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Israel’s 2006 war fits a long pattern of
intervention—a pattern of unprovoked, wholesale murder, covered up by
deception.
From its start the Zionist movement had
plans for southern Lebanon. Israeli historian Benny Morris in “Righteous
Victims” reports that the Zionists presented a map for their desired
state to the Versailles Peace Conference that “included southern Lebanon
up to the Litani River, north of which they hoped would emerge a Maronite
[Christian] state.”
The strategic importance of the Litani
and other rivers in this arid region also shaped Zionist plans. This
conception was echoed in writings by David Ben-Gurion, Labor Party
founder and later Israel’s first prime minister.
Army chief Moshe Dayan said in 1955,
"All that is needed is to find an officer ... to win him over or
bribe him so he agrees to declare himself the savior of the Maronites.
Then the IDF will enter Lebanon, conquer the necessary territory and
establish a Christian government. … The areas south of the Litani will be
annexed completely to Israel."
Both Ben-Gurion and Dayan pushed
(unsuccessfully) in the 1950s for cabinet approval for such plans even
though, says Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Lebanon had “scrupulously
abided” by its armistice agreement.
The 1967 war and after
After the 1967 war (during which Israel
seized Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms), the U.S. increasingly relied on Israel to
intervene on its behalf. As Gilbert Achcar writes, Israel “would become
the watchdog of U.S. regional interests: congenitally a militarized
state—and [it] could not be otherwise due to its colonial origin and its
hostile relationship with its environment—it was predestined to play that
role.”
After the war the PLO began frequent
raids on Israel, leading to Zionist reprisals against any country from
which they were launched. The Palestinian refugees driven into Lebanon in
1948 were joined in 1970 by those driven out of Jordan by the murderous
repression of King Hussein.
Lebanon replaced Jordan as the PLO’s main
base, with a refugee population of about 300,000. This meant Lebanon
suffered more than any country from Zionist retaliatory or “preventive”
attacks. Some examples, as documented in Noam Chomsky’s “Fateful
Triangle”:
• In 1968 Israel destroyed 13 Lebanese
civilian aircraft in Beirut after a PLO attack on an El Al jet.
• Accounts of the famous 1974 Mailot
massacre of 20 Israeli paramilitaries rarely mention the Israeli air
attack two days before, which killed four Lebanese civilians, nor the
previous weeks of napalm bombing of camps, with over 200 killed.
• Many villages were attacked almost
daily in 1975, including with phosphorus, incendiary bombs, and napalm.
One such attack was admitted to be “preventive, not punitive,” and was
used to sabotage a PLO overture for talks.
From 1968 to 1974 there were an estimated 1.4 Israeli
violations of Lebanese territory per day. The town of Khiyam was bombed
repeatedly from 1968 on, reducing it from tens of thousands to a few
dozen—who were massacred by Israel’s Christian allies in 1978.
The civil war
In 1975 civil war broke out, ranging
Christian militias against a Muslim-leftist alliance (the National
Movement). But Walid Khalidi points out in “Conflict and Violence in
Lebanon” that discrimination against Muslims was ignored by the Muslim
establishment, who bemoaned the “Maronite ‘monopoly’ of power” but wouldn’t
challenge the confessionalism from which they also benefited.
The National Movement united Marxists,
Baathists, Nasserists, and radical Muslims, with leading Druze politician
Kamal Jumblat’s misnamed Progessive Socialist Party at its core. The leftist
parties had many Christian members, and one of its planks was the
deconfessionalization of the country to end the rule of both Christian
and Muslim capitalists.
Unfortunately, the Movement, while including two large
Stalinist parties (with many Shia followers), was only anticapitalist in
words.
The later entry of the PLO into the
Movement did nothing to clarify its politics. A 1974 statement by Arab
Trotskyists on “The Arab Revolution” had noted that the PLO’s policies
made it easier for the Zionists and the Lebanese regime to isolate the
resistance from the Lebanese population. Noting that Lebanon was “the
Arab country most affected by the world capitalist crisis,” they pointed
to the need for an independent class strategy.
In June, 1976, as the scales tipped in
favor of the National Movement, Syria sent in troops against them—but
later turned on the resurgent Christian forces to maintain the
pro-capitalist confessional balance.
An estimated 100,000 died in the civil
war from 1975 to 1990. From 1976 to 1982 Israel gave the Phalange $118.5
million in arms, and both Labor and Likud leaders met with them regularly.
In the midst of the civil war (1978)
Israel launched “Operation Litani”: 22,000 shells killed 2000, destroyed
hundreds of homes and forced 250,000 to flee their homes. After six days
the IDF held the area south of the Litani except for Tyre, and created
there the South Lebanese Army (SLA).
On the arrival of a UN force, the IDF
withdrew to a border "Security Zone" but Israel’s resumed
bombing in 1979 killed 1000 people.
In his “History of the Israeli Army,”
Israeli military historian Ze’ev Schiff summarizes an Israeli general’s
take on the 1978 invasion: “We struck the civilian population
consciously, because they deserved it … the Army has always struck
civilians, purposely and consciously—even when Israeli settlements had
not been struck.”
Operation Peace for Galilee
Despite repeated provocations in 1981,
the PLO at first avoided retaliation—and in its first response ordered
gunners shelling settlements to miss their targets.
In July 1981, Israel destroyed roads and
bridges and bombed camps; 300 were killed in air attacks on Beirut,
prompting the U.S. to delay delivery of fighter jets. Still Israel
couldn’t achieve its goals of ousting the PLO and destroying its social
infrastructure, which provided services to hundreds of thousands. Nor
could it destroy dispersed PLO military stockpiles or stop arrival of new
supplies.
Even more galling was the implied
recognition of the PLO in U.S.-sponsored ceasefire talks. All this led,
said Morris, to a sense of frustration and humiliation—and "a
burning desire to settle accounts."
A January 1982 PLO raid led Defense
Minister Ariel Sharon to propose an air attack, hoping to trigger a PLO
response against settlements, but he was voted down. From August 1981 to
May 1982 there were 2125 violations of Lebanese airspace and waters.
Morris writes that Israel spent these months “seeking a pretext to
invade,” despite PLO forbearance.
In January 1982, Sharon met secretly with
Christian political leader Bashir Gemayel and talked of invading as far
as Beirut Airport. In May Schiff wrote in Haaretz, “It is not true
that—as we tell the Americans—we do not want to invade Lebanon. … The
military wanted to create “a situation that will leave Israel no choice
but to invade. … The aims would be to ‘root out’ the PLO, disperse the
refugees once again, and make Israel ‘the policeman of Lebanon,’ able to
decide how the Lebanese parliament votes.”
Destroying the PLO in Lebanon, Sharon
hoped, would “bring out moderates in the occupied territories amenable to
limited autonomy.”
On June 4 Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan
proposed air attacks on Beirut, knowing, says Morris, "that the raid
would most likely trigger a PLO bombardment of Galilee. The ministers
understood this would precipitate the long-planned IDF ground assault."
In the first months of 1982 there was a
huge increase in arms supplies from the U.S. to Israel, including cluster
bombs, the latter soon to be used so indiscriminately against civilians
that the U.S. stopped their export to Israel (a ban rescinded in 1988).
In the months before the invasion, Begin
and Sharon told U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig what was coming.
Haig asked only that there be a plausible pretext and warned against a
“disproportionate” response. When Haig asked how far he intended to go,
Sharon said, “as far as we have to.”
The pretext eventually used was the
attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat by the Abu Nidal faction
of the PLO, which was promptly denounced by the dominant Fatah faction.
In response refugee camps were bombed and 200 killed—double the number of
Israelis killed in 15 years of PLO actions.
Another pretext used was the alleged
capture of “international terrorists” being groomed by the PLO. It was
later admitted no such capture had occurred.
When the full-scale invasion began on
June 6, 1982, no one in Washington complained that it relied on
U.S.-supplied arms, despite laws requiring their use only for defensive
purposes. The New York Times said, "American weapons were justly
used to break the PLO."
The Palestinians fought largely on their
own. On June 8, Reagan’s special ambassador, Philip Habib, demanded that
both Palestinian and Syrian forces retreat.
The PLO was hindered by an incompetent
command and cowardly officers. But the rank and file fought
bravely—fighting, says Schiff, “with uncommon valor” against “a war
machine [with] enormous fire power.” This was most true of “the scantily trained
militiamen in the camps,” defending their own homes and families.
Despite claims it was acting against
“terrorists,” Schiff says, “Israeli fire was released indiscriminately.”
Fisk tells of air attacks on hundreds of buildings known to have civilians.
Hundreds of men were rounded up and taken away, never to be seen again.
The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, engaged in torture and
assassination on Lebanese soil, and sent Arab agents with car bombs into
Beirut, killing dozens.
The siege of Beirut
Upon reaching Beirut, the IDF began a
nine-week siege, including saturation bombing and intermittent blockades
of food, fuel, and water.
On June 26, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security
Council resolution for an end to hostilities (saying it was “a transparent
attempt to preserve the PLO as a viable political force.”) But sensing
the siege’s impact on public opinion, Reagan had Habib begin talks for a
cease-fire.
Habib demanded that the PLO leave
Lebanon. Even after this was agreed to, the IDF continued bombing,
killing 300 on Aug. 12, 1982. Reagan then told Begin to halt the
"unfathomable and senseless" raids. Even the Zionist Cabinet
was taken aback and stripped Sharon of the right to activate forces
without higher approval.
All told, about 17,000, mostly civilians,
were killed in Operation Peace for Galilee, and between 500,000 and
800,000 made homeless.
Still, Newsweek reported that the
guerrillas forced out of Beirut “did what all Arab victories have never
been able to do: they denied Israel its victory.” For the first time the
ending didn’t come “with long lines of defeated, demoralized troops. ...
The world is seeing triumphant soldiers carrying their arms to new
battles,” and “veterans who know what it is to face the Israeli army and
stop them dead in their tracks.”
Massacre in the camps
Israel soon broke its pledge not to enter
Beirut after the PLO left. The U.S. had agreed to serve as protector of
Palestinian civilians. But there was time for one more atrocity.
The Phalange was picked by Israel to
enter the camps of Sabra and Chatilla to hunt for “terrorists.” Israel
knew the assassination of Christian President Bashir Gemayel—whose
election it had just secured by force and bribery—would lead to
retaliation. Sharon—who, Chomsky notes, used “terrorist” as a synonym for
Palestinian—told the Phalange not to leave a single terrorist alive.
The Phalange marched house to house in
the camps, brightly lit at night by IDF mortars. Says Schiff, “Entire
families were indiscriminately slaughtered.” People were killed with
grenades hung around their necks, others raped and disemboweled. Infants
were trampled with spiked shoes. Throughout, high-ranking Israeli
officers listened on radios to Phalangists discussing the massacre.
It went on for three days, with between
1700 and 3000 killed. Fisk later noted that although the number of
victims was over half the total at the World Trade Center, "no-one
proclaimed that the world had changed forever." The massacre brought
dissent over the war inside Israel to a head, leading to a rally of
400,000. Sharon’s only punishment, however, was to be shuffled to another
cabinet post.
The aftermath of the 1982 war
After the war Israel stepped up
settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza. But rather than the
hoped-for postwar PLO capitulation, an upsurge of mass activity soon
blossomed into the intifada.
Even Israel’s hopes for its Lebanese
collaborators went awry. Rather than sign a proposed 1983 agreement with
the Israelis, Bashir Gemayel’s successor, his brother Amin, felt
compelled to make peace with Muslim elites in West Beirut.
The same year daily casualties led Israel
to withdraw to southern Lebanon. But Israeli and SLA activities in the
south led to increased resistance by the Shiite group Amal and the newly-formed
Hezbullah. The Israeli reaction, said Fisk, "followed the timeworn
pattern of curfews, searches, mass arrests, torture, vandalism, looting,
and occasional on-the-spot executions."
Meanwhile the U.S. “peacekeeping force”
intervened in renewed Christian-Druze fighting on behalf of the former,
including by shelling civilian areas—making U.S. soldiers into targets.
In a suicide bombing on April 18, 1983, 63 were killed at the U.S.
embassy. More suicide bombs killed 241 U.S. Marines on Oct. 23, and 59 at
a French base the same day. The following February, U.S. troops were
withdrawn.
Continued resistance forced Israel to
withdraw in 1985 to a zone a few miles deep inside Lebanon. From then
until 2000, Israel launched repeated attacks. A few New York Times
reports give a flavor for these:
• Aug. 5, 1993: “Israel's weeklong
bombardment ... displaced 250,000 people and left 130 dead. Israel
dropped 1,000 bombs and 21,000 shells on 70 villages.”
• March 22, 1994: “Israeli artillery pounded
Lebanon … in retaliation for bombings that killed two Israeli soldiers
and three members of Israel's client militia.”
• Aug. 21, 1997: “Warplanes struck power
lines … cut[ting] power to thousands. The strikes were the heaviest since
all sides agreed in April 1996 to call a halt to attacks on civilians.”
The halt referred to came after the bombing deaths of
100 civilians in Qana, site of a similar atrocity in the 2006 war. This
was in the midst of Operation Grapes of Wrath, in which Israel created 400,000
refugees.
• Feb. 9, 2000: “Shiite guerrillas killed
another Israeli soldier, and warplanes retaliated less than 24 hours
after their first bombardment shut down civilian life. Israeli officials
said they would ignore the agreement prohibit[ing] involving civilians in
the violence. ... They said Hezbollah increasingly [used] villages to
launch rockets at Israeli soldiers.”
On the same day, Israeli destroyed just-repaired
transformers in Beirut, Tripoli, and Baalbek.
• March 15, 2000: “Israeli jets attacked
targets in Lebanon for the second day, giving a riposte to the 22-nation
Arab League for its denunciation of Israel.” In other words, civilians
die for diplomats’ words. These attacks in 2000 came even though Barak
had won elections with the promise of a July withdrawal.
This is the legacy which Israel carries
on today, paid for and supported by both parties in Washington at every
barbaric turn.
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