History is a teacher of life because it teaches that history teaches nothing. Bibi Netanyahu attacks Lebanon, claiming he will “defeat terrorism” from Hezbollah. But if he knew Israel‘s history, he would know that two wars in Lebanon aimed at defeating terrorism have already seen Israel defeated and terrorism victorious. The first was triggered by the Begin government in 1982 to drive out the PLO militias, which had been wreaking havoc since 1970, after King Hussein of Jordan massacred thousands of Palestinians in Black September. In Lebanon, too, Arafat & Co.’s fedayeen set up a state within a state, destabilizing the precarious political balance among the various militias. This led to a bloody civil war that lasted 20 years (150,000 dead and a million displaced: one in four Lebanese). It was a war of all against all, until the Syrian invasion in 1976 and the Israeli invasion of 1982, known as “Peace for Galilee.” It was led by Defense Minister Sharon, whose mission was to cleanse southern Lebanon, used by the PLO as a launchpad for rockets and missiles against the villages of Upper Galilee. The Israeli army wiped out the positions along the border, but the fedayeen fled towards Beirut. Sharon disobeyed orders and pursued them with his troops all the way to the capital. On August 22, the young Christian leader Bashir Gemayel, an ally of Tel Aviv, was elected president of Lebanon. He was ready to make peace with Israel, like the Egyptian Sadat, who had just been assassinated as a traitor to the Arab cause. And on September 14, Gemayel himself was killed, along with 30 collaborators and bodyguards, by a pro-Syrian commando. His Christian-Maronite Phalangists, on the night of September 16-17, unleashed a brutal reprisal in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, on the outskirts of Beirut, indiscriminately killing both armed PLO terrorists and defenseless civilians. The dead, identified by the Red Cross, numbered 663, though the total exceeded a thousand. The Israeli army, which controlled West Beirut, did nothing to stop the massacre. The Israeli Supreme Court, while excluding direct responsibility, forced Sharon to resign as defense minister (ending his career for nearly 20 years). Meanwhile, Arafat & Co., after a civil war with dissident Palestinian groups, were also expelled from Lebanon and relocated to Tunisia. They were quickly replaced by Hezbollah’s Shiite militias, the Iranian-backed “Party of God.” Hezbollah picked up where the PLO had left off, relentlessly bombarding Upper Galilee for a quarter of a century.
In 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert launched the second Lebanon war, first by air then by ground, to annihilate Hezbollah: 34 days of fighting, 1,100 Lebanese dead, 154 Israeli dead, and nothing achieved. Now, with Netanyahu, the saying “third time’s the charm” seems to apply.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, September 25, 2024
