies.
Inside Israel, a mounting death toll causes sharp criticism by a war-weary public of the war of and of the Likud government.
The United States tries without success to piece together a coalition Lebanese government and induce the Israelis and Syrians to withdraw.
Israel sets up a commission of inquiry to determine responsibility for the deaths at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps.
While finding Sharon not directly responsible for the massacres, the commission finds him indirectly responsible for failing to take action to prevent the bloodshed.
Islamic suicide bombers destroy Israeli military headquarters in Tyre on November 11, leaving seventy-five Israeli soldiers dead, together with fifteen Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.