The 1982 Invasion of Lebanon

On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with roughly 60,000 troops and more than 800 tanks — Operation Peace for Galilee, directed by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. Within days Israeli forces reached the capital, captured the Beirut–Damascus highway to cut off escape, and placed West Beirut — with the PLO’s leadership and the civilians of the city — under siege.

For ten weeks the world watched televised images of the siege and the heavy destruction it wrought on the civilians trapped inside, while negotiations ran through US envoy Philip Habib. Under the American-brokered agreement that took effect on 19 August 1982, some 14,000 PLO fighters evacuated the city under the protection of a multinational force of French, Italian, and American troops — a force that was also supposed to guarantee the safety of the Palestinian refugees left behind. Arafat was forced to leave Lebanon; the PLO established its new headquarters in Tunis, a thousand miles from Palestine.

The multinational force withdrew early. On 14 September, president-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated; Israeli forces entered West Beirut, and from 16 to 18 September the Phalangist-affiliated militia massacred Palestinian civilians in Sabra and Shatila under the eyes of the army that ringed the camps. The war as a whole killed some 19,000 people. Israel’s occupation of parts of the south lasted until 2000, and the resistance it bred there reshaped the region. For the Palestinian national movement, 1982 closed the era in which liberation would come from the border states — and shifted its center of gravity, within five years, to the occupied territories themselves.