Summary
Israel’s full-scale invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982, in Rose’s account a war long anticipated in Israel with the strategic aim of the physical annihilation of the PLO in Beirut, backed to the hilt by the United States, which bombed West Beirut, destroyed the Palestinian camps of Southern Lebanon, killed 19,000 people and wounded over 30,000 on the Lebanese government’s figures, and culminated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre (Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, lines 547-644).
Details
- The invasion’s professed occasion was the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London; Ha’aretz had written in March 1982 that behind the official excuse lay a strategic view holding that the physical annihilation of the PLO had to be achieved in Beirut and its hold on the West Bank amputated (lines 565-573).
- Before the invasion Defence Minister Arik Sharon visited Washington and informed US Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger that Israel must act in Lebanon; Pentagon figures show delivery of US military goods to Israel in the first three months of 1982 was almost 50 per cent greater than in the preceding year, and deliveries continued through June, including smart bombs used in Beirut (lines 573-579).
- The first target was the Palestinian camp of Rashidiyeh, south of Tyre, much of it in rubble by the second day; its nine thousand people fled or were herded to the beach, and all teenage and adult males were blindfolded and bound and taken to internment camps — a pattern repeated throughout Southern Lebanon (lines 581-587).
- Lebanese government casualty figures, based on police records and counts in hospitals, clinics and civil defence centres and excluding people buried in mass graves, give 19,000 dead and over 30,000 wounded, and in Rose’s presentation underestimate the real toll (lines 589-591).
- Hospitals were repeatedly hit from June to August 1982, including a children’s hospital in the Sabra camp, the Gaza Hospital, the Acre Hospital, the Islamic Home for Invalids and the Beirut mental hospital (lines 591-595).
- The sustained eleven-hour bombing of Beirut on 12 August 1982 finally evoked worldwide condemnation, even from the US, and the direct attack was halted; in the last air attack Israeli planes carpet-bombed Borj el Brajne camp (lines 598-606).
- A mid-August poll showed 80 per cent of Israelis supported the invasion and 64 per cent approved going beyond the 25-mile zone; the Labour opposition voted with Likud to support the invasion, with just two exceptions, and 91 per cent of Labour supporters backed the war (lines 606-614).
- Despite the expulsion of the PLO from Beirut, the bloodletting was not finished: the invasion culminated in the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 16-18 September 1982 (lines 618-644).
Related pages
Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, Sabra and Shatila massacre, Phalange, Arik Sharon, Menachem Begin, State Terrorism