1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon and the Israeli military that had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border. The military operation was launched after gunmen from the Abu Nidal Organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin blamed Abu Nidal's enemy, the PLO, for the incident, and used the incident as a casus belli for the invasion.
| 1982 Lebanon War | |||||||||
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| Part of the Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and the Israeli–Lebanese conflict | |||||||||
Top: Israeli troops invading Lebanon, 1982 Bottom: A map of the military situation in Lebanon in 1983 Map legend
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Israel:
Phalange: Al-Tanzim:
SLA:
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PLO:
Syria:
LCP: Al-Mourabitoun: Amal:
ASALA:
PKK:
Others:
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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Total Lebanese: 19,085 killed and 30,000 wounded. | |||||||||
After attacking the PLO – as well as Syrian, leftist, and Muslim Lebanese forces – the Israeli military, in cooperation with their Maronite allies and the self-styled Free Lebanon State, occupied southern Lebanon, eventually surrounding the PLO and elements of the Syrian Army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy Israeli bombardment, the PLO forces and their allies negotiated passage from Lebanon with the aid of United States Special Envoy Philip Habib and the protection of international peacekeepers. The PLO, under the chairmanship of Yasser Arafat, had relocated its headquarters to Tripoli in June 1982. By expelling the PLO, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel, Israel hoped to sign a treaty which Begin promised would give Israel "forty years of peace".
Following the assassination of Gemayel in September 1982, Israel's position in Beirut became untenable and the signing of a peace treaty became increasingly unlikely. Outrage following the IDF's role in the Israeli-backed, Phalangist-perpetrated Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias, as well as Israeli popular disillusionment with the war, led to a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Beirut to the areas claimed by the Free Lebanon State in southern Lebanon, later to become the South Lebanon security belt, which was initiated following the 17 May Agreement and Syria's change of attitude towards the PLO.
Despite the Israeli withdrawal to Southern Lebanon in 1985 being considered the end of the war, Shi'a militant groups began consolidating and waging a low-intensity guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, leading to 15 years of low-scale armed conflict, until Israel's final withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Simultaneously, the War of the Camps broke out between Lebanese factions, the remains of the PLO and Syrian forces, in which Syria fought its former Palestinian allies. The Lebanese Civil War would continue until 1990, at which point Syria had established complete dominance over Lebanon.