From Beirut to Jerusalem

Ariel Sharon, commander of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, represented a Jewish tradition of hardness in the face of bitter persecution, and “the ruthless singlemindedness of the European Zionists” (127). He accordingly made little effort to understand the city he invaded, helping to explain the many difficulties his forces would encounter. The invasion began in June 1982, seeking to deprive the PLO of sanctuary for launching attacks across the border, an objective widely accepted across the Israeli political spectrum.

For Israeli soldiers, the war began as a grand adventure, an opportunity to collect exotic goods to send back home. They thought “Lebanon was a friendly place, where the Israelis might soon be able to come skiing in the winter” once the PLO was excised (133). They did not reckon with the profound divisions within Lebanese society, that the PLO’s presence “was only a symptom of Lebanon’s ills” (135), and that there would be fierce resistance to their proposed solution of restoring the Maronites to power. They viewed the Maronites as helpless Christian victims of Muslim aggression, where they were in fact vicious warlords clinging to minority rule. They convinced themselves that the enemy of their enemy must be a friend, not realizing that this was a multi-sided conflict where the Palestinians were one faction among many, not the principal antagonists. As a result, the Phalangist militias let the Israelis do their fighting for them, but once they were in the war, they could not upset the Phalangists without ruining the entire operation.

Israel’s prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin, viewed any Palestinian claim to statehood as an “existential threat to the Zionist enterprise” (142). He therefore saw the Palestinians as outlaws and believed that the destruction of the PLO would settle the question once and for all. Born in 1913, Begin had witnessed the extraordinary persecution of Jews throughout the 20th century and was eager to reassert Jewish power on the world stage. Begin had the grand vision, and Sharon would be the one to implement it.

For all of Israel’s misperceptions, they did succeed in making life difficult for Arafat, whom the Arab states were unwilling to assist in this moment of crisis. The Lebanese prime minister urged Arafat to end the armed struggle and refashion the PLO as a purely political organization. Arafat rejected this, but did agree to leave Lebanon. George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, tried to reframe the defeat as a victory, reasoning that “by marshaling their entire army to fight the Palestinians, the Israelis were in effect granting them the most profound form of recognition” (150). But by the end of August, the PLO was gone, cursing the Arab states for not coming to its aid. Friedman visited the PLO after they resettled in Tunis, where they longed for information about their former home, dreading their current spot as an “exile from exile” (155).

The PLO’s withdrawal seemed to mark a decisive victory for Israel, and they promptly had the Maronite leader Bashir Gemayel elected president. The Muslim militias and their Syrian backers were on the brink of defeat, but then suddenly, Gemayel was assassinated by a remote-detonated bomb in September 1982. Eager for revenge, the Israeli army looked to Palestinian refugee camps, where Sharon believed PLO operatives had remained behind. They surrounded the camps of Sabra and Shatila, and stood guard as Phalangist militias went on a three-day rampage. Friedman arrived shortly thereafter, noticing that the overwhelming majority of those killed did so without putting up a fight, belying the idea that thousands of militants were housed inside. A later Israeli investigation found Sharon responsible for the massacre, and he stepped down as Defense Minister but would return to government soon (he later became prime minister). Friedman’s reporting on the massacres earned him a Pulitzer Prize, and after a fruitless interview with the commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon, Friedman published a scathing article on him on the front page of the Times.

After his expulsion from Lebanon, Arafat “became more than ever a symbol, and maybe nothing more than a symbol, of the Palestinian refusal to disappear” (168). He insisted on referring to Lebanon as a victory, and rebuffed negotiations with promises to fight on for centuries if need be. When one of Arafat’s lieutenants led a revolt against him, citing the corruption of the PLO leadership, Arafat discredited him by calling him a tool of the Syrian government. But even as he held onto power, the PLO was no longer connected to the daily realities of Palestinian life and “could no longer hope to bring any significant military pressure on the Jewish state” (174). But in an ironic twist, the diminution of the PLO’s position ultimately drove them to the bargaining table: A new round of protests against Israeli rule in 1987 brought the Palestinian question back to the forefront of the world’s attention.

Following Gemayel’s assassination, Israel could not impose a favorable solution by force and had to find a way to extricate itself. They tried to install Gemayel’s brother, a corrupt playboy who was also vicious towards the Muslims and Druse, making tensions worse. About a year after the invasion, Begin resigned and withdrew from public life. Israel then made matters even worse by interrupting a Shi’a festival on its holiest day, prompting clashes between Shi’a militias and Israeli forces who had previously been either allies or at least neutral. Israel now had to clamp down on southern Lebanon, where the Shi’a population was concentrated, making it even harder for Israel to withdraw on favorable terms. Only when the Labor party came to power in 1985 did the Israeli military withdraw unconditionally, by which point Friedman had moved from Lebanon to Israel. He found that Israelis were eager to forget the war rather than learn from it, blaming it on Begin and Sharon or dismissing the Lebanese as “insane” and therefore unworthy of Israel’s well-intentioned interventions (185).