After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the persecution of the Palestinians, Palestinian refugees “flooded” the area on the opposite side of the border with Lebanon. Thus, the southern part of the country soon became a base for armed groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), turning it into a battleground in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
So Israel’s first two invasions were aimed at pushing the exiled Palestinian militant groups away from its borders. But the continued violence has led to the creation of new enemies, including Hezbollah. So now it is the Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitary group that Israel seeks to defeat with this invasion.
Operation Litani: First Israeli invasion in 1978
In 1978, Israel launched its first ground invasion of Lebanese soil in retaliation for a Palestinian bus attack in Israel that left 35 Israelis dead.
These Palestinian fighters started in southern Lebanon, giving Israeli commanders a reason to “push” the PLO across the Litani River, Lebanon’s largest river that reaches up to 30 kilometers from the border between the two countries.
So with this goal in mind, Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon in March 1978, in collaboration with a Lebanese Maronite Christian militia. The IDF claims it destroyed PLO infrastructure and killed 300 Palestinian fighters in the week-long offensive. However, some analysts estimate that more than 1,000 civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced.
Operation Peace for Galilee: 1982 Lebanon War
In 1982, a Palestinian gunman attempted to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Britain, and Israel responded by launching its second invasion. The Israelis’ official goal was again to push Palestinian militants away from the border and put an end to rocket attacks on northern Israel.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin of the right-wing Likud party denied at the time that Israel planned to hold Lebanese territory, saying Israeli troops “will return as soon as possible.”
The Israelis easily crossed a large part of the southern part of Lebanon and were even welcomed by some Lebanese who were tired of the clashes of the paramilitary groups there. But Begin’s promise to withdraw the troops was not fulfilled.
Israeli forces and their Maronite Christian allies conquered southern Lebanon, clashed with the Syrian army in the northeast and laid siege to west Beirut, where Palestinian militants and their Lebanese allies were now based.
Lebanese-Palestinian journalist Samir Kashir later described that war as a three-month bombardment “almost non-stop – from air, land and sea” that killed “thousands” of civilians.
The PLO was eventually exiled after a US-brokered deal. But the IDF had essentially failed in the second part of its goal, namely to end cross-border rocket attacks. This is because through this conflict, Hezbollah emerged, which began its attacks against Israel with the support of the theocratic regime in Iran that had come to power three years before.
Although Israel agreed to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 1983, its soldiers continued to occupy swaths of territory and launch attacks throughout the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in ongoing civilian deaths and displacement.
The aim was to turn these parts of South Lebanon into a “security zone” with the aim, according to the Israeli military, of protecting the residents of northern Israel.
2006 Israel-Hezbollah War
In 2000, under Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the “safe zone” and the UN’s so-called “blue line” was drawn between Israel, Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
But cross-border skirmishes continued, culminating in 2006 when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid and killed eight others. In response, Israel launched a punitive air strike, pounding Hezbollah targets and other infrastructure, before sending troops back into southern Lebanon.
After 34 days of war, and heavy losses on both sides, Israel retreated: Hezbollah had managed to resist the onslaught of the technically superior and better armed Israeli army.
The popularity of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fell to a record low of 3 percent after a government report criticized “very serious failures” in the war. He had admitted a few days ago to the Washington Post that “the Israeli army was not well prepared for a total ground operation”.
The month-long conflict officially ended with UN Resolution 1701, which called for Hezbollah and Israel’s military to withdraw from areas near the border, to be replaced by UN peacekeepers and the official Lebanese army. Of course, neither side properly implemented its terms, allowing a low-intensity but ongoing border conflict to perpetuate.
22 years later, the Israeli army invaded its northern neighbor for the fourth time. Despite the unintended consequences and the failure to achieve all the goals set by the respective Israeli leadership in the previous three invasions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue to “humiliate” Hezbollah. It remains to be seen how this invasion will develop.
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