Episode 176 Transcript: Eyes on Lebanon

Transcript of today's episode looking at the possibility of war in Lebanon

A bunch of years ago I stayed in Israel’s most northern city, called Metullah. It’s a little town of about 1,500 people that has a unique place in Israeli geography: it’s surrounded on three sides by Lebanon. The distance from my hotel room to the border was about 1,300 feet. You can walk right up to the border fence, which is pretty cool, and from the hills you can see deep into Lebanon. But it’s also kind of unnerving because what you are looking at is less Lebanon and instead Hezbollah country — an entire region controlled by the most powerful terrorist organization in the world. 

Metullah these days is a ghost town, along with so many other Israeli communities along the northern border. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced as Israel and Hezbollah trade fire across the line. It started as a low-level conflict immediately after October 7, as Hezbollah tested Israel’s ability to defend itself. In recent weeks the fighting has intensified. Hezbollah and Israel are striking further into each others’ territory, with more casualties and many people killed. Israel has been pulling reservists out of Gaza to rush them up north. A full-scale war may yet break out, with an army just as fanatical as Hamas and exponentially more powerful. 

Lebanon holds a particular place in the Israeli psyche. Israel has fought two wars there: brutal, nasty affairs first against Palestinian terrorists and then against Hezbollah. Both wars exposed the limits of Israeli military power. Lebanon is where Israel first encountered some of the urban warfare and guerrilla tactics that we now recognize so well: terrorists embedded amongst civilians, using human shields, suicide bombers, IEDs, and the like. It’s where Israel learned that giving up territory means seeing it filled in with terrorists. And it’s where Israel’s image at home, abroad, and amongst Jews, suffered in the wake of a horrific massacre of Lebanese civilians. Not for nothing is Israel’s experience in Lebanon known as its “Vietnam War.”

A couple months ago I covered the background of Hezbollah in Episode 160. Today it’s worth taking a brief look at the history of Israel’s involvement in Lebanon, how it got tangled up first with the Palestinian cause and then with Iran’s determination to destroy the Jewish State. Generations of Israelis have fought in Lebanon since the late 1970s. The question is whether another is set to go in now, too.

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Let’s get to today’s episode on Lebanon and Israel. I’m your host Jason Harris and this is Jew Oughta Know.

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Lebanon is a small but immensely complex country along Israel’s northern border. It has a fascinating and rich history stretching back thousands of years. Its capital city, Beirut, was once one of the cultural crown jewels of the Mediterranean, famous for its literature, cinema, painting, and music, all the way into the twentieth century.

For much of its recent history Lebanon was majority Christian, not Muslim. It’s probably the most religiously- and ethnically-diverse place in the Middle East. This hasn’t resulted in harmony but conflict. Different sects often live in their own distinct towns and neighborhoods, and compete for scarce resources and political power, sometimes violently. Because there is so much tension, no population census has been conducted in more than 90 years. Lebanon is now probably slightly majority Muslim. 

Then you add in huge influxes of refugees, such as the Palestinians, overlapping foreign occupations from both Israel and Syria, entrenched terrorist groups, a 15 year-long civil war in the 1970s and 80s, and, lately, one of the world’s worst economic crises and the state-within-a-state that is Hezbollah, which really means Iran. Muslims assassinate Christian leaders, Christians massacre Muslims, Palestinians attack Israel, Israel bombs Beirut — everyone piles in to this little country that has by now been devastated by decades of strife. They haven’t had a president in more than a year because no one can muster the necessary parliamentary majority. The country is desperately trying to get back on its feet: politically, economically, financially, socially. A war with Israel could wreck all that. But as we’ll see, the Lebanese government isn’t in control. 

So let’s take a look at Israel’s past involvement with Lebanon. This history is worth knowing as Israel considers whether or not to invade southern Lebanon once again.

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Israel has invaded Lebanon four times, fought two wars, and carried out dozens of counterterrorist raids. The first invasion was during the War of Independence in 1948, when Lebanon and the other Arab states attacked Israel. When the war ended in 1949, Israel gave back to Lebanon the territory it took during the war. For the next thirty years or so, things were fairly quiet along the border. Lebanon did not participate in the 1967 Six Day War or the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

But what did happen in Lebanon was a huge influx of Palestinian refugees that upset the majority-Christian population, which worried about being overtaken by Muslims. After 1948 around 100,000 Palestinians ended up in Lebanon, mostly living in refugee camps. They were subjected to severe discriminatory laws, which is still the case today. Palestinians are mostly denied Lebanese citizenship, not allowed to own property, and banned from various types of jobs like medicine and law. They are kept impoverished and disenfranchised. Yet the Palestinian population tripled after more refugees came following the Six Day War.

Those were the refugees. Then came the terrorists. In 1970 there was a civil war in Jordan between the government and the Palestine Liberation Organization — the PLO, led by arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat. I talked about this back in Episode 156. The end result is that Arafat and the PLO fled Jordan for Lebanon. They set up shop in southern Lebanon, using that area to launch attacks on Israel, while also ratcheting up conflict with the Lebanese Christians. The PLO’s presence so destabilized Lebanon that a civil war broke out there, too, in 1975. What followed was a nasty war between Christian and Muslim factions that killed around 150,000 people over the next 15 years. Thousands of Palestinians were expelled, Beirut turned into a wasteland, the Syrians occupied half the country, and Lebanon became an outpost for the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. lost hundreds of troops to suicide bombers. Point being: Lebanon was a huge mess. Then in comes Israel. 

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Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon took place in 1978. Israel had put up with years of deadly terrorist attacks from the PLO. But that year saw the Coastal Road Massacre — at the time the worst attack in Israel’s history. Palestinian terrorists boated from Lebanon to a beach south of Haifa, where they hijacked a bus, executed the riders, and tore up and down the nearby highway. 38 Israelis were murdered, including 18 children. Israel had a relatively new prime minister, Menachem Begin, and he decided it was time to push the PLO back off the border with Israel. A few days after the Coastal Road Massacre Israel invaded southern Lebanon. 

The operation was successful, forcing the PLO to retreat above the Litani River, around 12 miles from Israel’s border. Arafat for the first time agreed to a cease-fire with Israel. A few months later Israel then pulled back to its own border. Left in southern Lebanon were two organizations: a United Nations peacekeeping force, called UNIFIL, which still exists today. And a Christian militia allied with Israel, called the Southern Lebanese Army, that was intended to help Israel maintain security in southern Lebanon. Remember that this was all happening amidst the civil war. The SLA was actually a breakaway army that tried to declare southern Lebanon an independent state. Both they and the PLO attacked the UN troops. As we get into the 1980s, you’ll be shocked to learn that this whole scheme wasn’t really working out. Things were about to get a lot worse.

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Israel’s brief invasion in 1978 and the presence of the UN and the Christian Southern Lebanon Army didn’t end up stopping Palestinian terror attacks. They mostly weren’t coming from Arafat’s mainstream PLO but from splinter groups that refused to recognize the cease-fire. For Menachem Begin, this was a distinction without a difference. He was a disciple of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the early Zionist leader who held an assertive and uncompromising view of Jewish defense. Begin came from Eastern Europe, where he lost his family to the Holocaust. He looked at the Palestinians’ ability to act with impunity from southern Lebanon and saw Jewish powerlessness, fear, and Auschwitz, Israeli children spending their days and nights cowering in bomb shelters. The 1978 invasion hadn’t solved the problem. Israel had to defend itself, he insisted, even if the cost was significant.

In June, 1982, Palestinian terrorists shot Israel’s ambassador to the UK, leaving him debilitated for life. Even though he was shot by  Palestinian group that was an enemy of the PLO, for Begin the intolerable problem was the same no matter who was doing it: all the terrorists had to go. Two days later Israel invaded southern Lebanon. It was called Operation Peace for Galilee. The goal was once again to push the terrorists off the border and back into Lebanon. Begin and the government had determined that Israel would go no further than 40 kilometers into Lebanon, and had promised the United States the same. But the IDF was led by one of Israel’s most capable, successful, and ruthless commanders, Ariel Sharon, who was Minister of Defense. He blew past the 40 kilometer line…and then just kept going. Pretty quickly Israel surrounded Beirut with a massive army. This wasn’t a precision counterterrorist operation but a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. More than two hundred Israeli soldiers were killed. And as Israeli forces pounded the PLO’s positions in Beirut’s neighborhoods and the refugee camps, civilians were also killed. The international community began criticizing Israel, and Yasser Arafat started looking like a resistance hero. Sounds familiar to the war with Hamas.

But the invasion worked. Within a couple of months the PLO was defeated. Once again Arafat and his thousands of fighters cut a deal to leave. This time they headed to Tunisia in North Africa. What Israel wanted now was for the Christians to win the Lebanese civil war, push out the Syrians who were occupying half the country, stabilize the country so Israel could pull out, and then for Lebanon and Israel to make a peace treaty. Sure enough, a pro-Israel, pro-Western Christian leader named Bashir Gemayel was elected president, uniting the Christian militias and looking like he was going to pull Lebanon together. Israel put all its eggs in this one basket. Things were looking up.

Were it so easy. Gemayel was assassinated two weeks after his election. Once again, everything fell apart. It would take Israel another 18 years to leave Lebanon.

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In the chaos after Gemayel’s assassination, and with the IDF still hanging around Lebanon, Ariel Sharon wanted to clear out two Palestinian refugee camps where a couple thousand PLO terrorists remained. One camp was called Sabra, and next to it was Shatila. The plan was for the IDF to form a perimeter and then for a Christian militia to actually go in and fight the PLO. But the Christians were pissed about the assassination of their president. As the IDF watched from outside, the Christian militia spent the next two days massacring hundreds of  civilians, men women and children. Around 1,000 Palestinians were murdered. It was a horrific act of brutality. Although the IDF wasn’t involved in the actual killing, it aided and abetted the Christian militia.

The massacre at Sabra and Shatila not only brought worldwide condemnation but had a profound effect in Israel. The massacre engendered a deep introspection and feelings of guilt over what the country had gotten itself into in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of protesters demanded the resignation of both Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin. A government investigation found that the IDF wasn’t directly responsible but that Ariel Sharon bore “personal responsibility.” The report said given his deep involvement in the war and with the Christian militias, he should have known what could happen and acted to prevent it. Sharon was forced to resign. A few months later Begin resigned as well, in part over the Lebanon quagmire. Israel pulled back from Beirut.

But the IDF didn’t leave Lebanon for another 18 years. With the PLO gone other Islamic terrorist groups filled in, especially the radical group backed by Iran called The Party of God, or Hezbollah. Over the next few years Israel gradually pulled back from territory in Lebanon after rounds of vicious fighting that claimed hundreds of Israeli soldiers. By 1985 the IDF had withdrawn to a security zone several miles into southern Lebanon, in order to protect Israel’s northern border. There the army sat for years, fending off constant attacks. Suicide bombings became a regular and deadly occurrence. Much like today’s fighting in Gaza, it was a bitter affair with civilian casualties and a blow to Israel’s international image. For the first time since 1967, America’s Jews started to object to Israel’s actions, distancing themselves in protest of what was seen as a Vietnam War-style debacle.  

Finally, in the year 2000, Israel unilaterally pulled out of Lebanon, retreating back to its side of the border having never secured a peace deal with Lebanon. Eighteen years of war had left a bitter taste in Israelis’ mouths, none more so than amongst the soldiers who had fought it. What was left was a lasting guilt over Sabra and Shatila, a looming anger at the country’s political leaders, and the realization that Israel’s military power had found a limit. For the first time Israel hadn’t been able to defeat its enemies.

Six years later Israel would go right back in.

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Once Israel left southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah swarmed in. They were becoming the most powerful force in Lebanon, not just militarily but with their own political party that dominated politics. The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force, were helpless to prevent Hezbollah operating in southern Lebanon, right up against the border with Israel. Hezbollah carried out hundreds of attacks on Israel, killing and wounding dozens of Israeli civilians.

In 2006 Hezbollah launched a large attack on the border. They fired rockets at several towns and then ambushed an Israeli army patrol along the border. They killed three soldiers and took two as hostages into Lebanon. An Israeli rescue operation failed, killing five more soldiers. Once again the Israeli government decided the terrorist threat was no longer tolerable. Israel invaded in July. They not only attacked Hezbollah but Lebanese infrastructure targets as well, including the runway at Beirut’s international airport. Since Hezbollah’s ministers served in government, Israel held Lebanon partially responsible for the group’s actions. Just like Gaza, Hezbollah embedded itself amongst civilians, using houses, buildings, and roads for its military activities. 

The war lasted about a month, and it was rough. 120 Israeli soldiers were killed, along with 44 civilians, and perhaps half a million Israelis were temporarily displaced from their communities along the border. Around 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed and maybe a million temporarily displaced. 

What followed was a cease-fire and UN Resolution 1701. The Resolution demanded three things. One, that Israel completely withdraw from Lebanon. Two, that Hezbollah disarm. And three, that both the Lebanese army and UNIFIL operate in southern Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and prevent terrorist groups from attacking Israel. 

Guess which one of those three things actually happened? Israel left Lebanon and got nothing in return. The UN and Lebanon refused to even try to disarm Hezbollah, and were anyway powerless to prevent the terrorists from running rampant. Hezbollah immediately violated the cease-fire, launching dozens of artillery strikes and rockets inside Israel. 

So what did Israel have to show for what became known as the Second Lebanon War? Israelis felt like they lost 120 soldiers for nothing — they invaded Lebanon, pulled out, and Hezbollah moved right in. The terrorists grew in size, power, and strength. The UN couldn’t be relied on to enforce their own resolution. Once again anger turned on the government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was blamed for a mismanaged war and a bungled political process. Fathers and now their sons had fought and died in Lebanon and yet the terrorists remained mere feet from Israel’s border. 

And so the clashes continued. Hezbollah attacks and Israeli retaliation. A low-level but simmering and deadly conflict that continues to this day, and then was turbo-charged by October 7. Israel is now eyeing yet another invasion and a third war. But this war would be different. It would be much deadlier.

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War with Hezbollah could very well be an order of magnitude worse than with Hamas. Israel’s border with Gaza is around 35 miles; with Lebanon it’s around 80. Gaza is flat, southern Lebanon mountainous, making it much harder to root out terrorists and their infrastructure. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is deeply embedded in civilian life in order to use them as human shields. Any war is likely to incur high civilian casualties. Hamas has fired around 9,000 rockets at Israel since October 7. Hezbollah probably has around 150,000, and these are much more sophisticated than what Hamas has. Hezbollah has precision-guided missiles that can strike anywhere in Israel. It’s a proper army with a huge amount of equipment, weapons, and infrastructure all over southern Lebanon. Unlike Gaza, it has a land supply route directly to Iran through Syria. And Hezbollah is battle-experienced, having fought for more than a decade in Syria’s civil war. So don’t think of Hezbollah as a middling terrorist group but an advanced military with quality weapons. It would be a very nasty war.

So here again we have similar dilemmas to Hamas and Gaza. Israel cannot allow terrorists to attack with impunity. But a war would also be disastrous. So what are the options?

The imperative right now is to push Hezbollah back away from the border so that Israelis can return to their communities without worrying about an October 7 attack. The idea is like back in 1978 with the PLO — get the terrorists to the other side of the Litani River, some dozen miles or so beyond Israel. This doesn’t eliminate Hezbollah — their missiles and rockets can still hit Israel. But it gets their fighters away from the border. Without that, then instead of a southern Lebanon security zone, northern Israel serves that function. All those cities and kibbutzim and national parks become uninhabited. 

So the choices are a diplomatic deal to get Hezbollah back over the Litani River, or a military effort to do the same. There is a diplomatic effort behind the scenes but it doesn’t seem to be gaining much ground. As we’ve seen, Hezbollah has defied previous diplomatic efforts, ignored UN resolutions and cease-fires, and the regular Lebanese army has been powerless to stop them. That doesn’t put much hope for a current deal. Even if Hezbollah agrees to withdraw to the Litani River, there’s no way to stop them from just creeping back down south.  

Yet no one wants a full-scale war. Lebanon is terrified. Already muddling through economic and financial disaster, a brutal war with Israel would likely push Lebanon into the failed state category. Iran doesn’t want a war, either. Remember that Iran is building nuclear weapons and at all costs wants to keep Israel from bombing those sites. Hezbollah is their insurance. The understanding is that if Israel bombs the nuclear sites, Iran will unleash Hezbollah on Israel. But if Israel and the terrorists are already fighting, Iran will have lost its deterrent and Israel might very well destroy the nuclear program. And Hezbollah, too, doesn’t want a huge war because that would devastate their army. 

Yet if Hezbollah won’t stop attacking Israel, and there is no workable diplomatic deal, then Israel is as usual left with only bad options. So the talk these days seems to be coalescing around the notion that Israel is, at some point, going to have to fight it out. The reservists pulled out of Gaza are being redeployed to the northern border. Israel is retaliating hard against Hezbollah’s attacks. The situation is very tense. We’ll see what happens.

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© Jason Harris 2024