Lebanon 1982: The Imbalance Of Political Ends And Military Means CSC 1985 SUBJECT AREA History WAR SINCE 1945 SEMINAR Lebanon 1982: The Imbalance of Political Ends and Military Means by MAJOR M. THOMAS DAVIS, US ARMY 1 April 1985 Marine Corps Command and Staff College Marine Corps Development and Education Center Quantico, Virginia 22134 ABSTRACT Author: DAVIS, M. Thomas, US Army Title: Lebanon 1982: The Imbalance of Political Ends and Military Means Publisher: Marine Corps Command and Staff College Date: 1 April 1985 On June 6, 1982, the Israeli Defense Force, following the directions of Ariel Sharon, Israeli Defense Minister, launched a large scale invasion across the northern border into Lebanon. The invading force consisted of nearly 60 thousand Israeli soldiers organized into 9 division sized formations and supported by portions of the Israeli Air Force and Navy. The announced purpose of the attack was to push back those elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon to a distance 40 kilometers north of the border between Israel and Lebanon 50 that Israeli settlements and villages of northern Galilee would be beyond the range of PLO artillery. The Israeli government under Prime Minister Menachem Begin declared that it had no broader designs on the territory of Lebanon and that "Operation Peace for Galilee" would be over in a few days as had "Operation Litani" in the Spring of 1978. Despite the limited aims initially established by Jerusalem, it soon became obvious that the Israelis had in mind objectives of considerably greater scope. Considering the rather dubious nature of the initial justification for the operation, as well as the Israeli Defense Force's early crossing of the 40 kilometer line, it became apparent that the true objective was destruction of the PLO and elimina- tion of not only that organizations limited military threat, but more significantly its political threat to the established policies of the Israeli government. Addition- ally, the Begin government evidently hoped to foster the development in Lebanon of a political order which might be more capable of controlling events in southern Lebanon and more conducive to signing a peace agreement with Israel. By January 1985, the Israeli army was still in Lebanon occupying that part of the country north of the Alawi River. The operation in Lebanon had cost the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) over 600 killed, losses which on a per capita scale approach those the United States suffered in Vietnam over nearly ten years, had created serious rifts within Israeli society, its armed forces, and its government, and had toppled from power the government of Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon. Worse, from both a political and military point of view, the invasion had failed to achieve in any certain way the objectives for which it had been launched -- objectives which were never so clearly enunciated that they were clearly reducible to military terms. The purpose of this study is to argue that the Israeli adventure in Lebanon was a costly failure. The period since World War II has been one of limited war, one in which conflicts have been restricted in either space, time, objective, means, or combinations of all four. This international condition necessitates that the political objectives for which military forces are employed be more clearly and concisely defined than ever before; that the nature of the conflict, and the probable conditions of its termination, be rigorously analyzed. These imperatives are the same ones which Clausewitz identified nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, but which modern man seems ever so slow to internalize. This paper will review the war from its root causes, through its operational execution, and conclude with an analysis from a Clausewitzian perspective on why it assumed the character it did. The sources for the study include the few books that have been written on the subject, numerous articles from the journals that cover international affairs, and media analy- ses and reportage. Primary source material includes inter- views with scholars having both Israeli and Palestinian per- spectives; interviews with American military personnel who served in the area during the conflict; interviews with some State Department officials; and my own personal observations and notes from a brief tour at the State Department coinciding with the war. My observations will have to be accepted at face value; those of the observers will be referenced with their anonymity respected and preserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction p. 1 Chapter 1. Clausewitz and the Philosophy of War and Politics p. 5 --Clausewitz Considered p. 9 --The Nature of Contemporary Conflict p. 14 Chapter 2. The Arab-Israeli Condition: Coming Full Circle p. 21 --The Roots of Conflict p. 25 --The Arab-Israeli Wars in Brief p. 33 --The Combatants p. 49 --Strategic Concerns p. 58 --Summary p. 64 Chapter 3. Escalation in Lebanon, 1981-1982 --The Lebanese Condition p. 65 --1981, Setting the Stage p. 74 Chapter 4. The Conduct of the War p. 88 Chapter 5. Conclusions p. 120 --Lack of Clearly Defined Goals p. 121 --Failure to Focus on the Center of Gravity p. 127 --Failure to Merge War and Politics p. 130 --The Result p. 133 LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS Figures Figure 1: Israeli Political Parties and Coalitions p. 51A Figure 2: Organization of the PLO and the PNC p. 53A Figure 3: Israeli Tactical Organization p. 92 Maps Map 1: Lebanon Under the Ottomans p. 65A Map 2: Confessional Groups Within Lebanon p. 68A Map 3: Lebanon After March 1978 p. 73A Map 4: Operations - 6 June 1982 p. 93A Map 5: Operations - 7 June 1982 p. 99A Map 6: Operations - 8 June 1982 p. 101A Map 7: Operations - 9 June 1982 p. 104A Map 8: Operations - 10 June 1982 p. 106A Map 9: Operations - 22-25 June 1982 p. 110A INTRODUCTION The Middle East has been a regular scene of conflict for centuries. Since the establishment of the modern state system in the region and, more specifically, since the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948, this condition has not only worsened but has become chronic at best and institutionalized at worst. Military men throughout the world have carefully followed the wars that have all too frequently erupted between the Arabs and Israelis seeking in them clues about the performance quality of modern equipment and the intellectual logic of modern tactics. Both Superpowers have invested heavily to ensure the success and survivability of their local clients and allies while making those military procurement and doctrinal adjustments that these wars seemed to suggest as prudent. Lessons in these areas of interest have been numerous; but in the study of the cause and advisability of resorting to military force in the modern era, both camps of the contemporary bipolar balance have been less vigorous in building solid analyses. Henry Kissinger once suggested that the major question about military power is not how it is to be employed, but whether it is to be employed. With the December 1984 speech by Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, during which he described his own specific test as to the appropriateness of any resort to arms, this debate has been opened once again in the American defense and foreign policy community. The major concern of the Secretary of Defense, and for all military leaders, is that military power, once engaged, should be used to secure clear military objectives support- ing attainment of precisely defined political aims. This necessary linkage, of political purpose with military objective, is the most basic of the precepts established by the German military philospher Karl von Clausewitz more than a century and a half ago. Yet, despite its logic and the fact that it is often referenced and repeated in both military and political writing, this simply-comprehended association seems to be the one observation of Clausewitz that is the most universally remembered yet the most frequently disregarded. The consequence is painful recol- lection and dissatisfaction following combat. The evidence from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon indicates that the eventual failure of the operation has its basis in the failure of the Israeli government to make this elementary association. The decision for a military operation where one was not clearly warranted was then com- pounded by mistakenly seeking a political objective that was simply beyond the capability of its military instrument. The result was a weakening of the Israeli military, both in its internal cohesion and its external perception, as well as a lessening of the deterrent value of the Israeli military muscle. Lastly, the collapse of the government that had embarked on this ill-advised undertaking followed as a final consequence of indecision. The 1982 War in Lebanon is now regarded as the fifth Arab-Israeli war, but unlike its predecessors, this conflict pitted a conventional force against an opponent that was primarily unconventional -- although there were battles fought between regular army units of Israel and Syria. This war was one where the evidence, although somewhat disputed, indicates there was no immediate, substantial threat to the continuing existence of Israel as a state that forced its resort to military force. Finally, this war did not have a clear, decisive, and definite conclusion allowing for the usual measurement of success or failure. Accordingly, unlike previous wars, this one is destined to be less dissected and analyzed. But in its own way, this war has lessons that may be more significant than any of the others. We now live in a period of limited conflict where the clashes of man will be most frequently on the low intensity end of the scale of conflict. In many ways, both military and political, this new condition places additional burdens on the national leadership of all states to find a reasonable balance between political ends and military means, to ensure that the ends of the one are both proportional and reducible to the means of the other. The United States experienced the consequences of imbalance in Vietnam. Israel has duplicated, to a great extent, this failure in Lebanon. We would all be wise to consider this example and investigate its political as well as its battlefield lessons. CHAPTER 1 "No war is begun, or at least, no war should be begun, if people acted wisely, without first finding an answer to the question: what is to be attained by and in war."1 Karl von Clausewitz On 26 May 1982, Secretary of State Alexander Haig appeared before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and delivered what had been billed as a major address on American policy in the Middle East. The Secretary observed that the on-going turmoil in the Middle East was of considerable concern to the United States and that the Reagan administration would soon initiate actions to end the Persian Gulf war between Iraq and Iran that had been raging since September 1980; would invigorate the Palestinian Autonomy Negotiation designed to consummate the final details of the Camp David Agreement mediated by President Carter; and would end the growing internal strife that had paralyzed Lebanon since the days of its bloody Civil War of the mid 1970s.2 The policy bureaucracy of the State Department had been busy during the weeks prior to the Secretary's speech designing and proposing a diplomatic strategy that would hopefully generate movement and progress in all three areas identified by Haig. Outside of the administration, this activity was seen as a positive sign that the early proclivity of the administration for viewing the Middle East in a strictly East-West context; of seeking the creation of unrealistic anti-Soviet structures such as the "strategic concensus" proposed by Haig in early 1981; and of assuming what many considered to be an excessively pro-Israeli position throughout the area, would soon be brought to an end. Unfortunately, this was not the case.3 Less than two weeks after Secretary Haig's speech in Chicago, Israel launched a long anticipated attack across its northern border into Lebanon. The effects of this action by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had a most deleterious impact on the the plans of the United States for addressing those problems identified in Chicago by Secretary Haig. By the end of the summer of 1982, the war in the Persian Gulf continued to roll along in full fury; the Camp David Autonomy Talks between the United States, Israel, and Egypt had been suspended indefinitely; the internal conditions within Lebanon were more complicated and destructive than ever; and Alexander Haig had been forced to resign his position as Secretary of State. The 1982 war in Lebanon created many changes in the Middle East, but perhaps none were more profound than those experienced by Israel herself. When a state resorts to arms, it supposedly does so with the idea of achieving some political purpose. The decision to fight should come after careful consideration of the purpose for the introduction of military forces; of the risks involved; of the demonstrated or perceived inability to secure the desired objectives through other means; and of the probability of success. Historically, the Israelis have well understood the essential linkage between military might and political purpose. They have often used force to achieve certain immediate political goals.4 In Lebanon, however, something went wrong. On 3 June, the Israeli ambassador to Great Britain had been wounded and permanently disabled in an assassination attempt by a splinter group formerly associated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Although the group, known as Abu Nidal, had been expelled from the PLO in 1974,5 Israel responded to this terrorist action with an air attack on Beirut directed against known PLO positions. The PLO countered with an artillery and rocket attack against northern Israel, known as the Galilee, reportedly killing one Israeli.6 Until this action, a cease fire between Israel and the PLO, which had been negotiated by American Ambassador Philip Habib the previous summer follow- ing a confrontation over Palestinian and Syrian actions in Lebanon, had held. As Israeli authors Dan Bavly and Eliahu Salpeter noted in their book Fire in Beirut, when Israel attacked "it was after ten months of outward peace and tranquility, in which not a single Israeli in Galilee had been killed or wounded by the PLO."7 Therefore, considering the situation that existed along the Israeli-Lebanese border in the spring of 1982, Israel did not need to invade Lebanon to end a terrorist barrage maiming its citizens and dis- rupting their lives. Jacobo Timerman, an Israeli journalist and intellectual has charged that: "For the first time, war was not a response to provocation."8 Clearly, the Begin government had something else in mind when it voted to cross the border, something that had little to do with either the Galilee or avenging Ambassador Argov. By September 1982, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had won, at best, a most elusive victory. Although the PLO had been pushed back to a distance which placed the Galilee well beyond hostile artillery range, the PLO itself had not been destroyed. Not only had the IDF failed to capture the expected number of PLO "fighters", but the intensification and aggravation of the chaos in Lebanon made an Israeli withdrawal most difficult, if not impossible.9 There are many explanations as to why Israel found itself in such a quagmire after invading Lebanon, and why the government of Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon ultimately was compelled to step aside. But at least part of the answer is to be found in an apparent disregard by the Prime Minister and his Defense Minister for an adage of war first clearly enunciated by the famous German military scientist, Karl von Clausewitz. Indeed, the evidence clearly indicates that Clausewitz would have found much objectionable in the manner in which the Israelis both conceived and executed their operation in Lebanon. CLAUSEWITZ CONSIDERED Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) has become the high priest of the relationship of military matters to mankind's other societal interests and endeavors. Although he lived during the Napoleonic period, and never commanded large formations in battle nor even directed a campaign, the cogent observations contained in his masterpiece On War have shaped the thinking of military leaders and statesmen for years. Clausewitzian thought is easily discernible in the modern works of such disparate personalities as military theorist J.F.C. Fuller and political scientist Henry Kissin- ger.10 His influence has been unquestionably enormous. In reflecting on the significance of Clausewitz, Fuller expressed the belief that, "his penetrating analysis of the relationship of war and policy has never been excelled, and is even more important today than when first expounded."11 Without questions Clausewitz's most famous contribution to the literature of military affairs is the seemingly self-evident observation that "war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means."12 Many have read this to mean that war is politics, that the one can revert to the other and vice versa. But a closer reading of Clausewitz clearly indicates that this is not an accurate analysis of his assessment. Although war may be a continuation of politics, Clausewitz clearly believed that it was an instrument of the political art and not a creature with a life of its own. On this point he was quite specific. He noted: "War is only a part of political intercourse, therefore by no means an independent thing in itself."13 To emphasize the major importance of this observation, Clausewitz added that: "The subordination of the political point of view to the military would be unreasonable, for policy has created the war; policy is the intelligent factor, war only the instrument, and not the reverse."14 With this statement, Clausewitz was attempting to indicate that war, if it were to be successfully and prudently practiced, must have as its basis the attainment of a political objective. This objective could conceivably be changed or altered during the course of the conflict, but the achievement of the political goal must be the paramount objective of warfare. Implicit in this argument is the belief that the political goal must be within "the nature of the means at its disposal".15 For national policy to be reasonable and responsible in the utilization of military power, its architects must establish a clearly defined political goal that military means can achieve. Creating a master plan requiring the application of military force beyond the capabilities of that force is folly on a grand scale. According to the Clausewitzian perspective, therefore, politics and war are inexorably interconnected, the one directing and using the other as its selected instrument to achieve some purpose. Clausewitz never identified any rationale for war that existed beyond the political context. In fact, so firmly did he believe that military means were the servant of the political will that he declared: "War can never be separated from political intercourse, and if... this occurs anywhere... we have before us a senseless thing without an object."16 But what of using the military instrument? Clausewitz had numerous observations on the nature of what we would today call operational issues. Many have slowly slipped into irrelevancy before the rush of technology and the massive changes that have permutated the practice of warfare. But there are two important arguments, relative today in both the tactical and strategic senses, that have survived unaltered. First is the argument that the war should be completed as quickly as possible. The uncertainty of combat, a factor that Clausewitz called "friction" but today is most usually described as "the fog of war", would inevitably create conditions in which plans, and perhaps even policies and objectives, would have to be altered or re-thought. One way to prevent large alterations in the original concept of the war was to finish it as quickly as possible. For this and other reasons, Clausewitz felt speed was an essential ingredient in warfare. Second, and in many ways closely related to the first, Clausewitz declared that the forces employed should be judiciously used -- that they should be directed against that point of the enemy most important and most vulnerable. He observed that, "a centers of gravity, a center of power and movement, will form itself upon which everything depends; and against this center of gravity of the enemy the concentrated blow of all the forces must be directed."17 By extension, it can be assumed that Clausewitz believed efforts which were not directed towards the center of gravity might eventually yield success, but not without a significant wastage of time and recources. Some military historians, by way of example, have argued that the Allied effort during World War II was guilty of ignoring the centers of gravity of both the German Reich and Imperial Japan thereby prolonging the war and unnnecessarily increasing its destructiveness.18 The significance of Clausewitz on modern military thought has been profound, but his influence has been less significant than one might expect on many of those charged with the repsonsibility of developing and executing modern military and political strategy. The immediacy of acting; the necessity to respond to situations of high fluidity; the strong pressures to produce results; and the equally powerful imperative to protect valuable and increasingly expensive resources, have served as wedges separating quality political from relevant military thinking in recent times. Few, if any, modern states are immune from this dangerous tendency. For modern decision-makers, both in and out of uniform, the implications of this condition are enormous for the very nature of contemporary conflict demands that the political-military relationship be given greater consideration than ever before. THE NATURE OF CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT Since the end of World War II, warfare has clearly changed in kind. It would not be completely accurate to argue that we have entered a novel period where warfare has become limited, for historically wars have usually been limited in some aspect. But following the experience of World War II, the concept of total war was so expanded in both scale and intensity that for a war to achieve general acceptance as "total", it would have to be fought on a global scale and probably include the employment of nuclear weapons. The prospect of engaging in such a war has sobered the leaders of both superpowers, along with most of their colleagues of the world community, into vigorously analyzing ways in which conflicts can be contained. To date, the United States and the Soviet Union have both adopted "rules of orders which have served to limit conflicts around the world, although the degree to which either power seeks to limit a conflict varies according to their evaluation of the interests involved.19 Presently, there are two primary dimensions in which conflicts may be limited. The first is in geographical scale. If a conflict erupts, its impact and implications will be contained if the conflict itself does not exceed certain geographical limits. If one, or both, of the belligerents have totally committed his resources to achieve an unlimited objective, the conflict will remain controlled as long as its boundaries are restricted. Despite the violence of their natures, both the Vietnam War between the United States and North Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq were limited in space thus moderating their impacts on the world at large. In practice, there are considerable pressures brought to bear internationally to localize modern conflicts. After hostilities erupt, the United Nations Security Council usually calls for an immediate cease-fire and a negotiated settlement. Simultaneously, the superpowers measure and evaluate their interests and normally make an effort to control the size of the conflict, particularly if they can discern a probability that war might eventually lead to a clash between them. Since both Washington and Moscow have widely recognized interests, the unmitigated expansion of even a small flareup has the potential of drawing one or the other into a cauldron each would prefer to avoid. Despite the pressures which limit modern wars in scope, the most common limitation has been in objective. This condition is not the result of some ingrained desire for lower levels of destruction, nor some late twentieth century mellowing of human nature, but simply the objective calculus of what can be achieved within reasonable costs. A real limit is established if there is clearly an insufficiency of means for a total commitment. This power deficiency may be the result of many things, but its presence dictates that objectives must be established which are proportional to the force one has the ability and will to employ. In the modern world, this limitation in the availabil- ity of means contains within itself something of a self- regulating device. As Adam Smith first observed over two hundred years ago, the cost of the modern implements of war is increasing at a pace which dictates that conflicts simply must be restricted in scale.20 Today, the costs of weapons, their supporting infastructure, their operators, and their replacement components, have become so extreme that only the wealthiest of nations can afford the burdens of a large, standing military force. Since the states that have such forces are reluctant to see them employed under con-ditions of general conflict, and since such forces are very difficult for the smaller and poorer states to either raise or maintain, these limited means dictate strategies designed for limited objectives. For these reasons, modern conflict has clearly shifted to the low intensity end of the spectrum of violence.21 Ironically, perhaps, this condition places increased burdens on national policymakers who must rigorously analyze the objectives for which their scarce and expensive forces will be used. Given that the objective will have to be limited in some degree, the accuracy of their judgment on the correct conditions for employment becomes more significant because the opponent will most likely have to be influenced rather than forced to change his policies. He will have to be convinced that although his regime may not be totally annihilated, it is nonetheless in his interest to yield because the costs of further resistance outweigh the benefits to be gained. The calculations on both sides thereby become as much economic and psychological as military. Returning to Clausewitz, in one essay he observed that: The more it will be concerned with the destruction of the enemy, the more closely the political aim and the military object coincide, and the more purely military, and the less political, war seems to be. As just discussed, the modern world has witnessed a marked increase in warfare where good reason dictates that the destruction of the enemy will NOT be the primary objective. Therefore, our time is one in which conflict is ordained to be highly political. Former American Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger has noted that the present decline in the relative strength of the United States, as well as the post-World War II diffusion of power to numerous smaller, regional actors, has created a situation in which Washington will have to be more "clever" than it has been in the past. According to Schlesinger: "When the United States was believed to possess overwhelming power, political blunders mattered relatively little."23 Current conditions, however, require that American forces be used in situations where they complement effective "diplomatic and political tactics". This means that the relationship that Clausewitz identified so many years ago is not only still operative, it is in fact stronger than ever. As Field Marshal Michael Carver has noted, modern war is still able to support state policy by other means, but one must always ask: Was it worth the costs?24 Although this discussion has tended to focus on the modern political-military condition from a superpower perspective, the principles are the same for smaller powers and are probably applicable to an even greater degree. Small countries obviously have military establishments on a reduced scale. But despite this, the investment and opportunity costs paid to raise and establish a military force gives a small state a stake in its force that is at least as significant as that of the major nations. The necessity for selectivity in deciding the correct manner in which to employ this force is essentially the same, except that the costs of failure may be much higher. Thus all states face much the same problem in varying degree: how to employ a military force in a manner which will achieve something of political value, achieve it before the stakes involve superpower attention, and preserve the viability of local military power. This last point, preserving the viability of military power, deserves some explanation. Modern conditions have greatly expanded the utility of military force in the perceptual rather than the actual context. The actual capability of a military force today is often less important than its perceived capability. Coupled with this is the expectation that such force will be skillfully used by its political leadership in a way to achieve results while maintaining a perception of strength. In essence, this is the theory of deterrence applied to small scale conventional forces. Whether this is a desirable condition or not is a moot point. It is, nonetheless, the condition under which contemporary political and military leaders must operate. It demands that national leaders be more analytical and measured in the ways they decide to use military power. Basically this means they must carefully isolate political aims sought; determine if military power is the proper means for achieving these aims; and then commit forces appropriate for and precisely proportional to the ends desired. In short, there must be a balance of political ends with military means. The failure to establish this balance is a clear formula for disaster, and unfortunately we are presently accumulating a wealth of examples which prove the point. CHAPTER 1 ENDNOTES 1. Karl von Clausewitz, On War (Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1953), p. 569. 2. See U.S. Department of State, "Peace and Security in the Middle East," Current Policy No. 395, 26 March 1982. 3. See Bernard Gwertzman, "Mideast Strategy: The 1950s Revisited," The New York Times, 13 October 1981, p. A14. 4. Richard A. Gabriel, Operation Peace For Galilee: The Israeli-PLO War in Lebanon (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), p. 15. 5. Very little is known about the actual organization known as Abu Nidal. It is widely acknowledged to be a renegade faction that has little respect for PLO Chairman Arafat or representatives of the established Arab states. See Dan Bavly and Eliahu Salpeter, Fire in Beirut (New York: Stein and Day Publishing, 1984), p. 32. 6. See James E. Akins, "The Flawed Rationale For Israel's Invasion of Lebanon," American-Arab Affairs, No. 2, Fall 1982, pp. 33. 7. Bavly and Salpeter, p. 234. 8. Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 11. 9. Ibid., pp. 112-116. 10. J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War, 1789-1961 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1961), p. 60. For the Kissinger summation see Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), p. 141. 11. Fuller, p. 60. 12. Clausewitz, p. 596. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. 598. 15. Ibid., p. 16. 16. Ibid., p. 596. 17. Ibid., p. 586. For a discussion expanding on the comments of Clausewitz see Fuller, p. 68-70. 18. For a critique of the Allied effort, and its presumed failure to attack the enemy centers of gravity, see Fuller, p. 279-303. 19. For a thorough discussion of this significant change in the international setting following World War II, see Robert E. Osgood, "The Reappraisal of Limited War", American Defense Policy, 3d ed., Richard G. Head and Ervin J. Rokke, eds. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1973), pp. 156-160. 20. See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937), pp. 653-669. Smith's discussion on the "Expence of Defence" (sic) is fascinating. With only minor revision, the trends and implications that Smith perceived in defense spending are as true today as they were two hundred years ago. 21. For a discussion of this trend, see William J. Taylor, Jr. and Steveb A. Maaranen, The Future of Conflict in the 1980s (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1982). The views of the corporate authors are summarized in pp. 3-8. 22. Clausewitz, p. 17. 23. The comments of Secretary Schlesinger are contained in Taylor and Maaranen, p. 16. 24. Michael Carver, War Since 1945 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, Inc., 1981), p 282. CHAPTER 2 "The Zionist movement had always been convinced that the Arabs would receive it with open arms, and be happy for its bringing the values, the ideas and the know-how of West European and Amer- ican civilization into the Middle East. Because of this illusion... Zionism committed the unin- tentional error of ignoring the importance of the Arab attitude for the realization of Zionist aspirations."1 Nahun Goldmann, 1978 Conflict in the Middle East has been endemic for centuries, but during the present century it has become chronic. In addition to the strifes of religious and ethnic origin that have historically plagued the area, modern international politics has now grafted a seemingly insoluble Arab-Israeli dispute onto the crazily woven regional backdrop. This new component serves not only as a conflict in its own right, but as a complicating additive to the clashes that existed in its absence.2 This condition has served to create in the Middle East something of a testbed for modern warfare. Wars in the region since 1945 have covered the entire spectrum of violence. The Middle East has witnessed civil war, insurgency, guerrilla war, and open conventional war of both mobile and static natures. The 1982 War in Lebanon is merely the latest in a continuing series of conflicts that have been so costly and so damaging to the region's prospects for economic development. But for the purposes of studying conflict in the modern world, it has much to offer in the way of lessons learned and re-learned. Like all the post World War II conflicts in the Middle East, this one was a small war. In terms of the criteria previously discussed, it was a limited war in both space and time. It was also limited in objective. The Israelis did not attempt to completely destroy all the opponents they faced in the war. They do not now, and never have had, the resources required to destroy all the Arab regimes hostile to Israel.3 Nevertheless, the objectives that the Israelis established for their armed forces were not sufficiently limited to make them achievable at acceptable costs. This is what makes the war in Lebaon in 1982 so fascinating as a case study in the modern use of force. Here was an instance in which a conventional force was sent against an opponent consisting primarily of irregulars or guerrillas who fought when they chose to on familiar and favorable terrain. Simultaneously, a second front matched conventional forces neither of whom had a strong desire to become decisively engaged. But even in this clash of conventional forces, the mechanized and tank-heavy units comitted by Israel were forced to fight in an unfavorable environment. The nature of this conflict from both a military and political perspective indicates that the Israelis should have taken care to establish political objectives that were both unambiguous and reducible to military terms. In addition, given the small size of the Israeli forces that can be deployed without resorting to a major reserve call up that severely disrupts the national economy, and considering the American and Soviet sensitivities in the region, there existed a clear necessity for Jerusalem to fight a quick war securing the carefully established political objectives. But Jerusalem did not apply this logic to the war in Lebanon. The goals initially announced seemed to conform to this paradigm, but the actual conduct of military operations belied this early announceed intent. The history of this conflict indicates that Israel's political aims were unclear and inconsistent. For reasons that will be long debated, after early successes the Israelis expanded the operational objectives of the conflict to the point that they quickly exceeded the capability of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The costs of this effort at political over-reach were excessive to Israel in both political and military terms. The government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin was soon subjected to extensive internal pressure leading to the abrupt resignation of disheartened leader on September 15, 1983. The principal architect of the invasion, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, was also forced from office because of events associated with the seige of Beirut and as of early 1985 had gone to court in a suit with an American periodical in an effort to rehabilitate and broaden his stature with the Israeli electorate.4 The war was ultimately costly for the United States as well. Not only did the conflict drive Syria closer to the Soviet Union, creating conditions for the re-introduction into the Middle East of regular Soviet forces, but it also dragged the United States into an expensive and futile involvement in Beirut resulting in nearly 300 casualties for the United States Marines, and reopening in American politics questions pertaining to the War Powers Act of 1974 and the appropriate role for US Forces in contemporary conflicts.5 In order to understand the context of these events and the conflict in Lebanon, it is necessary to elaborate somewhat on the recent history of the Middle East. The sources of the conflict in Lebanon are deeply rooted in the history of the Arab-Israeli dispute, a confrontation which has now finally telescoped down to a familiar essence -- the contradictory interests of the peoples of the State of Israel and the land of Palestine.6 THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT Most people seem to assume the conflict between the Arabs and Israelis is a struggle between conflicting religious beliefs, between two antagonistic but religiously based ideologies. This is simply untrue. Not too long ago, this conflict was frequently described as one between "the Muslims and the Jews". That it is now predominantly labeled as a dispute between" Arabs and Israelis", words indicating its true nationalistic and secular nature, is indicative of an increased awareness that has taken hold over the past few years. It is certainly true that in history there are instances where Muslims have persecuted and often destroyed Jewish tribes and communities. Following the battle of "The Ditch" in 627, Muhammed, convinced that one of the Jewish tribes of Medina had collaborated with his enemies led by the Quraish clan of Mecca, ordered the men of the Jewish tribe executed and the women and children sold into slavery. The Prophet was angered that the Jewish citizens of Medina had failed to accept his new religion, and began a campaign to divest Islam of certain practices which seemed to have a Jewish basis. For example, originally Muhammed had directed that Muslims face Jerusalem during prayer, but after the clash with the Medinese Jews, this was changed to Mecca.7 The ancestral homeland of the Jews, where they had constructed the first and second temples, was in the ancient land of Israel with its capital at Jerusalem, but this polity existed as an established state under Kings David and Solomon for only about 80 years between 1010 and 930 BC. After being brutally conquered by the Romans, the major Jewish communities were scattered in 135 AD. When the Arabs conquered the region during the reign of the Caliph Umar in 637, there was no longer any large, established, Jewish community.8 Many of the Jews who had remained in the area following the Arab conquest converted to Islam; while others maintained the faith in small groups located primarily around Jerusalem. During the reigns of the great Arab Empires and dynasties such as the Ummayads and the Abbasids, and through the time of the Ottomans, Jews lived and even served in high places throughout the ancient Middle Eastern world. As religions that preceded Islam, Judaism and Christianity were accepted by Muslims as legitimate faiths and their adherents were largely free of persecution -- although Arab toleration was sometimes unevenly applied. Accordingly, there is little indication in past history of sectarian strife between Arabs and Jews.9 All of this began to change in the period following World War I when the conflict between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs began to fester. This was not a conflict based on an ethnic or religious component; primarily, it was a confrontation between two nationalisms being played out during a period of rising nationalism. The Zionist movement began to gather momentum after Theodore Herzl called the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. The Zionist aim was to re-establish the ancient Jewish homeland in the area now known as Palestine. Their program was succinctly captured in the phrase: "a people without a land for a land without people." It was a simple and catchy slogan, but it was also false; Palestine had people, the descendents of the Arab conquerers who had been on the land since the seventh century. During the course of World War I, driven by the desire to defeat the Central Powers, the British had created for themselves a morass of conflicting promises. With the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence of 1916, they had promised the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire to Arab forces repre- sented by Sharif Hussein of Mecca, patriarch of the House of Hashim. In 1917, however, the British issued the Balfour Declaration stating that London viewed "with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People." The effort of the Entente to square these promises at Versailles with President Woodrow Wilson's avowed principle of self-determination ultimately resulted in Great Britain being granted a mandate for Palestine and Trans-Jordan with the responsibility of satisfying both the Arab and Jewish communities.10 In 1921, Britain's Colonial Secretary, a colorful chap named Winston Churchill, divided Palestine and Trans-Jordan establishing Sharif Hussein's oldest son, Abdullah, as the Amir of the latter.11 Practically, this meant that only the portions of Palestine west of the Jordan River would be con- sidered for the site of the Jewish homeland. But between 1922 and World War II, the growing antagonism between the Jewish and Arab communities because of Jewish immigration created constant problems for London. By 1936, with the Arabs in revolt, the British were dealing with a full fledged insurgency. In answer to the difficulties in Palestine, London organized a study of the problem under Lord Earl Peel, a former Secretary of State for India, who in 1937 issued the report of the Commission bearing his name. As Peel saw it, the only solution was to partition Palestine between the two communities. The following year, however, a second commission sent to study Peel's partition proposal declared that such a plan would be unworkable because of Arab resistance and the limited space suitable for incorporation into the Jewish province.12 In 1939, the British issued a White Paper announcing their intention to slowly restrict and then end Jewish immigration into the area. This wasstrongly resisted by the both the Palestinian Arabs and World Zionist communities. As they entered World War II in September 1939, the British found themselves hopelessly caught between the aspirations of two determined national groups. The devastation of Europe and Hitler's campaign of extermination directed against Jews left millions of Jews homeless after the end of the war. Many wanted to leave Europe and re-settle in Palestine, but this would create renewed problems for the British with the local Arab population. As thousands of Jews fled Europe for Palestine in old tramp steamers and other vessels which were barely seaworthy, the British dilemma intensified. If they allowed the Jews in, they faced the consequences of a Palestinian Civil War; if they didn't, they faced the wrath of the Zionist organizations and world opinion which was growing increasingly incensed at pictures of European Jews being again herded into camps -- only this time by the British on Cyprus. Having few ideas and no solution; heavily burdened by the costs of the war; and uncomfortable at maintaining a large Army contingent in Palestine where its soldiers were the targets of both Arab and Jewish extremists; the British referred the issue to the newly formed United Nations on April 12, 1947. Shortly afterwards, the UK announced its intention to leave Palestine by May 15, 1948, the day their Mandate was scheduled to expire.13 The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution establishing an eleven nation Special Committee on Palestine. This became known by the acronym UNSCOP, and immediately began to study the various questions and issues related to the problem. Between 26 May and 31 August 1947, UNSCOP investigated all apects of the dilemma and in late September rendered a divided report containing both majority and minority suggestions. The majority report recommended partition with an economic union, much as Peel had proposed in 1937. A minority report, authored by three states, suggested the establishment of autonomous Arab andJewish states in a federal union following a three year transition period in which further immigration would be allowed within the limits of the absorbtive capacity of the country. Neither plan offered many details as to how the UN would deal with the violent opposition expected from both parties during the execution of the proposals.14 The Arabs denounced both proposals as unfair and undemocratic noting, among other things, that in the proposed Jewish state Arabs would constitute nearly half of the population, and that the "best part" of Palestine containing the citrus land would go to the Jews along with 80% of the cereal area and 40% of Arab industry. In addition, the Jewish state would receive 55% of the land area of Palestine in question despite the fact that they owned only 7% of the land. As one Arab scholar has argued: "We were asked to accept half a loaf, but we rejected the baker's analogy. We believed the principle in question was the Solomonic analogy, and we were the ones who opposed dividing the baby."15 The Zionists firmly rejected the minority report, but their General Council meeting in Switzerland found the partition proposal acceptable although they had certain reservations about the area allotted to the Jewish state as well as the status of Jerusalem. Nonetheless, recognizing their position as being essentially strengthened by the UNSCOP proposals, the Zionist Organizations launched a well planned campaign to have the majority report adopted by the General Assembly. On 29 November 1947, after considerable maneuvering by both sides, and after some alterations to the original UNSCOP proposals by a General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee, partition was voted by the Generals Assembly by a vote of 33 to 13 with 10 states abstaining. By this time, Britain had firmly announced intentions to leave Palestine regardless of the outcome of the UN vote. Economically, financially, and militarily weak after World War II, Britain was anxious to shed its imperial outposts. It had reluctantly decided to give up India; to terminate its role in the eastern Mediterranean; and to move some of its military bases to Kenya. At the time, the British had stationed in Palestine a substantial military contingent in an effort to keep order. Harrassed by both sides, often savagely by the extremists Zionist groups, the British force equalled one troop for every 1.5 able bodied, male member of the Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv. Since they had decided to leave India, the strategic importance of Palestine was greatly diminished and the Foreign Office in London saw no good reason to pay for forces there. Accordingly, Britain abstained from the UN vote declaring that she would abide by any solution acceptable on both sides, but that she would not impose with military force any solution opposed by either side. The British had clearly washed their hands of Palestine. THE ARAB-ISRAELI WARS IN BRIEF Following the United Nations vote on 29 November 1947, a Civil War erupted in Palestine between the Arab and the Jewish communities. The Arabs probably fired the first shot, but the war exacted a heavy cost from both sides. The period of Civil War which lasted until the departure of the British on 14 May 1948, was a cruel and vicious struggle between two societies placed on a collision course because neither could accomodate the irreducible minimum demands of the other. Because of the limited means available, the war started with an initial flurry of random killings, but it soon settled into a recognizeable pattern of fighting as both sides added to their stocks of men and equipment. But it was a deadly affair: between 1 December 1947 and 1 Febru- ary 1948 the UN recorded 2778 casualties including 1462 Arabs, 1106 Jews, and 181 British.16 In the first four months of the conflict, the Israelis suffered five times the relative losses of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war which included greatly expanded firepower and 15 times more soldiers.17 By May 1948, the Yishuv had done relatively well in the war and had clearly taken better advantage of the frequent lulls and cease-fires. Although constituting only a third of the population, the Jewish community eventually mobilized the totality of its resources and actually fielded an armed force that was larger, better led, and better trained than that of the Palestinian Arabs.18 After the declaration of the establisment of the State of Israel on 14 May, the war changed in complexion. Pressured by their aroused masses, and in some cases motivated by the possibility of national and territorial gain, the established Arab states bordering Israel had been planning for a possible armed intervention since mid-April. Ruled by governments with different ideological orientations, and plaqued by several dynastic rivalries, the Arabs were, however, unable to develop a coordinated strategy. When the five Arab states, consisting of Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon attacked on 15 May, it marked the high water mark of Arab unity of effort. As the war drug on through the remainder of 1948, the Arab states each fought on their own front with little effort to coordinate strategies or even to share intelli- gence.19 This Arab disunity allowed the Israelis to take maximum advantage of interior lines in shifting forces from one front to another as the situation required. After the first two weeks, the war dragged toward stalemate and the United Nations became involved in an effort to mediate. On 29 May, the UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as its official mediator and he arranged the first of many truces and cease-fires which went into effect on 11 June 1948. During this cease-fire, the Israelis resupplied their under-equipped armed force and strengthened it with newly arrived immigrants. The Jewish army expanded to somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 combatants armed with new equipment including fighter aircraft and bombers. By the time fighting resumed, the Israelis probably outnumbered the Arabs who had to withhold some of their forces for internal security duties at home. This meant that during the later stages of the war, the Arabs were forced by the availability of forces to adopt a larely defensive strategy.20 Fighting was renewed on 9 July 1948 and raged for some ten days although it was mostly contained in the center sector around Jerusalem and the Egyptian front in the Negev desert. During the course of the fighting, the Israelis were able to further widen and secure the road that connected Tel Aviv with the Jewish community in Jerusalem. They then broke through Egyptian lines in the south to open a corridor to Jewish enclaves which had been isolated in the Negev. Although there were some gains in the north, the increasing Arab inability to effect a coordinated military effort allowed the Israelis to maximize the growing capabilities of their young army.21 Although Israeli efforts to seize control of as much of the area allotted to the Jewish state by the General Assembly partition resolution were succeeding, they were becoming increasingly isolated diplomatically. This isolation was aggravated on 17 September 1948 when the Stern Gang, a Jewish extremist group, assassinated Count Berna- dotte. The attack on Bernadotte had been in response to his proposal that the partition plan be modified in a manner that would give the Arabs control of the Negev, annex the Arab territories in Palestine to Jordan, turn Jerusalem into an international city, and allow the swelling horde of Arab refugees to return to their homes.22 The Arabs rejected this proposal because it would have added to the Jordanian territory controlled by King Abdullah, but the Sternists found the parts about the Negev and Jerusalem so objection- able that they decided to murder the UN mediator who they now adjudged to be hopelessly in sympathy with the Arabs. Bernadotte's position as UN Mediator was filled by an American diplomat, Dr. Ralph Bunche. Deciding that they had to take concrete steps to alter the military conditions which supported Bernadotte's pro- posal, the Israelis launched a third offensive on 14 Octo- ber 1948. By this time, the Israelis had all of the mili- tary advantages on their side. They had a larger, better led force; one that had a certain degree of central direction; and one that enjoyed the perogatives of the attacker -- initiative and surprise. In a quick nine day campaign, they routed the Egyptians in the south; seized control of the entire Negev desert; and cleared all of the central Galilee in the north.23 Following one more period of combat in November, the war came to a conclusion with an armistice signed by Israel and Egypt on 24 February 1949. Lebanon quickly adopted Egypt's lead and settled on 23 March followed by Jordan on 3 April, and Syria on 20 July. Baghdad refused to conclude an armistice with Israel and not needing to worry over a common border simply withdrew her forces, returning them Iraq. Since the Saudis had contributed only a small token force, they also saw no need to sign a separate agreement and followed the Iraqi example. Thus by the summer of 1949, the new state of Israel existed behind armistice lines that reflected the realities of the battlefield more than any logic of economics or demography.24 Little is written these days about the first Arab-Israeli war, but its nature, setting, and termination have colored the Arab-Israeli conflict ever since for several reasons. First, beyond the concrete success of establishing the modern state of Israel, the psychological implications of the victory of the Yishuv complicated the possibility of future Arab-Israeli relations. The decisive nature of the Israeli victory, against odds that were perceived to be far greater than they actually were, instilled in the Israelis and their fledgling government a sense of pride and self-confidence that lessened considerably their willingness to make the kinds of concessions to the Arabs that were necessary for genuine reconciliation and peace. This established a mental boundary on Israeli flexibility that has been evident ever since, although, as we shall see, the Lebanon experience in 1982 has begun to force changes. In 1975, while attempting to negotiate the Sinai II agreement, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger observed how this legacy of the 1948 war had impacted on his ability to negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Kissinger reported that: When I ask Rabin to make concessions, he says he can't because Israel is too weak. So I give him arms, and he says he doesn't need to make concessions because Israel is strong.25 Second, on the Arab side, the extent of their defeat was a deep blow to their pride and self-esteem. Their sense of humiliation was so complete that they refused to recognize the existance of Israel, even going to the extreme of removing references to it from maps and periodicals shipped into Arab countries, refusing to even use the name "Israel" in official business until the early 1970s.26 Ac- cording to Henry Kissinger, President Sadat's decision to go to war in 1973 was primarily to force Israel into realizing that it was not invincible, and to demonstrate to the Arabs that they were not militarily and technologically incom- petent. In Kissinger's judgment: "Sadat fought a war not to acquire territory but to restore Egypt's self-respect and thereby increase its diplomatic flexibility."27 Third, and most significantly, was the refugee problem. When one discusses the refugees, it must be realized that this means Palestinian Arabs who left the areas that became the state of Israel. They lost their homes, their possessions and, by their reasoning, their identity. A protracted debate has raged for years over why the Arabs abandoned their homes. Israeli historians have insisted that the Jewish leaders encouraged the Arabs to remain, but the Palestinian Arabs elected to leave their homes and farms because of the encouragement of their own leaders. Arab historians have vigorously denied this. They maintain that there were no instructions for Arabs to abandon their land, and that the Arabs did so because they were forced out by a combination of Israeli military force and psychological warfare. Arabs are quick to single out the widely known Deir Yaseen incident of April 1948, in which Jewish extremists from the Irgun destroyed an entire Arab village killing some 250 of the Arab inhabitants including women and children, as an example of the coercive tactics used by the Israelis.28 The truth will never be known, but it probably lies somewhere between the two poles of opinion. Indeed one respected scholar with strong Israeli connections argues that as long as the partition proposal was in doubt, the Arabs, expecting to avoid trouble and return after the issue was decided, left voluntarily in the face of Jewish insistence that they remain. After the war began and the advantage swung to the side of the Israelis, the Arabs were then forced from their homes as the Jews attempted to make their area more homogenous, lessen the danger of Arab espionage and sabotage, and secure additional land and buildings for the expected influx of Jewish immigrants.29 Regardless of the exact cause, the effect was the same. By the end of the war, there were approximately 700,000 Arabs refugees displaced from lands now occupied by the Israelis. About 60% of these refugees wound up in Jordan while the remainder were evenly divided between the Egyptian controlled Gaza Strip, and areas of southern Lebanon and Syria. These people, confined to camps, primarily representing excess agricultural labor, and forced to live off meager handouts of various Arab states and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), have become the breeding ground of the discontent that has spawned the contemporary Palestinian national movement. To these Palestinians, the establishment of the state of Israel is known merely as "the catastrophe" and they continue to look upon the Jewish state as imperialistic, western, coercive, and dispossessive.30 This is the major engine driving the emotional dispute that continues to thrive in the region. The final major result of the 1948 war was the instability it created among the Arab states in the region. Because established governments had been beaten so badly, and unexpectedly, their regimes came under considerable pressure. In Egypt, the monarchy of King Farouk, which had suffered the most humiliating defeat, was toppled. On 22 July 1952, Farouk was overthrown by a group of young Army officers who were very disillusioned by the course of the war. Within two years, Gamal Abdul Nasser had emerged as the primary leader of this movement and Cairo became the focus of his Pan-Arab exhortations calling for a united Arab effort to purge the shame of 1948. In Syria the government was overthrown and replaced by a military clique in 1949. By the mid-1950s, the Arab Baath Party, another force with a strong Pan-Arab message, had come to power in Damascus. The message of the Baathist was that only through the establishment of a larger secular Arab state could the memory of the debacle of 1948 be erased. In Jordan, which had annexed the portions of the West Bank that it controlled following the war, the composition of the population was greatly altered by the results of the war. Because of the number of refugees who fled east across the Jordan river into the Hashemite Kingdom, Jordan's population became instantly nearly two-thirds Palestinian. This presented King Abdullah with serious political prob- lems. In addition, it strained the limited resources that his country could employ to care for its new and unwelcome guests. Abdullah engaged in a series of secret meetings with the Israelis in an effort to address their mutual problem, but many of the Palestinians considered this to be traitorous behavior. An enraged refugee murdered Abdullah in Jerusalem on 20 July 1951, as Abdullah's grandson Hussein watched. For many, this event is the explanation for Hussein's continuing political caution in dealing with the Palestinian issue since his assumption of the Jordanian throne. It is within this framework that one should view the major Arab-Israeli wars that occurred between 1949 and 1982. The Sinai war of 1956 was a war that Israel elected to enter in collusion with the governments of Britain and France. The three states found themselves with a conver- gence of interest over the nature of the Nasser regime in Egypt. The British under Prime Minister Anthony Eden were at odds with Nasser's nationalistic actions and pronouncements, an antagonism which reached its peak when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the vital link between Europe and trading partners to the east. For the French, the major concern was Nasser's meddling in their insurgency in Algeria. Nasser had provided encour- agement to the Algerian rebels and had made support for their struggle against Paris a common theme in his foreign policy. For the Israelis, Nasser's Pan-Arab philosophy and his often stated desire to avenge the embarrassment of 1948 were interpretted as an immediate and serious threat. In addition, his failure to take assertive action to prevent Palestinian guerrilla activities being launched against Israel from the Egyptian administered Gaza strip caused continual tension. In late October 1956, in an effort to eliminate or at least mitigate this Egyptian menace, Israel attacked Egypt. Shortly afterwards, the British and French intervened to protect their national interests. The result was a quick victory for the Israelis, who conquered the Sinai desert in less than a week, but a political disaster for all three attackers. Not only did Nasser emerge from the assault with his power and heroic image increased, but the attackers were disavowed by the United States whose President compared their actions to those being used simultaneously by the Soviet Union in Hungary.31 Washington forced Israel to give back the Sinai in exchange for a promise to support its contention of free passage through the Straits of Tiran at the southern tip of the peninsula. In 1967, a series of events involving Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the Soviet Union came together to create the conditions which led to the 1967 "Six Day War". Again, the Arabs were attempting to demonstrate their military ability and were probably overcome by the inertia of events once they had started things into motion. The Israelis, although evidently not involved in any of the actions which initially precipitated the crisis, apparently decided to take advantage of the moment to demonstrate once again their military prowess. One United Nations official recalled that, "I don't think Eshkol [the Israeli Prime Minister] wanted a war, but it was quite clear the military establishment, including the intelligence services, badly wanted a showdown with the Arabs."32 During this period, Israel's two top military leaders, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, and Air Force General Ezer Weizman, the first of a new generation of native born leaders who were to play important roles in Israeli politics in the future, decided that it was imperative that they demonstrate that "Israel could not be intimidated."33 Following several bellicose statements by Nasser, and his threatening military re- occupation of the Sinai, the Israelis attacked on the morning of 5 June 1967 destroying the bulk of the Egyptian Air Force on the ground. By 11 June the war had ended in a complete Israeli victory. This war left Israel with a dual legacy. First it reinforced the Arab Problem of having to explain and address again the spectre of complete destruction and defeat. The Arab psycological problem was complicated and expanded leaving them once more with the inability to either settle or admit defeat, while the Israelis were left with victory but inadequate resources and power to impose a preferred solution. Second, the Israelis captured a considerable amount of territory. To the west, the Sinai deserts was once again in their hands and there were now no pressures from the United States to return it. Washington, in fact, having no particular fondness for Nasser or his other Arab allies, and caught in the deepening gloom of Vietnam, was happy to share in the reflected glory of the Israeli military achievement. Israel therefore gained a significant buffer area which terminated on the West with one of the world's best tank ditches, the Suez Canal. To the north, the successful battle with Syria had left Jerusalem in possesion of the strategic Golan Heights controlling the entire Galilee area. This meant that the farming areas below the heights would be free from indiscriminate artillery and rocket attacks from Syrian gunners able to see all of Northern Israel from their lofty perch. In the center, the Israelis had captured the entire West Bank and the whole of the city of Jerusalem. This eliminated their vulnerable center which was at places only nine miles wide along the 1948 armistice lines, and shortened their frontier while anchoring it along the more defensible and definable Jordan River. Unfortunately, this turn of events which promised such great military advantage brought with it the kernal of a dangerous dilemma. These new territories, particularly the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, contained nearly one million Arabs who would now have to be controlled, governed, and administered. As Professor Nadav Safran of Harvard University has noted, "The Israelis had been completely unprepared to deal politically with the situation they faced as a result of their military victory and were deeply divided in the views they improvised after the event."34 To keep the conquered lands, advocated by many because of religious and nationalistic beliefs, would leave Israel in the position of accepting into its body politic an Arab plurality half the size of the Jewish portion of Israel. This, especially when added to the much higher birth rate of the Arabs, meant that in the future the Jewish character of the Zionists State would be challenged if not altered. Keeping the Arabs out of political life, meant basically an army of occupation for an indeterminate period and the abandonment, in part, of cherished democratic principles. The Israelis have never solved this rudimentary contradic- tion whose implications haunt them to this day. Jerusalem decided to live with the status quo, creating a diplomatic log-jam that led to the 1973 war. Nasser's successor, Anwar El Sadat, could not surrender his land in the Sinai, he could not overtly abandon the Pan-Arab principles of his revered predecessor, and he could not elicit from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir any pragmatic concessions short of what Sadat perceived to be capitulation. Seeing no way out, Sadat decided on war in an effort to end the stalemate and colluded with Syria and Saudi Arabia to launch a limited objective attack against Israel in an effort to demonstrate that the Arab military option would have to be seriously considered by Jerusalem. Syria eagerly provided a second front, while Saudi Arabia provided the necessary financing.35 The 1973 Arab-Israeli war accomplished much of what Sadat had hoped for. It ended in a negotiated settlement allowing both Egypt and Syria to argue that they had made concrete advances from their resort to arms. It also lifted from them, although more so in the case of Egypt than Syria, the onus of military impotence. Indeed, the Egyptian achievement at crossing the Suez Canal during the early days of the war is one of the major military accomplishments of this half of the century. The 1973 war, created the conditions which allowed Sadat to go to Jerusalem in 1977 and start the process which found its final expression in the Camp David Agreement of September 1978. It can be seen from this brief perusal of the major Arab-Israeli wars since 1949, that one starts and ends with the Palestinian issue. The wars between Israel and the Arab states actually had little to do with the Palestinians, although they were obviously an ingredient that added to the atmosphere of conflict. The Arab states bordering Israel, commonly known as the first tier states, have slowly dropped out of the conflict, and with the 1982 war in Lebanon, we have returned to the starting blocks. The antagonists were once more, just as they had been in 1948, the Israelis and the Palestinians now represented by their own nationalist organization, the PLO. THE COMBATANTS Although there is little possibility that one would ever find an Israeli and a Palestinian member of the PLO who would openly agree, there are tremendous similarities between the structures, processes, and strategies of the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organi- zation. This is primarily due to two factors: (1) they both seek the destruction of the other, to some degree giving them a similarity of purpose; and (2) they both are coalition-based political organisms giving them a similarity of operation. Israel is a democracy with a hertiage of political pluralism inherited from its pre-state experience. Since the World Zionist Movement was voluntary, consisting of many peoples from many countries, often expressing differing opinions, the dynamics of early Jewish politics were purposely designed to encourage particip[ation and to protect minority positions. This desire has greatly influenced Israeli politics as they have evolved since 1949. Although the original intent of the founders of modern Israel was to draft a constitution, an inability to agree on certain key points, such as the exact nature of the state and its basis of law, resulted in this goal being set aside in favor of a Transition Law. This basic law was to establish the nature of the governmental process until a constitution could be drafted; but none ever has. Thus, Israel's government is founded on the provisions of four basic laws and the traditions established by the early Zionist movement as well as the actions of the first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. The supreme power in Israel is the country's Parliament known as the Knesset, a 120 member body elected for a four year term unless it votes to dissolve itself earlier. Election to the Knesset is indirect, the Israeli voter casts his ballot for a party, not an individual. There are no small constituencies which are represented as all Party members run nation-wide. After the vote is counted, the party, which has submitted a prioritzed list of its candidates, will receive the number of seats in the Knesset which is proportional to its percentage of the total national vote. After reviewing the vote, the President of Israel invites the leader of the party which has the best chance of creating a government to form a Cabinet and submit it to the Knesset as a whole for approval. Once accepted by the Knesset, this Cabinet becomes the executive branch of the government. The Cabinet has no fixed size and its members, except for the Prime Minister, do not have to be members of the Knesset although most, especially those that hold the key cabinet posts, usually are. Clearly this system protects minority rights and opinions, but it also encourages a proliferation of political parties that, in the United States, would remain as interest groups attempting to influenmce rather than join the government (see Figure 1). Consequently, Israel has never had a political party or alliance win a clear majority of the seats in the Knesset. Since Israel's founding, it has always been led by coalition governments. Small parties which have strong ideological or religious bases are Click here to view image therefore co-opted into the Cabinet in order for the larger parties to establish a working majority.36 There are two practical effects to Israel's coalition- based political system. First, the ability of the government to make sweeping or significant changes is significantly limited. Since members of any ruling coalition establish pre-conditions for joining a cabinet, they are able to prevent the introduction of laws or policies that they find to be too objectionable.37 Because of this, many of the controversial issues regarding security as well as many of the more daring and risky proposals relating to Arab-Israeli peace issues have been largely removed from the political agenda. In this way, minority opinion is not only protected by the Israeli political system, it is frequently exaggerated. Second, because Cabinet positions are given out to individuals who have political constituents that must be served, there is often a narrow base in the leadership of those who understand the broader implications of policy. This creates the conditions in which one minister can often inact policies whose controversial implications only become obvious well down the road. This is particularly true, as the 1982 experience demonstrated, if the minister is an eccepted expert in a narrow area and is given support by the Prime Minister and other powerful voices within the Cabinet. The Prime Minister is the head of the government, but in many instances throughout Israeli history the nature of coalition government and the Cabinet system have made his control over certain ministers and their ministries somewhat tenuous. The Palestine Liberation Organization is not represent- ative of a liberal democracy, but there are nonetheless certain similarities with its organization and that of the Israeli government. As the organizational chart on the next page shows (see Figure 2), the PLO is a part of a semi-governmental system headed by the Palestine National Council (PNC). This council which meets about once a year is for all practical purposes the Palestinian Congress in exile. It approves programs, establishes budgets for its various departments and organizations, and coordinates the activities (to the extent possible) of its various components. It also elects an Executive Committee, an organization similar to a cabinet, which carries out the agreed upon programs and is responsible to the PNC. The current Chairman of the Executive Committed is Yasir Arafat who is also the leader of Fatah, the largest of the PLO guerrilla groups.38 Click here to view image This is the current nature of the PLO which reflects its rather truncated development since its founding in 1964. The PLO was initially established under the auspices of the Arab League, and with the blessing of Egyptian President Nasser, in an effort to not only give the Palestinians a political organization, but also to get them under control. Before 1964, the Palestinians had worked primarily with the radical and revolutionary segments of the Arab political spectrum in an effort to achieve the Arab unity that they considered essential for the liberation of Palestine. After the 1956 war, Nasser became the symbol of this effort towards Pan-Arabism, the integration of the Arabs into a larger political unit. But Nasser, and other Arab leaders, were concerned that Palestinian guerrilla attacks against Israel would involve them in a confrontation with Jerusalem before they were ready. The PLO was in their minds designed to be a device to coordinate the Palestinian effort with that of the established Arab states. The need for such an organization had been accentuated after the 1961 break-up of the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria. The Palestinians had reacted very adversely to this development in Arab politics because the failure of Nasser, the symbol of Arab unity, and the Syrian Baath Party, the vanguard of Arab Unity, to successfully integrate showed that the Pan-Arab idea was a long way from fruition. The following year, the success of the Algerian's FLN in winning their independence from France through a protracted guerrilla war led many Palestinian leaders to theorize that they could model their own effort on this regional example although others argued that there were significant differences in the two cases.39 The PLO, initially led by Ahmed Shuqairy, placed considerable faith in the established Arab governments until the 1967 war. After the dust settled from this Arab disaster, control of both the PLO and the PNC were seized by the guerrilla movements and their younger more energetic leaders -- among them Yasir Arafat. Convinced that the narrow interests of the Arab states would always supercede any Pan-Arab or Palestinian interests, the PLO became more independent in its actions. It also absorbed within its ranks numerous other groups having various political and military strategies for both dealing with Israel in the near term, and establishing the Palestinian entity which would follow the ultimate victory. The PLO grew to contain a membership which reflected traditional Palestinian vested interests along with others, such as young Marxists, who wanted to establish a secular state. In short, Arafat leads a coalition of groups with strongly differing ideas each having sufficient strength to insist that their positions be honored and that certain other options be tabled. Following the 1967 war, the PLO moved its main area of operations to Jordan. From there it launched numerous terrorist attacks across the Jordan River into Israel. This war against Israel reached a critical phase in late 1970 when King Hussein decided that he could no longer tolerate the effects of having the PLO state-within-a-state making him vulnerable to Israeli reprisals. Following a bloody war in which the King turned the Jordanian army against the PLO, Arafat and his followers were forced from Jordan into Lebanon where they had previously entered into an agreement with the Lebanese government giving them certain freedom of action in limited areas of the country.40 From 1970 until 1982, Lebanon became the fulcrum PLO activities. The PLO is for all practical purposes something like a government. In fact, the late President Sadat frequently advised that the PLO declare itself to be a government-in- exile. It is also, as is the Israeli government, coalition based, clearly subject to the limitations imposed upon it by the firm demands of even some of its less significant members. Both parties, therefore, have political processes which make compromise difficult where it concerns issues that certain key components find non-negotiable. There are numerous groups within the PLO "umbrella" that operate with a great degree of autonomy. In addition to Arafat's group, Fatah, which is generally considered the most moderate following its announcement after the 1973 war that it was ending terror attacks against Israeli targets, are several more strident groups that are only loosely controlled. The most ideologically strident is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist- Leninist group led by a former doctor, George Habash. This group has been reponsible for many of the airline hijackings and bombings attributable to the PLO and carried out the highly publicized ones of late 1970 that led to King Hus- sein's expulsion of the organization from Jordan. The PFLP General Command (PFLP-GC), a splinter group of Habash's led by Ahmad Jabril, a former Syrian Army officer, has been active in several PLO fratricidal confrontations. The Saiqa faction of the PLO is controlled directly by the Syrians, while the Arab Liberation Front (ALF) is linked to Iraq. Both are rejectionist on issues pertaining to a possible settlement with Israel. The Abu Nidal group, which evidently left the PLO in 1974 following the decision of the PNC to use political as well as military means in the struggle with Israel, is an ultraradical faction which has attacked numerous targets throughout the world including the Syrian embassies in Italy and Pakistan. Generally considered to be beyond the pale of the PLO leadership, it was apparently Abu Nidal that wounded Israeli Ambassador Argov in London setting off the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.41 As this discussion makes apparent, both the Israeli government and the PLO are subject to constraints imposed by their most doctrinaire and extreme elements. This is not to say that both sides use the same tactics, or have the same strategic concerns, but the ability of either to propose responses to the other is severely limited by the reality of dealing with the political least common denominators that clearly exist. STRATEGIC CONCERNS The Israelis and Palestinians each have several strategic objectives that explain many of their actions on the international scene. Clearly they both share the common interest of all states and organizations -- to survive. As a state, this translates largely into military considera- tions for Israel; but for the PLO, with limited military means, the major components of its current strategy are more political. Israel, even after 37 years of statehood, is still seeking a secure place in the moden world. Its position as a regional outcast has greatly complicated its ability to establish a self-sustaining national economy. Therefore, Israel has traditionally looked abroad for support in terms of money, supplied from both the Jewish dyaspora and foreign governments, and markets. A major goal of the Israelis is, of necessity, the avoidance of international isolation, a condition which has from time to time forced them to find unlikely friends in unlikely places.42 The Israelis also must maintain a sensitivity to the requirements of internal control. They are surrounded by hostile opponents who over the years have shown an ability to infiltrate the country, and they have a significant Arab minority population within their borders which has questionable loyalty to the national government. The Israelis cannot afford to be indifferent to the nature of their internal conflicts which always have the possibility of expanding to dangerous dimensions. The Israelis, from a military as well as humanitarian perspective, have a great sensitivity to the safety of their citizens. The Jewish population of the country is only a little over three million, which means that Israel bears a heavy burden in any situation which threatens the lives of its citizens. They cannot accept large numbers of casualties under any circumstances without the loss being quickly reflected in both the national well-being and national politics. This is why, in the past, the Israelis have always been willing to exchange thousands of captured Arab soldiers for just a hand full of their compatriots. The Israelis have constantly been concerned about their strategic depth. Because the armistics lines along which the country was formed in 1948 were so abnormal, there were places in which the Israeli state was at severe military disadvantage. At one place in the center, the country was barely nine miles wide. Although the modern era of long-ranged missiles and aircraft has clearly made this less significant, the fact remains that for Israel defensive depth is virtually non-existent. Practically this means that numerous places throughout the country are within range of potentially hostile fire. Because of its small population and lack of military depth, the Israelis have adopted military strategies that emphasize the offensive and short, intense conflicts. Since the country has no depth around which to organize an area defense, the IDF has long recognized that during any conflict it had to quickly go on the offensive and carry the war away from Israel's borders. As a corollary, the Israelis emphasize pre-emptive war in which a hard early blow would stun the opponent facilitating the early assump- tion of offensive action. The quick offensive gives the Israelis the initiative and allows them to push the conflict to the earlist possible conclusion. They simply lack the resources to fight long, costly wars, especially ones in which casualties are high. This has re-inforced the desire to pre-empt whenever possible for such action offers the best possibility that the duration of the war will be minimized -- and the 1967 experience seems to vindicate this perspective. From the Israeli position, it can be seen that among the conditions Jerusalem would naturally seek to avoid would be those where it faced international isolation, especially from its major supporter in the West, the United States, where it was concerned about a disruption in its internal security situation, and where it feared losing the initia- tive and with it strategic depth. Some of these conditions existed in the summer of 1982, but the solution adopted by Jerusalem created difficulties for itself that it might normally have avoided. For the Palestinians, the goals and strategic interests are much different. Their major concern is simply to keep the ball in play -- to keep the issue of Palestine open, to keep the world community aware of it, and to work to the disadvantage of Israel whenever possible. Their ultimate goal, the achievement of a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel, is increasingly recognized by those Palestinian leaders with sufficient rationality to apply objective analysis as simply impossible. The objective has become, therefore, to create the conditions for cutting as good a deal as possible. Although the PLO has continued to use terror, despite Arafat's announcement in 1974, and although it is clearly a major player in the international terror network, the PLO did attempt to downplay its use of this tactic in the late 1970s. The new strategy adopted was to whittle away at the Israelis in the international political arena. In 1974, Yasir Arafat became the only representative without a country to address the UN General Assembly which shortly thereafter, on November 23, 1974, granted the PLO observer status.43 Apparently liking this format, the PLO and its Arab supporters have since influenced the General Assembly to pass numerous resolutions condemning the Israelis and calling for a settlement of the Palestinian issue. These efforts have included the controversial 1975 vote in which the UNGA labeled Zionism "a form of racism". The United States has long attempted to minimize the impact and influence of the PLO. During the days before the 1967 war, Presidential National Security Advisor Walt Rostow noted that the US and Israel had attempted to block recogni- tion of the PLO hoping that "it would die from lack of support."44 However, during the Hostage Crisis with Iran in 1979, Washington, at one time, used the good offices of the PLO in one of its efforts to secure the release of the American captives.45 Former American Ambassador to Syria, Talcott Seelye, reported that during a trip to Beirut in 1976 the PLO provided for his security and that of his family as well as passing information that enhanced the security of the US embassy.46 Thus by 1982, not only had the PLO achieved a considerable degree of international recognition under the leadership of Arafat, it had also succeeded in being recognized diplomatically by more countries than Israel.47 The strategy of the PLO was in transition in the early 1980s. Although no senior PLO official had publicly acknowledged that the organization was prepared to recognize Israel's right to exist, a long stated American precondition for dealing with the organization, there were clearly cir- cles within the PLO leadership that were thinking along those lines. But as the murder of PLO moderate Issam Saratwi indicated in the Spring of 1983, these can often be unhealthy thoughts. SUMMARY There are three major points that this discussion has attempted to make. First, the major conflict in the Arab-Israeli dimension of Middle Eastern politics is that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The other factors that play in this issue, the support and involvement of the other Arab states, the interests of the two Superpowers, and the concerns of the world at large, are all peripheral to this central kernel. Second, the two sides have each established a political process that creates for itself a sort of structural stalemate. The key issues are very difficult for either party to address because the nature of each political regime gives a veto power to those minority groups having extreme views. Although there is some evidence that this is currently changing, it has been a condition that has aborted numerous efforts from various sources to influence a settlement. Finally, the Arab-Israeli wars seem to have come full circle. The first half of the first war was a clash between the two communities of Mandatory Palestine -- essentially a civil war. In 1982, the next generation continued the clash that had started with the 1947 UN partition vote. CHAPTER 2 ENDNOTES 1. Nahun Goldmann, "Zionist Ideology and the Reality of Israel", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 57, no. 1, Fall 1978, p. 74. 2. See M. Thomas Davis, "Conflict in the Middle East", chapter in William J. Taylor and Steven A. Maaranen, The Future of Conflict in the 1980s (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1982), pp. 237-259. 3. Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 224. 4. See James Kelly, "A General Loses His Case", Time, 4 February 1985, pp. 64-66. 5. See "Debating the Military Option", Time, 10 December 1984, p. 34. 6. That the Palestinian issue is central to a Middle Eastern peace can be drawn either directly or by implication from numerous sources. See for example, George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1982), pp. 466-467; Walid Khalidi, "Thinking the Unthinkable", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 698; American Friends Service Committee, A Compassionate Peace (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), pp. 39-40; and Talcott W. Seelye, "Can the PLO Be Brought to the Negotiating Table", Arab-American Affairs, No. 1, Summer 1982, p. 76. 7. See Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 7th ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1960), pp. 117-118. 8. Safran, pp. 10-11. 9. See Don Peretz, The Middle East Today, 3d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978), pp. 57-60. 10. For an analysis of the events after World War I and the American role in them, see M. Thomas Davis, "The King-Crane Commission and the American Abandonment of Self-Determina- tion", Arab-American Affairs, No. 9, Summer 1984, pp. 55-66. 11. Don Peretz, The Middle East Today, 3d ed. (New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston, 1978), pp. 106-108. 12. Ibid., p. 278-280. 13. Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1976), pp. 43-47. 14. Ibid., p. 56. 15. Interview with Professor Walid Khalidi of Harvard University, 5 March 1980. 16. Khouri, p. 59. 17. Safran, p. 47. 18. Khouri, pp. 69-70, and Safran, pp. 45-46. 19. Khouri, p. 70. 20. Khouri, pp. 77-79, and Safran pp. 56-57. 21. Safran, pp. 58-59. 22. Khouri, p. 83. 23. Safran, p. 59. 24. Khouri, pp. 95-98. 25. Ibid., p. 357. 26. Ibid., pp. 100-101. 27. See Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 1982), pp. 459-460. Sadat was very sensitive to the perception of Arab military inability. See also Anwar El-Sadat, In Search of Identity (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 181-186. 28. See Khouri, pp. 123-124; Khalidi interview 5 March 1980. 29. Safran, p. 62. 30. Interview with Professor Walid Khalidi, 13 February 1980. 31. Although numerous studies with both a political and military focus exist on the 1956 Suez Crisis, a very interesting recent work which draws heavily on newly de- classified American and United Nations sources is Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez (New York: The Linden Press, 1981). 32. Neff's second book on the Arab-Israeli wars covering the 1967 conflict retains his basic theme that the Israelis have done much to excite Arab passions against them through their policy of disproportional response to guerrilla raids, and inflexible reaction to diplomatic overtures. See Donald Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 58 (Hereafter cited as Neff, Jerusalem). 33. Ibid., p. 194. 34. Safran, p. 429. 35. Sadat, pp. 184-186, and Khouri, pp. 361-370. 36. This description of the workings and its historical underpinnings of the Israeli Government comes from Don Peretz, The Government and Politics of Israel (Boulder, Colorado: The Westview Press, 1979), pp. 141-169; and Safran, pp. 126-160. 37. Ibid. 38. See Samih K. Farsoun, "The Palestinians, The PLO and US Foreign Policy", Arab-American Affairs, No. 1, Summer 1982, pp. 81-94. 39. Interview with Khalidi, 2 April 1980; also see Farsoun, p. 85. 40. The text of this 1969 agreement known as the "Cairo Agreement" is contained in Walid Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Center for International Affairs, 1979), pp. 185-187. 41. Dan Bavly and Eliahu Salpeter, Fire in Beirut (New York: Stein and Day Publishing, 1984), p. 28. 42. In addition to its well known aid to such Central American countries as Guatemala, the Israelis have also recently been on a campaign to garner American support in such unlikely places as the American Evangelical movement. At Prime Minister Begin's insistence, the 1980 winner of the Vladimir Jabotinsky Award was Reverend Jerry Fallwell of the politically active Moral Majority. In addition, Begin invited Reverend Bailey Smith, who created a storm of protest by declaring that "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew", for a visit to Israel. See for example, David K. Shipler, "Israel is Cultivating Unlikely New Friends", The New York Times, 1 December 1981, p. A2. 43. Khouri, p. 377. 44. Neff, Jerusalem, p. 173. 45. Bavly and Salpeter, p. 28. 46. Talcott W. Seelye, "Can the PLO Be Brought To The Negotiating Table", Arab-American Affairs, No.1, Summer 1982, pp. 75-80. 47. Farsoun, p. 92. CHAPTER 3 "I know that whoever sets his foot in Lebanon has sunk into the Lebanon swamp."1 Yizhak Rabin, 1985 Like all of the modern Middle Eastern states, Lebanon is a creation not an evolution. Its present borders reflect neither natural nor national boundartes, but simply the whims of the French administration assigned to control it following the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. But in other ways, Lebanon is a state unlike many others. It has a culture and history that have given it a close link to the West that is uncommon for other Arab states. That link has been both its blessing and its curse. In 1649, the Ottoman Sultan who ruled Lebanon as one of his provinces, granted to King Louis XIV of France the privilege of "adopting" the Maronite Christian community of the small area of Mount Lebanon (see Map 1). These Maronite Christians had previously established a relationship with the Pope and were already quite familiar with western ideas and thought. With this connection, the Maronites hoped to Click here to view image cultivate a patron who would protect them from absorption into the great Muslim sea that existed all around them. It was natural that the Ottoman Sultan would allow such an association. The Ottomans ruled a far-flung and multi-national empire very loosely, and had it organized primarily along religious lines known as millets. Giving this small Christian community a link to other Christians was hardly something that they would have considered unusual. Nonetheless, there were enormous implications. The Maronite community of Mount Lebanon grew prosperous and quite well educated. By 1861 it had established an early majlis, or parliament, that was elected on the basis of religious representation. Thus, the Maronites accepted the idea of democracy, and along with it the principle that representation in the elective ruling establishment would be based on religion. This was a wedding of western thought with the normal organization of the intricate Ottoman governmental system. The confessional system of Lebanon was born.2 As Lebanon entered the twentieth century, its Maronite community was clearly dominant. Its members considered themselves to be "from" but not "of" the Middle East and were as comfortable with French as Arabic. Many were better versed in French literature than that of their native language. As one scholar has described it: Their spiritual and cultural Meccas were Rome and Paris, respectively. Their mythology stressed their non-Arab or Pre-Arab ancestry. To these Maronites, the French-protected Grand Liban of which they were at once the core, linchpin, raison d'etre, and chief beneficiary, was an act of historic justice. It was tantamount to the lifting of a putative Moslem seige laid as early as the 7th century with the advent of Islam.3 Primarily because of this French connection, France was given the Mandate for Lebanon and Syria by the Paris Peace Conference which allocated the former territories of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Although the area was supposed to be ruled as separate parts of one political entity, the French immediately took steps to divide Lebanon from Syria enlarging considerably the territory of the former. This action, taken in part because the French desired to weaken the position of the Muslims of western Syria while simultaneously ensuring that the Christians would require continued French protection, formed the basis for modern Lebanon. The final dimensions of the country included Mount Lebanon, the traditional Maronite enclave, as well as the Bekaa Valley, and the anti-Lebanon, the mountain range to the east before one descends to Damascus, the Syrian capital. In 1919, the French established the first native Lebanese government when the old majlis was restored. When this was replaced by a newly elected council, the system of religious representation was restored, thus the confessional practices of the previous century were perpetuated. This was codified in a constitution written in 1926 that stated how the seats in the executive, legislative, and civil services were to be equitably distributed among the major confessional groups (see Map 2). Unwilling to allow things to run their natural course, however, the French controlled the actual distributions and avoided holding a regular census. One was held in 1922, and a second with certain procedural questions, in 1932. Based on the 1932 census, the Christians were declared to be the majority sect, which they unquestionably were, at the time, and were granted the preponderance of political and administrative power -- a conclusion quite satisfactory to the French.4 There has never been another census conducted in Lebanon. When France fell in 1940, it meant the effective end of French rule in Lebanon and Syria. Urged by the British, who still controlled Palestine to the south, two Lebanese leaders, Bishara Khoury and a Pan Arabist Sunni Muslim, Riyad Solh, established the National Pact of 1943 paving the Click here to view image way for a stable Lebanese government and independence from France. The National Pact called for the division of political power in Lebanon along confessional lines. In exchange for a Muslim pledge to drop demands for participation in a greater Arab union, Lebanese Christians agreed to renounce Western protection and limit their association with the French. In addition, the former constitutional provisions for the equitable distribution of power were slightly redefined. In terms of high office, it was agreed that the President of Lebanon, the most powerful national position, would always be a Maronite Christian while the Prime Minister would be a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the House a Shiite. The House itself would be divided so that there would be six Christian representatives for every five Muslims. Since the President was directly elected by the Parliament, therefore only indirectly elected by the people, the allocation of the principle governmental positions would be preserved so long as the distribution of House seats remained unchanged. This system of Parliamentary distribu- tion explains why the number of seats have always been divisible by eleven: to allow the maintenance of the specified 6:5 ratio. Certain factors began to upset the delicate balance in Lebanon shortly after the establishment of the National Pact. These have been magnified through the intervening years. First, the 1948 war created a significant influx of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon, a demographic change that added to the numbers of Muslims in the country. Second, during the mid-1950s, the heydey of Arab Nationalism, the Pan-Arab idea that the Muslims had agreed to renounce in 1943 became, once again, the rage of Arab intellectual circles. This put pressure on the political system and led to the Crisis of 1958 in which the United States first landed Marines in Beirut. Third, the second influx of Palestinians in 1970, following the war in Jordan in which King Hussein expelled the PLO, added to the Muslim population. Finally, the fact that the Christians were the more educated, prosperous, and privileged segment of the society meant that they were experiencing the lowest birth-rate. Therefore, in addition to the political factors which were serving to upset the confessional balance, the course of nature was also weighing heavily against the peaceful perpetuation of the Lebanese system. Following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinians in Lebanon launched a new guerrilla campaign against Israel which shortly created a rising spiral of destruction as the Israelis retaliated with increasing strength. Major segments of Lebanese society began to take sides with certain Christians and others of the political right objecting to the damage being caused by the Palestinian actions, while a broader Muslim-dominated left supported continued confrontation. The relations between the Lebanese confessional groups began to deteriorate as a result and, on 13 April 1975, a group of prominent Lebanese Christians of the Phalange Party, the most powerful of the Maronite political organizations, was attacked by an unknown number of assailants firing from a passing car. One prominent Phalangist was killed and several others seriously wounded. Later in the day, the Phalangist retaliated killing 28 Palestinians on a bus passing through the same neighborhood. This was the Sarajevo of Lebanon and the country plunged into a period of deadly civil war. By mid-1976, a coalition of the National Front, a leftist-Muslim alliance, and the Palestinians, under Arafat and the PLO, had gained the upper hand. Then, in one of the surprising moves of the decade, the Syrian Army entered the war on the side of the Christians saving them from what appeared to be certain destruction. Evidently fearing that the success of the Muslim left could lead to a new radicalized Lebanon which would serve as a lightening rod for Israeli action, and concerned that this could drag it into a war under adverse circumstances, Damascus decided to intervene to support the status quo. Later, when it appeared that the Phalange and its allies were about to fatally cripple the PLO and the Muslims, the Syrians switched sides. By 1977 the Syrian occupation had taken on a certain legitimacy as Saudi pressure forced Damascus to limit the extent of its control over Lebanon which by then had become quite extensive. The Arab League stepped in and designated the Syrian Army in Lebanon as the" Arab Deterrent Force" and the context of the 1969 Cairo Agreement was re-activated giving the PLO considerable license. For the Lebanese, the country became more divided than ever as the people of Beirut separated themselves into Christian and Muslim enclaves, and the Maronites expanded the small port of Junieh north of Beirut in an effort to give themselves an economic and transportation system independent of the rest of Lebanon. During this period, Israel began to provide consider- able support to the Maronite community, particularly the Phalange Party of Pierre Gemayel. By the summer of 1982, they were very closely allied in a joint effort to control the activities and influence of the PLO.5 Tensions continued along the Lebanese border between Israel and the PLO and in March 1978 the Israelis invaded Lebanon up to the Litani River following a PLO terrorist attack. Under American pressure, Israel withdrew and was replaced by the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL). The Israelis also left behind a renegade Lebanese Major named Saad Haddad whose small force they equipped and sustained to create a second buffer for themselves as well as a check on the effectiveness of UNIFIL (see Map 3). Some argued that Haddad also gave Israel a built in excuse to re-cross the border to support their little ally whenever they deemed it necessary. The situation calmed somewhat, or at least moved off center stage of Middle Eastern politics, during 1979 and 1980 when the attention of the Israelis and United States focused on the Camp David Agreement and the subsequent Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. During the early stages of the treaty, and the Palestinian Autonomy Talks which followed it, all major actors throughout the region slowed the pace of their normal activities while they attempted to determine the nature of the changes occurring. This created a lull in the Lebanon which the factions used to try and strengthen their positions relative to each other. During this period, the Israeli support of the Phalangist Party, Click here to view image particularly in the military arena, reached new heights. The Israelis had created for themselves a powerful ally capable of exercising considerable influence in the chaotic world of Lebanese politics. 1981: SETTING THE STAGE During 1981, the picture began to change for numerous reasons. First, the Israeli government became considerably more hard-line and doctrinaire in terms of the nationalistic tendencies of Prime Minister Begin. The two important cabinet officers who had served as a check on Begin during his first government, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, had both resigned in protest by late 1980. Dayan was replaced by Begin's old political colleague Yitzhak Shamir, who as a member of the Knesset had opposed the Camp David Agreement, while Begin followed the tradition of Ben Gurion and assumed the Defense Post himself. This removed men from office who were considered to be key obstacles to adventurous Israeli actions in the immediate region.6 Second, and related to the first, the Reagan admini- stration assumed office in the United States. Because of his campaign rhetoric, Reagan was considered to be the most pro-Israeli President since Harry Truman. Spurred by his foreign policy advisor, Richard Allen, Reagan had emphasized his belief that Israel was a strategic asset in addition to being an ally of the United States. He indicated little interest in the Palestinian issue. In reference to the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Arab territories, a major program being fostered by the Begin government, Reagan broke with the Carter Administration and previous US policy by stating that the settlements in his view were "not illegal" and were allowed by the provisions of UN Resolution 242.7 This was the kind of talk Begin wanted to hear. It signaled to him that the rough days with Carter were coming to an end and that Washington would soon reveal a new set of concerns -- which it did. Third, the Syrians and PLO became more active in Lebanon. Concerned about the growing strength of the Phalangist and other Christian groups, Syria launched several military actions in the Spring of 1981 against Christian controlled areas, particularly the town of Zahle. Responding to requests from his Lebanese Allies for help, Begin used the IAF to relieve the pressure on the town and in the process downed two Syrian helicopters. The Syrians responded by deploying SAM-6 missile batteries into the Bekaa valley expanding their air defense umbrella. Seeing this as a military threat, Begin threatened to destroy the missile batteries unless they were withdrawn. Only pressure from Washington prevented Israeli action.8 During this same period, the PLO became more active in its portions of Lebanon further complicating the problem. In response, President Reagan sent Ambassador Philip Habib, a retired diplomat, to the Middle East in an effort to find a solution to end the growing confrontation.9 Facing an election in late June, Prime Minister Begin was in no mood to compromise; nonetheless, Habib's efforts succeeded in defusing the situation. But the respite was short lived. On 7 June 1981, Begin's Air Force destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor outside Iraq claiming that it was being prepared for the construction of nuclear weapons for use against Israel. This created a considerable interna- tional controversy which left the United States and Israel on different sides in the ensuing UN debate.10 In July, the situation heated up again when PLO forces in Southern Lebanon launched an artillery barrage against Israeli urban areas in the northern Galilee and the Metulla finger. Israel responded with a devastating attack on Beirut killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians. This retaliatory attack occurred while President Reagan was attending a summit conference of western powers in Canada. When the Europeans issued a strong denunciation of the Israeli action, the President was forced to take steps expressing American displeasure and he further delayed the delivery of a set of F-16 fighters promised to Jerusalem. By late July, Ambassador Habib had negotiated an agreement between Israel and the PLO establishing a truce in southern Lebanon. Although no paper was actually signed, and the American link with the PLO was handled through Lebanese intermediaries, a cease-fire went into effect and the shelling came to an end. Shortly afterwards, there were cries from various circles in Israel that Begin had added to the PLO's growing stature by indirectly negotiating with it. Indeed, one month later, Arafat made a visit to Japan in which he received a welcome on par with those normally afforded to visting heads of state.11 Through the rest of the year, however, the cease-fire held. Still, there remained the possibility for trouble. Clearly, Israel and the PLO (and the United States for that matter) had differing ideas on what the terms of the cease- fire actually were -- differences which became more significant as the year wore on. The Israelis claimed that the cease-fire was total, binding the PLO to avoid any attacks against any Jews anywhere. The PLO claimed that the cease fire only applied to attacks directly across the Lebanese border, while the United States broadened this somewhat applying it to the flank areas thereby including, for example, incursions into northern Israel from the sea. This perceptual and legalistic difference was to have major consequences in the Spring of 1982.12 The last significant occurrence of 1981, setting the stage for 1982, was the appointment of a new Israeli cabinet following Begin's unexpected re-election. On 4 August, Begin acquiesced to considerable pressure and appointed as the Defense Minister former General Ariel Sharon. Sharon had served during the first Begin government as Agricultural Minister. In that position, he had been the driving force behind the settlements program that Washington had found so troublesome. He had long coveted the Defense portfolio, but had been denied it because of the perception in Israel that he was an ultra hawk with tendencies towards extreme action. As one close observer commented, "Begin will do what must be done; Sharon will do ten times what must be done."13 Although he had been the commander of the Irgun during the pre-state period, Begin was not a military man and had little military training. He was visibly awed by Israel's senior military officers and according to one source, "felt inferior in their company."14 Because of Sharon's military reputation, Begin was strongly disposed to defer to his judgment on matters of security -- but there was also a personal component. Not only was Sharon's grandmother the midwife who had delivered Begin, but the general's grandfather and the Prime Minister's father had been best friends.15 Sharon had used these personal connections to advantage during his tenure as the Minister of Agriculture. Champion- ing the cause of the more fervent settlements advocates, Sharon pushed numerous settlement projects through the cabinet by arguing that they were essential to security. To create "facts on the ground" during the Sinai negotiations with Egypt, Sharon had even proposed that Jerusalem construct dummy settlements. His opponent in many of these cabinet debates, Begin's first Defense Minister, Ezer Weizman, wrote: "Sharon always had the knack of presenting his views in such a manner that made them acceptable to most -- if not all -- of the cabinet members. His fingers ran up and down the maps, which many of the ministers were incapable of understanding. There were occasions when I suspected that the markings on Sharon's maps were not totally accurate. In any case, not one of the ministers was prepared to concede that he had not the faintest idea what it was all about."16 In Weizman's opinion, whenever Sharon used the word "security" to describe some settlement or road junction, his words "were taken as divine gospel."17 As Defense Minister, Sharon quickly began to plan for a war to wipe out the PLO militarily rather than making further efforts to deal with it either politically or diplomatically. The Chief of Staff of the IDF, LTG Rafael Eitan, who had assumed his post in April 1978 after "Operation Litani", shared Sharon's feelings. Therefore, shortly after the July 1981 cease fire in Lebanon, the Israeli government began planning to invade Lebanon.18 By January, three plans of varying scope existed for waging a potential war against the PLO.19 During the next few months, Sharon became quite talka- tive about his ideas for dealing with the PLO. A strategy known as the "Sharon Plan" was described in the press explaining how the Defense Minister planned to drive the PLO from Lebanon and back into Jordan where
