Authors: Martin van Creveld

The Sword And The Olive (54 page)

BOOK: The Sword And The Olive

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Seeking to counter the threat, IDF Northern Command would patrol, shell, bomb, and raid. Some of its operations were aimed directly at the guerrillas in the field. Others sought to hit the villages and refugee camps that gave them shelter and in which their headquarters, recruitment areas, training grounds, and arms stores were allegedly located. From time to time an exasperated Israel sought to counter the threat with larger measures, using the IAF and navy to strike deep into Lebanon or mounting miniature invasions. For example, on May 12, 1969, two columns of some one hundred vehicles crossed the border. Supported from the air, they occupied a forty-five-square-mile area opposite Kiryat Shmona, held it for thirty-four hours, and screened the population of the six villages it contained. After killing twenty presumed guerrillas, the Israelis withdrew. The enemy remained undaunted, however, and less than twelve hours later, mortar rounds and rockets were again falling on Israeli soil.

Then and later, some of the attacks were launched by Palestinian organizations on their own initiative. Others were assisted by Syria’s army, which provided weapons and used the Palestinians as proxies. The Lebanese government was ambivalent. Lebanon was and remains a country divided among numerous ethnic groups such as Christians, Druze, Shiites, and Sunnis. All were further divided into subgroups, and many were being manipulated to one extent or another by the powerful Syrian neighbor on the east—not to mention other Arab rulers who, if only to thwart Syria, also had a finger in the pie. Depending on the momentary balance of power among the various parties, the prime minister would attempt to suppress the guerrillas or allow them a free hand or cooperate with them or pretend to do one of these three while in fact doing something else. Coming under Israeli attack, the Lebanese would loudly complain that they were not to blame. And in fact theirs is less a unified state than a beehive of competing peoples and factions, all heavily armed and with a tradition of mutual hatred.

In May 1973, following one particularly vicious Israeli raid into the center of Beirut, Lebanon’s slide into civil war began. As riots broke out in the refugee camps, Christian Pres. Suleyman Franjiyeh ordered Lebanon’s army and air force into action against the Palestinians. They soon discovered that the latter had allied with the Druze and Shiites, both of whom feared the move might herald a Christian attempt to achieve supremacy at their expense. Beset on all sides at once, the army simply melted away. By 1975 the country was in chaos as an astounding number of militias fought each other tooth and nail. The Christians alone fielded four different militias: Bashir Gemayel’s Phalange, Kamel Chamoun’s Tigers, and two smaller forces belonging to Franjiyeh and George Kassis. Counting the various religious and Palestinian militias, the total number must have come to more than fifty.

As Lebanon disintegrated Israel acted. Although cross-border activity never ceased, compared to what was going on in the north and center of Lebanon the south was an oasis of quiet and attracted many refugees. Guided by Shimon Peres as minister of defense,
²Israel sought to establish a kind of protectorate over the area. It would help the local Shiites set up their own armed force; paid for, trained, and equipped by the IDF, it would do its bit in protecting the border against attack. The policy was known as the “Good Fence,” after the heavily guarded fence separating Israel and Lebanon. From 1976 on, the gates in the fence became as important as the fence itself. Through them passed Israeli supplies and military advisers in one direction, Lebanese civilians seeking work and medical treatment in the other.

During the first period of civil war Syrian intervention was generally limited to manipulating the various sides and providing arms. In June 1976, Syria invaded Lebanon, however, ostensibly to help Palestinians against their enemies and make sure they would be in a position to continue their struggle against Israel. The story of subsequent Syrian involvement is immensely complicated; suffice it to say they allied now with one side, then with another, taking on militia after militia and invariably defeating them in short, sharp encounters. How they managed this without falling apart, as would virtually every other army caught in a similar situation since 1945, has never been properly studied. All the while they were obviously determined to extend their own influence and by 1982 ended up dominating Lebanon’s eastern and central regions.

In the face of the Syrian threat, Israel’s initial response had been to issue stern warnings against an invasion.
³When that did not work, first Rabin and then Begin sought to draw “red lines,” which the Syrians were not supposed to cross. In fact an understanding was reached by which the Syrians undertook not to activate their air force against the IAF—which had been roaming over Lebanon for years—and not to station antiaircraft missiles in the country. Above all, they were to remain north of a line stretching from the mouth of the Zaharani River on the Mediterranean to the village of Mashki in the Beqa Valley to the east,
⁴thereby leaving a sort of no-man’s-land where PLO, supported by Syria, fought for domination against Israel and its Shiite allies.

Against this background of continual skirmishes, March 11, 1978, was a particularly bad day. A PLO party left Damour (in northern Lebanon) by sea, landed south of Haifa, and killed an American woman tourist they met on the beach. Next they hijacked a bus that was driving south along the coastal highway; thanks to deficient coordination between the IDF and the Israeli police, they were able to get as far as the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv before they were stopped. By the time the incident was terminated, thirty-seven Israelis were dead, the majority having been killed by the terrorists but some apparently by the security forces as they stormed the bus. Previously Begin as opposition leader had repeatedly chided Rabin for not being tough enough on Lebanese-based terrorism. Now he and Weizman organized two brigades—some 7,000 troops with artillery and tanks—and, after a weeklong weather delay, sent them rolling into southern Lebanon.

How Chief of Staff Gur, who during his term as CO Northern Command had been in charge of several similar operations, could have hoped to beat the PLO by such cumbersome means remains a mystery. Possibly he had learned nothing from the lessons of Vietnam, where countless similar operations had failed; more likely he and his masters just wanted to assuage outraged Israeli public opinion. In any event local Lebanese paid the price as dozens were killed, hundreds had their homes demolished, and tens of thousands fled north to escape the shelling and aerial bombardment. Needless to say the guerrillas, having had plenty of warning, also fled, some with their arms and others without (then again, outside the Occupied Territories acquiring additional light arms never constituted a problem for the PLO). Having suffered more than thirty dead, the IDF, five days after “Operation Litani” began, was back at its starting line. The only tangible result, if it may be called that, was the creation of a small UN observation force, which took up positions north of the border.

In retrospect “Operation Litani” constituted a turning point. It not only proved that the IDF did not know how to deal with the PLO but also boosted PLO confidence. Accordingly, even as skirmishes proceeded apace Arafat and his men set out to transform the guerrillas in southern Lebanon into a semiregular force. Syria and some other Arab countries, mainly Libya, helped; by summer 1981 this had resulted in the creation of three fledgling infantry brigades named Karameh, Yarmuk, and Kastel. They were supported by some one hundred artillery barrels and a number of old T-34 tanks.
⁵The Palestinians acquired in addition astounding quantities of small arms, various antiaircraft guns, and antitank weapons in the form of Soviet-manufactured RPG-7 rockets. Many of the arms were stored in the extensive system of underground bunkers that honeycombed the refugee camps; when the time for invasion came, the IDF would find them wrapped in their plastic covers.

By that time Israel, hoping to counter the Syrians, had become heavily involved with the Lebanese Christians concentrated in the north. The first direct contact between the two sides took place while Rabin was prime minister; he was, however, dubious and unwilling to do more than provide weapons, ammunition, fuel, and training.
⁶Begin, too, was initially cautious but later persuaded himself that the Syrians were genocidal, so he determined to do more. Mossad took up contact with the most important Christian militia, the Phalange, whose leaders made use of truly scrumptious feasts in order to recruit the Israelis for their cause.
⁷The ultimate goal was to form an alliance and drive the Syrians out of the country. Clashes between Phalange commander Bashir Gemayel and the Syrians multiplied. Syrian army helicopters were used against the Phalange, two being downed by the IAF; in April 1981 the Syrians responded by moving antiaircraft missiles into Lebanon.
⁸

Thus, during a period of several years the elements that would combine to create the IDF’s greatest folly were being assembled one by one. In summer 1981 the border between Israel and Lebanon flared up as the IDF answered fresh Katyusha rocket attacks by means of an unprecedented heavy artillery bombardment and a heliborne raid against PLO bases on the Zaharani River. Still Begin held back; after about two weeks of fighting a cease-fire was concluded and during the next year was to be observed fairly scrupulously by both sides. A month later Sharon’s appointment as minister of defense marked the beginning of the end run. Since 1973 the hawkish former general had often castigated the government for being soft on the Arabs; he even voted against the Camp David Accords. Now that the Lebanon border was almost completely quiet he, Eytan, and other members of the General Staff, every time some incident took place anywhere in the country, would descend on it like vultures, looking hard to see whether it was their excuse to invade. During the winter and spring of 1982, the plans were repeatedly set in motion and the tank transporters loaded and sent on their way. They were always recalled for one reason or another.

In truth, the IDF’s planning for Lebanon simply was not a rational response to PLO attacks. Perhaps because he had never been a soldier, Begin saw war in romantic terms. According to Arye Naor, who served as secretary to the Cabinet, for Begin the idea of Jews taking military action against their enemies struck a deep emotional chord; after all, the state of Israel had been established specifically to put an end to the pogroms that made them the hapless victims.
⁹Even among those who did not share this vision, the October War had caused a trauma that the Entebbe raid and the operation against the Iraqi reactor could only do so much to heal. Constantly harassed by guerrillas in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories, army commanders were raring to go—had they not spent years building the most enormous force ever fielded by such a small country? Above all, the air force was seeking revenge for the losses it had suffered in 1973, which had induced its former commander, Ezer Weizman, to say that “the missiles had bent the wing of the airplane.” When the next clash came, it was a question of pitting “our best against theirs” to see who would come out on top.
¹⁰

In any event Israel’s excuse for launching “Operation Peace for Galilee”—the name dreamed up by Begin personally—proved paper-thin (see Map 17.1). On June 3, 1982, Israel’s ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov, was shot in the head and gravely wounded. The PLO disclaimed responsibility; there were indications that the perpetrators belonged to Abu Nidal’s group, intending to put Arafat out on a limb.
¹¹Yet Sharon ordered the IAF to bomb Palestinian bases in the camps near Beirut, knowing full well that the response would be renewed rocket attacks on northern Israel. The attacks duly took place, and the tank transporters were set rolling toward the frontier. This time they did not stop, however, and on June 6, exactly fifteen years after the Six Day War, Israel found itself embroiled in large-scale hostilities against an Arab neighbor.

Officially the campaign’s objective was to overrun the PLO strongholds and throw the guerrillas back to a line twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) north of the border, thereby putting them beyond the range of their Katyusha rockets. As early as October 1981 a much larger operation had been hatched, however, aiming to link with the Christians in Beirut to break the PLO; it was in Lebanon that the fate of the Occupied Territories was to be decided.
¹²Since the Syrian forward positions in the eastern sector were located only fourteen miles or so from Israel’s border, a clash with them was inevitable.