Lebanon -Israel War of 1982, Operation Peace For The Galilee

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                               

The 1982 Lebanon War (Operation Peace for the Galilee) began on June 6, 1982, 9 years after the Yom Kippur War.  44 years ago.  [It is still continuing with some different antagonists, called Hezbollas. ]

• Causes: Triggered by cross-border rocket and guerrilla attacks from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) against northern Israel, alongside the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom.   The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is a Palestinian nationalist coalition recognized internationally as the official representative of the Palestinian people.
• Major Attacks and Actions Against Israel and Israelis
  • 1964–1967 (Founding and Early Guerrilla Phase): Formed under the Arab League, the PLO and groups like Fatah initiated border raids, sabotage, and guerrilla attacks against Israeli infrastructure and settlements from bases in neighboring Arab countries.
  • 1970–1971 (Jordanian Civil War / Black September): After attempting to subvert or challenge the Jordanian monarchy, the PLO was violently ousted from Jordan by King Hussein’s forces, after which it relocated its main operations base to Lebanon.
  • 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre: Operatives from the Black September organization (linked to Fatah/PLO) infiltrated the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, murdering 11 Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches.
  • 1974 Ma'alot School Massacre: Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a PLO-affiliated faction, seized a school in Ma'alot, Israel, resulting in the deaths of 21 Israeli schoolchildren and several adults.
  • 1978 Coastal Highway Massacre: Fatah militants hijacked a civilian bus along the Haifa-Tel Aviv coastal highway, shooting at passing cars and the bus, which left 35 Israelis dead and dozens wounded. Fatah (officially the Palestinian National Liberation Movement) is a major Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party, and the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Founded in the late 1950s (commonly cited around 1957–1959) by figures including Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), and Salah Khalaf. 
  • 1982 Lebanon War: Operating extensively from southern Lebanon to shell northern Israeli towns, the PLO drew a full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, culminating in the PLO’s expulsion from Beirut and the relocation of its leadership to Tunisia.
  •                       Continued Activity of PLO 
  • 1985 Achille Lauro Hijacking: The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), a faction within the PLO umbrella, hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled American-Jewish passenger.
    
                                              Yasser Arafat, top terrorist
    
  • Post-1993 Violations and Incitement: Following the 1993–1995 Oslo Accords in which Yasser Arafat formally recognized Israel and renounced terrorism, Israel's Government Press Office and international monitors accused the PLO/Palestinian Authority of breaches, including failure to consistently curb militant infrastructure, delay in formally amending anti-Israel clauses in the Palestinian National Covenant (eventually addressed in 1998), and ongoing political incitement.
  • 
                       Sharon and Begin, both PMs of Israel but separately.

• Objectives: Led by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the initial aim was to push PLO forces 40 kilometers north of Israel's border, though goals expanded to expelling Syrian forces and reshaping Lebanon's political landscape.                  
  
  
  

• Major Operations:
• The Israeli Air Force destroyed Syrian air defenses in Operation Mole Cricket 19. Operation Mole Cricket 19 (Hebrew: מבצע ערצב-19) was a massive Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and air-to-air combat campaign launched by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) against Syrian forces.
• Syria's air force entered Lebanese airspace in 1982 to defend Syrian ground troops and surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries in the Bekaa Valley, and to counter Israeli air dominance after Israel launched its June 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  During 1982, the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon was a major military theater during the 1982 Lebanon War (Operation Peace for Galilee), highlighted by Operation Mole Cricket 19 on June 9, 1982, which became one of the largest air battles since World War II.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) advanced to besiege West Beirut for 10 weeks.  During the Lebanese Civil War, West Beirut primarily housed leftist, Muslim-majority factions, the civil government, and Palestinian populations/guerrillas,  The Lebanese Civil War was a 15-year multi-sided conflict lasting from April 13, 1975, to October 13, 1990.  Israel's War waa sandwiched inbetween.  
• Human Cost & Atrocities: The conflict resulted in thousands of casualties. Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre inside Palestinian refugee camps under the observation of Israeli forces, drawing severe international condemnation.  The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the mass killing of between 700 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians. It took place from September 16 to September 18, 1982, in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon.  This was after the war that began in June.  
  
                                  Major Saad Haddad
• The Christain Phalanagists were friends of Israel who were helping out by guarding the perimeter of Israel from the  Lebanon and Syrian terrorists.Major Saad Haddad was the head.  While closely associated with the broader Lebanese Christian right-wing movement, he actually commanded the Free Lebanon Army (later renamed the South Lebanon Army). He was a Lebanese Army officer who broke away to form an Israeli-backed, Christian-dominated militia that operated along the border to protect the region and serve as a buffer for northern Israel.  He had an arrrangement with Israel that if he was killed, Israel would care for his children.  Following the death of Major Saad Haddad—the founder of the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army (SLA)—in 1984, his family relocated to Israel, where his children grew up, integrated into Israeli society, and pursued advanced careers.   The most prominent public account regarding his children involves his daughter, Arza Haddad, and their trajectory in Israel.   Fleeing to Israel: Arza was only three years old when Major Haddad died of cancer in 1984. After completing high school in Lebanon, she fled across the border to live permanently in Israel.   Academic and Professional Achievement: She integrated fully into Israeli society, attending the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. She went on to graduate with a master's degree in Aeronautics, specializing in research on Ramjet missile defense engines.  Life in Israel: Arza became the valedictorian of her master's graduation class. She has publicly stated that her adult life is entirely rooted in Israel and that she has no intentions of returning to Lebanon.   The broader SLA community experienced a massive migration wave to Israel later in May 2000 following the sudden withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from southern Lebanon.    The SLA community in Israel consists of former Lebanese militia fighters and their families who were allied with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the South Lebanon conflict.   However, Major Haddad’s immediate family had already established their ties and refuge in Israel much earlier due to his foundational alliance with the country.  May 2000, the SLA collapsed. Fearing severe reprisals and treason trials from Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, thousands of SLA members and their families fled across the border into Israel.
• Aftermath:
  • The PLO leadership and Yasser Arafat were forced to evacuate to Tunisia.
  • Israel withdrew to a southern security zone in Lebanon, which it occupied until 2000.
  • The war contributed directly to the formation and rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing whose military and security activities have been prohibited by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid the 2026 Lebanon war.  It started in 1982 by the Iranian religious people, Shiite clerics.   Hezbollah actively engages in Holocaust denial and spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories. Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a prominent Lebanese Shia cleric and an influential ideological figure associated with Hezbollah, made a number of statements expressing hostility toward Jews as a group.  The anti-Semitism of Hezbollah leaders and spokesmen combines the image of seemingly invincible Jewish power ... and cunning with the contempt normally reserved for weak and cowardly enemies. Like the Hamas propaganda for holy war, that of Hezbollah has relied on the endless vilification of Jews as 'enemies of mankind,' 'conspiratorial, obstinate, and conceited' adversaries full of 'satanic plans' to enslave the Arabs.  It fuses traditional Islamic anti-Judaism with Western conspiracy myths, Third Worldist anti-Zionism, and Iranian Shiite contempt for Jews as 'ritually impure' and corrupt infidels. Sheikh Fadlallah typically insists ... that Jews wish to undermine or obliterate Islam and Arab cultural identity in order to advance their economic and political domination.

    Various antisemitic statements have been attributed to Hezbollah officials

  • Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned following the findings of the Kahan Commission.

Yom Kippur War of 1973

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

         

The War of 1973 (also known as the Yom Kippur War or October War) started because Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israel to reclaim the territories Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War—specifically the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.The Yom Kippur War actually began on October 6, 1973  when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. This happened 6 years after 1967.                                                    

Golda Meir nee Meyerson, was elected PM in 1968 and was PM throughout the Yom Kippur War.  She was re-elected in 1973 but retired in 1974.  She wrote My Life, an excellent book that I have read.  

 The 1967 Arab League summit (the Khartoum Conference), held in Khartoum, Sudan, from August 29 to September 1, 1967, in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War.  They decided on their famous 3 NO''s.  Participants: Leaders and representatives from eight Arab states.   Oil-rich Arab nations (such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to provide financial support to Egypt and Jordan to help rebuild their economies and military forces.

                                                           

            Jews, people who would not revert from their religion to the consternation of all other religions. None would win them over, even though the religion itself divided into Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews and how they view Judaism in the late 1800's.  

          No peace with Israel

• No recognition of Israel
• No negotiations with Israel 

Later Shift: These "Three No's" guided collective Arab policy for decades until later shifts, such as the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, the 1994 Jordan–Israel peace treaty, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and subsequent normalization agreements like the 2020 Sudan-Israel deal.                                   

The Syrians initially overran much of the Golan Heights, but, despite support from Iraqi and Jordanian troops, etc, they were stopped and driven far behind the lines from which they had attacked.                                              

Artillerymen hold their ears as 155mm guns lay down barrage on Syrian positions during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Bettman/Getty Images.

The Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal in the 1st hours of the war and seized the Israel forward positions (the "Bar Lev line").  As a result of wide-ranging tank battles, however, they were unable to progress through the Sinai Desert.  

It is said that the Israel that fought the Yom Kippur War no longer exists.  Fifty- years is a long enough time to dissipate the impact of war.

The Yom Kippur War of 1973 has probably  receded in the Israeli imagination. But its specter is more complex than Vietnam for Americans. The 2,500 Israeli soldiers killed (a fraction of the 15,000 Arabs who perished) was three times the per capita human cost of the Vietnam War to the United States. Steven Simon, writer of this article, was in Israel during that time, and everyone knew someone who’d been killed. The war was also far shorter, about 10 days, so the casualty list had an outsized emotional impact. It was not the long slog of Vietnam, but rather an avalanche.

Early in the war, Syrian armor destroyed the Israeli tank brigade deployed to the Golan Heights and reached Gesher B’not Yaakov (Jisr Banat Yaqub). Just beyond it was the Jezreel Valley. The prospect of a large Syrian armored formation penetrating the Israeli heartland was as ghastly for Israelis as it must have been thrilling for the Syrians. The United States has never experienced anything like this, including 9/11.

Both sides suffered severe losses in equipment, but when a Soviet airlift replaced Arab materiel, the US countered with a major arms airlift, starting on October 14th.  Two days later, an Israeli force crossed the Suez Canal and in a few days cut off the Egyptian 3rd Army.                                                                  

The USSR, concerned about the possibility of a major Arab defeat, invited US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Moscow to work out terms for a cease-fire, which were accepted by the UN on October 22 and became operative on October 25th. 

Israel's overall military victory was thankful but minor; as the war had grave repercussions within the country because of the initial defects revealed;  the loss of more than 2,600 men, and the effectiveness of the Arab oil weapon, used internationally for the 1st time.  

Territorial Loss in 1967: During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan. Egypt and Syria wanted to take back their land.  (Al Jazeera)  So they can blame Egypt in the 1st place for talking them all into attacking Israel in 1967.                                           

For the Jewish community, both in Israel and across the globe, the timing of the attack on Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement and the holiest day in Judaism—created profound religious, cultural, and historical resonances.

Restoring Honor and Leverage: Egypt and Syria wanted to shatter Israel's image of military invincibility and force the international community to take the Arab-Israeli conflict seriously.  

The Surprise Timing: The attack began on October 6, 1973. The date coincided with Yom Kippur (the holiest day in Judaism) and the Islamic month of Ramadan, catching Israeli intelligence and military forces off guard. [In 2027 Ramadan will fall in February.]  {A monstrous and bloody attack will happen again on Israel on October 7, 2023) .

Stalled Diplomacy: Peaceful efforts and proposals to negotiate a return of the land had failed over the preceding six years. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat sought a military move to break the political deadlock. 

Major Jewish Historical & Cultural References

• The Synagogue Mobilization: Because the surprise attack occurred on Yom Kippur, the vast majority of Israeli military reservists were not at their military posts; they were fasting and praying in synagogues. Because the streets were completely empty and the entire population was gathered together, commanders simply went from synagogue to synagogue to call up their units. Soldiers famously stripped off their tallitot (prayer shawls) and kittels (white holiday robes) directly over their civilian clothes to board military transports heading straight to the frontlines.
• The Debut of the "Hesder" Units: The 1973 war was the first major conflict featuring distinct Hesder army units—frameworks allowing Orthodox yeshiva students to combine intensive Torah study with active combat duty. Their frontline service, particularly in the grueling tank battles on the Golan Heights, deeply impacted the religious Zionist community and integrated military defense as a core component of their religious identity.
• The Problem of the Agunot (Chained Widows): In Jewish law, a woman cannot remarry if her husband is missing in action but his death cannot be legally verified. Following the heavy, chaotic losses of the war, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, painstakingly reviewed hundreds of military forensic cases to halachically permit the war widows to move on with their lives.
• Shift in Yom Kippur's Modern Meaning: Prior to 1973, modern secular Israelis often viewed Yom Kippur as an individual day of rest. The national trauma of nearly losing the state transformed the holiday into a deeply national day of collective remembrance. It fractured the supreme confidence built after the 1967 Six-Day War and introduced a sobering language of vulnerability and social introspection to Israeli culture. 
• What the Arabs neglected to learn was what Yom Kippur was all about.  Had they realized this, would Egypt had attacked in the 1st place?  Yom Kippur is the Jews' Day of Atonement.  It is an all day solemn fast-day  (Lev.23:32 as a Sabbath of solemn rest.  A man must cleanse himself of all sin.  It is the day on which Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the 2nd tablets of the law and announced to the people the Divine pardon for the sin of the Golden Calf.  Man is to stop all work and abstain from food, drink, and sexual intercourse;  the day was outstanding for the elaborate Temple Ceremonial.  They included the sending of the scapegoat to the wildernss  "for AZAZEL."  In the evening is the rendition of Kol Nidre, a time of canceling rash vows between man and G-d  AND  the Concluding Neilah service, saying the Shema and the declaration:  "NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM."

• 1. What Is Ramadan?

  Ramadan commemorates the month during which Muslims believe the prophet Muhammed was given the first revelations of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, from the angel Gabriel. It’s an extremely important month in the Muslim year. During this time, Muslims fast during daylight hours (no food or drink—even water—permitted from dawn to sunset) and strive to avoid any impure thoughts or immoral behavior. Participating in this observance is one of the five pillars of Islam, meaning that it is required for all healthy adult Muslims. Ramadan ends in a festival called Eid-al-Fitr, or the Festival of Breaking the Fast. Muslims celebrate and give thanks for the strength Allah imparted in them during fasting. Children receive presents and new clothes, and young girls may decorate their hands with henna.

• https://responsiblestatecraft.org/yom-kippur-war-50th-anniversary/

• The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

• Wikiwand

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