In the wake of rising tensions and an Israeli assault that has so far claimed hundreds of lives, Lebanonese people have been fleeing the country’s southern in the hundreds.
Their anxiety, echoed by several spectators, is that Israel will follow the attacks with something that has the ability to have far worse effects: a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
From the standpoint of the Israeli government, the justification for such a move is that a floor rude may be its best chance to push Hezbollah fighters out of the Litani River in the middle of the nation.
This would help Israel reach its war effort, which would allow the estimated 60 000 people of northern Israel to return to their homes.
Irrespective of purpose, a floor invasion and possible job is more than crazy speculation. For this reason, Israel has deployed thousands of soldiers close to the Lebanon boundary on standby. Nor is such a shift without precedence.
As a professor of Palestinian story, I know Israel and Lebanon have been here before. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in the middle of the author’s legal battle, imposing a battle on the investment Beirut. The outcomes had a disastrous impact on the entire area.
The job of Lebanon caused a delicate country to become a permanent source of political and economic chaos, as well as Hezbollah, the extremely organization that currently threatens northern Israel.
Shelter and armed weight
The Israeli war of Lebanon in June 1982 had its origins in the Palestinian–Israeli turmoil, much as the battle between Hezbollah and Israel does now.
The development of the state of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the Nakba, or” catastrophe”, for the Palestinians. More than 750, 000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in the harsh birth pangs of a Jewish state on territory inhabited by Muslim communities with strong ties to villages, among others.
Some migrants entered Lebanon, where in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization was born. Over 20 000 Lebanese fighters were constantly preparing for assaults on Israel from Lebanese ground by the middle of the 1970s.
By 1982, Lebanon was seven years into its legal war, and Lebanese Christians and Arab Muslims were at odds with one another. Ariel Sharon, the next president of Israel, launched Operation Peace for Galilee on June 6, 1982, and invaded Lebanon with the intention of bringing down the PLO.
More than 40, 000 Israeli soldiers and hundreds of vehicles entered Lebanon from three locations: from Beirut, Beirut, and the Arab refugee camps, via land, water, or Sidon, or by air.
For two decades, Beirut was under siege, with water and electricity cut off. As a result of the big assault and lack of access to basic requirements, an estimated 19, 000 Syrian, Palestinian and Israeli civilians and soldiers died, of which 5, 500 were citizens from West Beirut.
The Syrian government appealed to the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom for support. These nations established the global peace power, which was set up to assist the Syrian military, flee PLO fighters, and restore peace in Lebanon.
By August 1982, the global power had safely evacuated PLO soldiers and begun ejecting Lebanon. They were called up, but, as crime flared.
More than 2, 000 Israeli civilians were killed when the Christian Phalangist army retreated from Sabra and Shatila after President-elect Bashir Gemayel was killed on September 14, 1982.
The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, which was established after by the Israeli government, came to the conclusion that Israel had a direct role in the murders.
The beginning of Hezbollah
All of this record is still important to the region’s current circumstances. Hezbollah was born out of Israel’s war and occupation of Lebanon, its battle on Beirut, and the subsequent murders that followed.
It was Israel’s war that piqued the interest of the marginalized Islamist community in the south of Lebanon, which had long been a means of mobilization for the region’s sectarian elite. In a 2006 meeting, Ehud Barak, the original Israeli Defense Minister and Prime Minister, stated that” We were the ones who founded Hezbollah.”
Israel’s war also soured Lebanon’s ties with the West. Some Muslims in Lebanon and Palestine thought the global organization, particularly the United States, to be a disappointment and even an accomplice of Israel.
From 1982 eastward, Americans and another Westerners became a target. More than 80 Americans and Europeans were taken prisoner by Hezbollah soldiers in the following ten years. Some were tortured for decades, people died in captivity.
And on October 23, 1983, a terrorist attack targeted the British camp in Beirut, killing over 300 persons, including 220 Marines, 18 seamen and three men. Minutes afterwards, a subsequent suicide attack killed 58 European troops.
Some of its associates are believed to be those who actually founded Hezbollah in February 1985, and some of the Islamic Jihad claimed role for the two problems.
Aiding Hezbollah selection
Israel’s 1982 conquest of Lebanon failed to help it stop southern Lebanon’s strikes on Israel. If everything, it had the opposite effect, causing many Syrian to rebel against Israel and creating the conditions for Hezbollah to attract.
Israel retreated from Beirut in August 1982, but it remained in southern Lebanon until 2000. During that time, it unlawfully detained numerous Palestinian who were suspected of resisting the Jewish activity. Some were held without claims in impolite conditions, while others were unlawfully brought into Israel.
With such a landscape, Hezbollah’s validity in the eye of many Palestinian grew – as did its help. The Syrian civil war ended in 1989, and this was in stark contrast to the agreement that asserted Lebanon’s right to resist the Jewish occupation of the south.
Hezbollah interpreted this section as a justification for its armed struggle against activity.
Hezbollah had to reevaluate its position after the job ended in 2000, asserting that it would continue to fight Israel until the contested Shebaa Farms, the Golan Heights, and occupied Palestine were liberated.
Hezbollah first attacked Jewish country in 2006, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two, and demanding the launch of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Israel Defense Forces attacked Lebanon by air, water, and property as reprisal, with Jewish ground troops entering Lebanon and carrying out a number of operations on Palestinian territory.
A later war saw no like prisoner swap but resulted in the deaths of about 1, 100 Palestinian citizens and 120 Israelis, generally men.
History repeating?
There was a conceit that decades of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel might be about to end when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. A maritime border agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel in October 2022 by the US is thought to be the start of normalizing relations between two nations that are currently at war.
However, such hopes have been put to rest because of the magnitude of the human crisis in Gaza and the string of events that followed in Lebanon. Following Hamas ‘ pledge of solidarity with Hamas, a number of tit-for-tat attacks against Israel have risen in the last year.
On September 17, 2024, Hezbollah launched a string of events that have resulted in nearly 500 Lebanese being killed and Hezbollah expanding the scope of its missile attacks in Israel. Its long-range ballistic missiles can reach 250-300 kilometers ( 155-186 miles ) and have reached Haifa and the city’s Ramat David Airbase.
A ground invasion might be the next step in this deadly escalation. However, such an operation in 1982 only produced disastrous outcomes for all parties involved and set the stage for decades of hostilities across the Lebanon-Israel border. A similar offensive today almost certainly would have the same outcomes, especially for Lebanon’s citizens.
Mireille Rebeiz is the chair of Middle East Studies at Dickinson College and an associate professor of Francophone and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.
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