There is a rich and extensive history on Israel’s wars on Lebanon, assaults across its international frontiers and attacks on its national sovereignty, ever since the signing of the Lebanon/Israel armistice agreement of 23 March, 1949 and until the present day. Among the most salient of these onslaughts are the raid on Beirut Airport (1968), the Litani Operation (1978), the “Peace for Galilee” operation (1982), the “Settlement of Accounts” operation (1993), the “Grapes of Wrath” operation (1996), the July war (2006) and down to Tufan al-Aqsa (2023-2024).
This paper presents a comparative reading of all these wars based upon specific indicators of scale, and focused on what we believe to be landmarks in this historical record that left its imprint on the map of the conflict with Israel and the place of Lebanon therein. We shall concentrate on four decisive landmarks: the 1978 Israeli invasion of Lebanon; the Israeli invasion of 1982; the 2006 war and the ongoing war on Lebanon in the context of Tufan al-Aqsa.
In this regard, the paper adopts a comparative approach that relies on five basic criteria and indicators: the pretexts and motives of the war and its strategic background; the field of battle and its geographical limits; the status of civilians and the laws of war; the UN, diplomacy and the accompanying negotiations, and the strategic impact of the war on the nature and future of the conflict (“The Next Day”). We will treat each war to the extent that these criteria apply to this or that war in addition to other subsidiary indicators such the definitions of victory and defeat, and so forth.
The Litani operation (1978)
Less than a year after the ascent of the Likud, led by Menachem Begin, to power in Israel in May 1977, and at dawn on March 15, 1978, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon with a force of some twenty thousand troops. The operation lasted seven days during which Israeli troops occupied about 2020 thousand sq kms of Lebanese territory. Israel’s Chief of Staff, Mordechai Gur, alleged that the operation was a response to one carried out by a Palestinian resistance group (March 11,1978) which arrived by sea and attacked buses on the coastal road in which 37 Israelis were killed. Intended by this was the operation carried out by FATH, led by the martyr Dalal al-Mughrabi. According to Israeli army communiques, the objective of the operation was to “uproot the bases of the terrorists” by which they meant the PLO military bases in the south. The then Chief of Staff announced that Israel intended to create a “security zone” along the Lebanese frontier with a depth of 10 kms but the military operation went far beyond this to encompass the entire region south of the Litani river.
As a result of that invasion, PLO forces were driven out of the region south of the Litani and a “Lebanese Free State” was declared, led by a former major in the Lebanese army called Sa`d Haddad, and later by a retired Lebanese general called Antoine Lahd, who took over command of what was then called the “South Lebanon Army.”
As usual, Israel did not abide by international humanitarian law which mandated the protection of civilians in wartime. During that invasion, it committed three massacres of civilians in the towns of `Abbasiyya (81 victims), al-Khiyam (31 victims) and Kunin (29 victims). The total dead came to 1168 according to the figures of the Lebanese Ministry of Information, and led to the expulsion of 285,000 others (220,000 Lebanese and 65,000 Palestinians). Enemy dead totaled 18, according to Israeli sources.[1]
On the diplomatic front, the UN Security Council passed its famous resolution 425 on March 19, 1978, calling for Israel to withdraw. As is well known, Israel refused to comply with that resolution and maintained its occupation of the southern zone, indeed expanded it in 1982, until it was forced by the resistance, led by Hizbullah, to withdraw in 2000.
In the last resort, that invasion was a prelude to the 1982 invasion during which Israel sought to accomplish and finalize the objectives of the Litani operation and to go even further by eliminating the political and military presence of the PLO in Lebanon.
The “Peace for Galilee” operation (1982)
The attempted assassination of Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argoff, on June 3, 1982 in London, carried out by the Abu Nidal group, a breakaway movement from FATH, was just a pretext used by Israel to wage a large-scale war on Lebanon on June 6, 1982. But the real motives behind that war may be gleaned from examining the strategic background of the conflict at that point in time. International, Arab and Lebanese turn of events all favored such a war, the most salient of which were: the growing confrontation between the Reagan administration and the Soviet Union, both regionally and internationally, in the context of the Cold War that lasted until the early Nineties; Egypt signing the Camp David Accords and the collapse of Arab solidarity as compared to the 1973 war period; the rocket crisis between Syria and Israel; internal divisions and sectarian conflicts in Lebanon in the wake of civil war and their impact on the entire Lebanese scene, and Israel’s fears regarding the growing power, military and political, of the PLO in Lebanon and the region.
The declared objective of that war was to destroy the PLO’s military infrastructure and prevent it from using Lebanese territory from which to launch attacks on Israel by creating a separation zone run by Lebanese militias allied to Israel. The hidden agenda was to rearrange the Lebanese political system by setting up a compliant Lebanese government, and to extend Israel’s geo-strategic influence in the Middle East by reducing Syrian influence in Lebanon.
Israel’s War Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, went much beyond the declared objective of the “Peace for Galilee” operation which was to push back PLO forces 40 kms from the frontier. His troops reached Beirut, besieged it for about three months, bombarded it constantly from the air and sea, and cut off electricity, water, and food from its inhabitants. The people of Beirut stood fast heroically during that barbaric siege, and the “Combined Forces” succeeded in arresting the advance of the Israeli army into the heart of west Beirut which it was only able to enter once the last PLO military detachment had left the city on August 31, 1982, in accordance with the plan and conditions set by US presidential envoy to Lebanon, Philip Habib. While Israel was besieging Beirut, there were violent clashes on the internal fronts in refugee camps like al-Rashidiyya, al-Burj al-Shimali and `Ayn al-Hilwa camps as well as in Damur and Khaldeh.
The Israeli army faced stiff Lebanese national resistance which forced it to evacuate west Beirut at the end of September 1982. Under pressure from resistance operations in many regions of Lebanon, Israel declared its decision to withdraw on April 21, 1985, and carried it out in early June 1986. Thus, the larger objectives of the “Peace for Galille” operation were abandoned and confined to creating a security zone some 850 sq kms in area (8% of the total area of Lebanon).[2]
Of note in this regard is the fact that French diplomacy, as is happening in this ongoing war on Lebanon, distanced itself from US diplomatic negotiations to bring an end to the war. France was one of several indirect channels of communication between the PLO and the Americans, playing an active role in this regard. The Americans constantly suspected French intentions, considering them to be aimed at easing the “dilemma of the PLO.” In that regard, French diplomacy strove hard to soften the “Philip Habib conditions” for the evacuation of PLO forces from Beirut but failed since Habib insisted on his conditions till the very end, and the PLO had no alternative but to accept them.[3]
The end result was that Israel succeeded in ending the armed Palestinian presence in the Lebanese south while remaining PLO troops retreated to the Biqa` valley and the north. Israel thus managed to evict the PLO from the Lebanese political scene and got Basir Jumayyil lected as president of Lebanon. It also imposed on Lebanon the signing of the 17 May accord which the Lebanese Council of Ministers later revoked at a session held on March 5, 1984, chaired by the president of the republic. Events moved fast. Basir Jumayyil was assassinated, and the Multi-National contingent withdrew from Lebanon before fulfilling their mission to protect Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps as per the Habib agreement, thus facilitating the Sabra and Shatila massacre. This was carried out, with Israeli blessing and planning, by Lebanese militias allied with Israel.
The war came at a huge cost to Lebanon as well as Israel which was plunged in a political crisis because of it. The perpetrators of that war were its first victims: Israeli Premier Begin went into depressed seclusion then resigned; War Minister Sharon was forced to resign after being found guilty by a judicial inquest, and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan also resigned.
There is no doubt that the heroism displayed by the citizens of Beirut and the courage of the PLO and national Lebanese forces in face of that horrific siege was a creditable achievement. In the end, the Palestinian fighters left wearing their military uniforms and carrying individual weapons and Yasir Arafat, throughout the preceding negotiations, insisted on that symbolic leave-taking, the image of the fighter who simply moves from one battle trench to another. But this is not to deny the bitter fact that the PLO had suffered a decisive defeat in that war despite the fact that many PLO leaders thereafter, as Rashid Khalidi was to argue, clung to the slogan of “Victory in Defeat,”[4] in order to attenuate its impact.
The victory of Israel in Lebanon in 1982 came at a very heavy cost according to most of Israel’s political, military and security elites, as revealed in discussions that followed the war’s end. In this regard, I would like to use the phrase “Pyrrhic victory” to describe that victory, one which had the taste of defeat.[5]
The July war (2006)
Following the “Peace for Galilee” operation, Israel waged two wars on Lebanon: in 1993 and 1996. After these wars, Hizbullah, through indirect negotiations with Israel, reached two understandings: the July understanding of 1993 and the April understanding of 1996. These two understandings did not differ in substance since they established rules of engagement on the southern frontier as regards the targeting of civilians. Acts of resistance against Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory did not cease. They had begun after the invasion of 1978 and expanded in scope after the 1982 invasion. Israel was finally compelled to end its occupation of most occupied lands in May 2000. It was the first time ever that Israel had withdrawn from an occupied Arab land without negotiations or concessions, and through sheer force.
Resistance continued after the liberation of 2000. On July 12, 2006, Hizbullah fighters, and for exchange purposes, captured two Israeli soldiers, killed three and wounded two more. Barely two hours after that incident, Israeli troops crossed into Lebanon and six Israeli soldiers were killed and Israel failed to recover the abducted soldiers, the declared aim of the war.
Israel then launched an extensive air war against Hizbullah, targeting its leadership, military resources and social base together with strikes against Lebanese infrastructure to pressure the Lebanese government. It then imposed an air blockade by targeting Beirut International Airport. Hizbullah responded by firing tens of rockets on northern Israel, reaching down to Haifa, and on July 14 fired a missile at an Israeli naval corvette off the Lebanese coast.
Israel’s politicians and military concluded that the air force alone had failed to take out Hizbullah’s missile launching pads or paralyze its command-and-control center. The army then attempted a large-scale land incursion in Marun al-Ras and Bint Jubail and failed. Israeli Mirkava tanks attempting to reach the Litani river fell into a trap in the Valley of Hujair in what came to be known as the “burial ground of tanks,” forcing the Israeli army to ask for a ceasefire after having deferred this throughout the previous period.[6].
As was its usual practice, Israel did not abide by the laws of war which mandated protecting civilians, killing more than 1200 civilians, a third of whom were children, in addition to a few hundred Hizbullah fighters. According to Israeli sources, 43 of its civilians and 117 soldiers were killed.[7]
In the course of the international diplomatic efforts exerted to end the war, Lebanon as well as Israel accepted the famous UN Security Council resolution 1701, passed unanimously by the Council on August 11, 2006, which called for an end to the fighting and for the Lebanese government to impose its authority on the whole of Lebanon’s territory.
The most prominent lesson of the 2006 war was the failure of Israeli intelligence due to Israel’s taking lightly the capacities of Hizbullah and their total ignorance of their potential, a matter which made them pay a heavy price on the battlefield. This in turn led to the formation of an Israeli Commission of Inquiry to assess the performance of the politicians and the military during the war and was called the “Winograd” Commission. In its report issued on April 30, 2007, it described Premier Ehud Olmert’s decision to go to war as “wrong and hasty.” The report also criticized War Minister Amir Peretz for failing to understand “the basic principles for the use of military force to achieve political aims” and accused Chief of Staff Dan Halutz of heedlessness in deciding to “launch an intense and immediate military strike.”[8]
It thus appears that the true import of that report was that Israel succeeded in learning the lessons of its intelligence failure in that war so worked since that time to overcome it and achieve intelligence superiority which then allowed it to strike Hizbullah repeatedly and painfully during the present and ongoing war.
The Tufan al-Aqsa war (The Lebanese front/2023-2024)
A careful and objective reading of the events on the battlefront, launched by Hizbullah on October 8, 2023, against Israel, requires us to place it within the larger strategic framework of the Tufan al-Aqsa operation, launched by HAMAS in Gaza on October 7 of that year. The HAMAS operation, irrespective of whether it had been coordinated before with others in the resistance axis, nonetheless brought into the conflict several other interventions in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, and in different forms and levels. It also came to involve Iran indirectly by its directly supporting the other fronts and through strikes and counter strikes in response to Israeli attacks on Iranian territory and interests in the region. This renders the war liable to become a wider regional conflict.
In this particular context, Hizbullah declared the Lebanese front as one of “support and backing” for the Gaza front, in fulfillment of the concept of “Unity of Fronts” advocated by the resistance axis. Yet over the course of this past year, this “support front” witnessed some dramatic and profound changes. It passed through several violent stages since Israel launched its “Northern Arrows” assault on September 23, 2024, and declared it in early October, 2024, to be a land operation with “limited and specific” objectives aimed at Hizbullah targets near the southern frontier. Thus, the war turned from a front that kept the enemy occupied and, broadly speaking, abided by the rules of engagement established since after the July 2006 war---with some calculated exceptions depending on battlefield conditions, the types of weapons used and the geographical depth of attacks---into a total and comprehensive war against the enemy. This followed upon Israel declaring as a war objective returning the settlers to their northern settlements from which they had fled. Thus, the Lebanon front became a principal front for Israel while Gaza became a subsidiary front after more than a year of a genocidal war. In his first speech on October 30, 2024, as the new Hizbullah Secretary-General, Shaykh Na`im Qasim named the current stage of war with Israel as “The Men of Might.”
This war has several characteristics which distinguish it from all previous Israeli wars on Lebanon. What are the most salient of these transformations and characteristics? First was the fullest and most extreme application of the Israeli “Dahiyeh Doctrine”[9] against residential quarters in the south, the Beirut suburbs and the Biqa` Valley; total and complete disregard of all international and humanitarian laws through targeting the health sector, civilian institutions, social and economic establishments (e.g. al-Qard al -Hasan), and journalists; a successful application of the technology of surveillance and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a an unprecedented cyber war on Hizbullah (explosive pagers and wireless devices on two successive days, September 17 and 18); destroying an important part of Hizbullah’s communication system and command and control centers which run its operations in the field and, finally, targeting senior commanders in Hizbullah like the Secretary General Hasan Nasrullah and its chief of staff Fu’ad Shukr.
A month or more after the start of Israel’s land incursion, Hizbullah has performed creditably and effectively, indicating that it has recovered its balance and ability to exercise command and control over the battlefield, as indicated by the daily and high casualty rates among the enemy invasion forces and preventing them from reaching deep into Lebanese territory. In fact, Hizbullah has struck the enemy in depth to the point where its drones reached Netanyahu’s bedroom. It looks as if the Israeli army finds itself embroiled in a war of attrition with Hizbullah on the southern frontier, and signs have appeared of rupture in the Israeli consensus that the war should continue, since it has neither achieved its declared objective nor accomplished any strategic advance inside Lebanon despite its almost total demolition of a number of southern villages.
Netanyahu kept torpedoing diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war, as set forth, e.g., in the Franco-American declaration issued on September 26, 2024. The very next day he ordered the assassination of Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyid Nasrullah while international diplomatic efforts to arrive at a ceasefire in accordance with that declaration were still ongoing, and which aimed at implementing resolution 1701. At a time when the Lebanese government calls for the full and verbatim implementation of that resolution, the US Administration and its special envoy Amos Hochstein is attempting to circumvent it by suggesting additional clauses to implement it, and by combining it with resolution 1559.
While Israel strives to go beyond what is stipulated in Resolution 1701 and add certain conditions and diktats regarding its implementation, alleging its “achievements” on the battlefield, the Lebanese government refuses to offer any prior promises or commitments regarding its implementation. Hizbullah refuses to negotiate under fire and demands an end to the war first. The diplomatic process is still ongoing, with some distancing by the French side from the US position.
As a result of Israel’s raids on Lebanon, and up to November 2, 2024, the Lebanese casualty figures are 2968 martyrs and 13,319 injured. In this regard, one may refer to regular reports being issued by the Lebanese Prime Minister’s Office in conjunction with the Unit that deals with Major Dangers and Catastrophes attached to the Ministry of Defense, for figures of martyrs, the injured, the displaced and so forth.[10]
As for losses on the Israeli side, no trust can be placed in Israeli figures or estimates with respect to loss of life among soldiers, civilians, equipment, and economic indicators, all of which are subject to extremely strict censorship. We will discover the real figures In the post-war period.
Conclusions
1- During the Litani and Peace for Galilee operations, the Israeli army confronted the PLO and Lebanese national forces. In the 2006 war it confronted Hizbullah, as is the case at present. Although the protagonists who faced Israel during its wars on Lebanon differed, one should regard them as a continuum, an uninterrupted series of confrontations. For example, the rise of Hizbullah was directly due to the 1982 Israeli invasion and its immediate aftermath. Moreover, Hizbullah inherited all the fighting experiences of the PLO and Lebanese national forces that faced Israel, whether it be on the level of cadres or other related levels. In this present war, Israel managed to avoid its 2006 intelligence failure.
2- Netanyahu’s dealings with the Biden administration during the Tufan al-Aqsa operation on the Gaza and Lebanon fronts and his manipulating that administration to serve Israel’s interests, is not without precedent in earlier Israeli wars, especially the 1982 war. That war also revealed the arrogance of the Israeli government, especially Sharon, in dealings with their US counterparts. In one of Sharon’s meetings with the US Special Envoy Maurice Draper on September 17, 1982, the latter told Sharon quite frankly that the US administration was dissatisfied by Israel’s refusal to comply with the US demand to pull its troops out of West Beirut. Sharon’s answer was insulting: “Where our security is concerned, we have never asked [permission] and never will. Where our existence and security are concerned, this is our responsibility alone and we will never allow it to be decided by others.”[11]
To be noted is the fact that Netanyahu, a young diplomat at the time, was among those who attended some meetings with the US side. In this regard, Rashid Khalidi writes: “If Netanyahu’s rebuke to US President Barack Obama before the cameras in the White House in 2011 holds any significance, it appears to show that Netanyahu learnt well from his Likud teachers a certain Israeli character trait as demonstrated in 1982.”[12] This is what we are witnessing today in Netanyahu’s arrogant and dishonest conduct in dealing with Biden and his team throughout the Tufan al-Aqsa period.
3- It is patently clear that Israel has always sought, throughout its wars on Lebanon and on other Arab countries, to achieve through negotiations goals that it was unable to achieve through war. It always acts like a victor dictating his conditions to the opposite side even when it has failed to achieve some of its objectives. It approaches these negotiations from the standpoint of the “invincible army”, relying upon its reserve of deterrent power which it did not use during the war. This is true also of Israel’s current war on Lebanon, where it seeks to impose terms of surrender on Lebanon by going far beyond the implementation of resolution 1701 and even before the balance of power has settled in its final form.
4- Israel’s current war on Lebanon has been the longest of its wars even if we start counting from the launch of the “Northern Arrows” operation on September 23, 2024 and ignore the earlier period of the “support front”. It is a war likely to last even longer since Netanyahu appears unwilling to abide by any diplomatic settlement before the US elections and discovering who will be the next occupant of the White House. The current war has contravened a number of assumptions we made in earlier wars such as that Israel’s army and domestic front cannot tolerate the burdens of a lengthy war, or suffer large casualties among its soldiers and settlers, or that it would offer painful compromises in order to recover its prisoners in Gaza.
5- In its current war, Israel is not the same as it was in its previous wars, and at all levels. On the level of ideology, and since the ascent of the Likud to power in 1977, Israel has moved to the extreme right, the climax of which was the coming to power of biblical religious Zionism before the outbreak of the Tufan al-Aqsa operation and which now runs the government and is, through Netanyahu, conducting the war. This move to the extreme right is true also of the settlers who back the broader objectives of the war. On the political level, Netanyahu has succeeded in transforming the slogan “army with a state” into “a state with an army” by reasserting the dominance of the political level over decision making in Israel and weakening the role of the military and security apparatus. These two had once the decisive say in earlier wars as to the political decision to wage or end a war. On the battlefield, this war has been unprecedented in Israel’s massive use of force against civilians and in its barbarity and its total disregard of all rules of war and humanitarian principles. This is all based on the assumption that whatever cannot be achieved by force can be achieved by more force. In this war, Netanyahu and religious Zionism have sunk to the level of barbarism, indeed to the lowest rung of humanity.
6- Victory and defeat are debatable issues in war, and some analysts determine this by the extent of losses suffered by the two sides. Other analysits place the conflict in a wider geostrategic context. Defeat in their view means breaking the will of the other side to the point where the opponent is convinced that he has been defeated. In this regard, former US ambassador Ryan Crocker, and in an interview with the magazine Politico and speaking of victory and defeat, stated: “One thing I’ve learnt in all these years, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the concept of defeating an opponent is meaningless unless it occurs in the mind of that opponent. If an opponent feels he’s been defeated then he is. If not, he is not defeated.” Crocker expressed his doubts as to whether the assassinations of Hasan Nasrullah of Hizbullah or Yahya al-Sinwar of HAMAS would lead to a feeling of defeat and adds that only time can tell.[13] On the other hand, some argue that this concept means different things in wars between states and wars against national liberation or resistance movements. It is not inevitable that a resistance movement would gain victory in a particular round of fighting even at exorbitant cost. More important is that its will to resist the colonialist oppressor is not destroyed, thus continuing to resist until that oppressor is defeated.
If we return to the concept of victory and defeat according to Crocker, we would say that this war has not yet ended, and that it would be premature on the strategic level to pronounce the winner and the loser. In any case, it will not be the last war waged by Zionism and its supporters in the West, but it does constitute a landmark among Arab/Israeli wars and will have a profound impact on the entire course of the Arab/Zionist struggle and the fate of colonialist Zionism in our region.
[1] لمزيد من التفاصيل عن عملية الليطاني، انظر:
محمود سويد، "الجنوب اللبناني في مواجهة إسرائيل" (بيروت، مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 1998)، ص 13-15.
[2] المصدر نفسه، ص 20-21.
[3] للاطلاع على تفاصيل الدور الفرنسي، انظر:
رشيد الخالدي، "تحت الحصار: صناعة القرار في منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية خلال حرب 1982" (بيروت: مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية، 2018)، ص 193-205.
[4] المصدر نفسه، ص 9.
[5] النصر البيروسي مصطلح عسكري مشتق من اسم بيروس ملك أبيروس اليوناني، الذي خاض حرباً طاحنة وباهظة الثمن ضد الرومان في الفترة 280-275 قبل الميلاد، وانتصر فيها. ويرمز هذا المصطلح إلى الانتصار، مع تكبد خسائر كبيرة تجعله يرقى إلى مرتبة الهزيمة.
[6] لمزيد من التفاصيل عن حرب تموز 2006، انظر:
الموسوعة التفاعلية للقضية الفلسطينية، مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية (موسوعة إلكترونية).
[7] المصدر نفسه.
[8] المصدر نفسه.
[9] عقيدة الضاحية، هي استراتيجية عسكرية إسرائيلية للردع تستخدم القوة المفرطة في قتل المدنيين والتدمير الكامل للبنية التحتية المدنية، بهدف الضغط على الحكومات أو الجماعات المعادية، من أجل قلب ميزان القوى في الحرب لصالحها. وقد استخدمها الجيش الإسرائيلي على نطاق واسع لأول مرة خلال حرب تموز/ يوليو 2006، إلاّ إنها ليست وليدة تلك الحرب، بل تطورت خلال حروب إسرائيل المتعاقبة، منذ حرب 1948.
[11] رشيد الخالدي، مصدر سبق ذكره، ص 15.
[12] رشيد الخالدي، مصدر سبق ذكره، ص 19.
[13] Michael Hirsh, “‘They’ve Forgotten Their Own Recent History’: Why Israel Won’t Move Toward Peace: Former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker says what he most fears is Israeli overconfidence following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” Politico, 18/10/2024.