LEADING UP TO 25 MAY
2000
Ghassan Kadi
25 May 2014
Ghassan Kadi
25 May 2014
Fourteen years ago I was travelling, and I was in my hotel
room watching the news with a friend (Scottish) when to my surprise I saw the
Israeli troops retreating from Lebanon.
The (Western) commentary was saying that positions vacated by the
Israelis were soon taken over by Hezbollah. My Scottish friend said: “poor Lebanon, from one hand to another”.
I looked at my friend and said: “Do you know the real story
behind this”. He said: “No”. Then endearingly I said: “Then shut up and hear it”.
Few people in the West, and indeed the Middle East, are
aware what happened on that day and the monumental events that preceded it.
When the 1967 war broke out and Israel won huge areas of
land from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, some
Lebanese that Lebanon is out of the equation and that the West will
always defend Lebanon’s neutrality.
This is a long saga that would take volumes to transcribe into
words to every detail, let alone the emotions and pain that I personally had
first-hand experience with. But from a “neutral” weak and most definitely
a very small state, Lebanon was destined to become the hammer that broke
Israel’s back.
Soon after the 1967 war, and more so after the event of
“Black September” in Jordan in which the PLO was kicked out of Jordan, the PLO
turned Lebanon into its base of logistics and operations. Israel did not take
this lightly and Lebanon, especially South Lebanon, was punished heavily with
regular air raids and shelling, and in most instances, totally unprovoked.
From 1968 till 1982, this nightmare went on and on
relentlessly, and the inhabitants of South Lebanon had to flee from their homes
on many occasions when the fighting escalated, and in many situations finding
their homes in total ruins upon their return.
In March 1978 Israel launched a major offensive against
South Lebanon and moved in by 40 kms to withdraw a few months later but not
before it established a safety zone in order to keep Israeli territory beyond
the firing range of the PLO’s missiles.
For that purpose, Israel sponsored a renegade ex Lebanese Army officer, Major
Saad Haddad to establish the “South Lebanon Army”, which was nothing more than
an Israeli watchdog, doing Israel’s dirty work.
But that measure was not “effective” enough, and in June 1982,
Israel decided to invade South Lebanon and to push the PLO totally out of
Lebanon. By then, Lebanon was already suffering from seven years of Civil War.
Its people were divided between supported of the Palestinians and their cause
and supporters of Lebanese neutrality.
By that time, those who believed in restoring Lebanon’s
neutrality realized that it was not going to be easy, and it had to be fought
for. To them, neutrality meant to appease Israel and to go cahoots with the
Israeli-US road map which had reached a new pinnacle with the Camp David
agreement between Israel and Egypt.
By that time also, even some Lebanese supporters of the PLO
were growing weary of their support, and they felt that their sacrifices were
neither reciprocated nor appreciated. There was a growing disgruntlement with
the PLO in South Lebanon to the extent that some towns received the Israeli
troops with showering them with rice; a tradition used to welcome those who are
dear and valued. An inhabitant of the town of Katermaya decided to welcome the
Israeli troops with a round of bullets in the air, another Lebanese celebratory
tradition. To his dismay and that of his town, his bullets were mistaken as
enemy fire and were responded to by the Israelis by heavy shelling that left
the town in ruins.
The ficticious honeymoon didn’t last long. Almost
immediately Israeli troops started to terrorize the population making sweeping
arrests, often having a hooded person identifying people (mainly young men) who
had any association with the PLO, albeit an association with someone who is
Palestinian. Tens of thousands were arrested and sent to the makeshift prison
camp in a town called Ansar, without any charges and/or any trials. On the
economic front, hundreds of trucks laden with Israeli goods forced their way daily
into the local markets, and their goods which mainly included fresh produce and
fish, had to be all sold first before Lebanese producers could sell theirs. The
flooded the market with all sorts of goods, including Coca Colas can with
Hebrew script.
This is not to forget the state of general despair. Israel
entered Beirut itself. The Syrian Army in Lebanon was a peace-keeping force,
not equipped to fight with Israel. And even at the best of times, Syria was not
able to confront Israel on its own. Nonetheless, Syria sent fighter jets to
confront Israel and lost over 80 of them in dogfights in which Israel had the
upper hand. Needless to say that the
staunchest Lebanese supporter of Israel, Bashir Gemayel, the Leader of the
extremist right wing Lebanese Forces was elected president to the wish of his
Israeli friends.
It was as if the Lebanese Civil War was not destructive and
tragic enough. Lebanon looked as
fragmented, more helpless and more hopeless than the Arabs were 17 years earlier
when they lost the Six-Day War in 1967.
Even though Gemayel was assassinated before he took office,
his brother Amin was elected as
president and Ronald Reagan sent pieces of the Sixth Fleet and a few thousand
Marines to peace watch. France and Italy sent some forces too. The PLO had
already been driven out and moved its base to Tunisia and Arafat left Lebanon
for the last time.
What followed the Gemayel’s assassination were the
retributional infamous Sabra and Chatila massacres, in which the Lebanese Forces
butchers hundreds of Palestinians women and children, who were left defenceless
after the fighters were made to leave.
Lebanon seemed in a huge mess, one that it had no chance to
get out of. The future of Lebanon and
its sovereignty looked as bleak as that of Palestine and its people. Israel was
there to either stay, or to impose a peace deal with Lebanon, a deal that
secured its interests and security. In fact, a deal with the Lebanese
government was reached on the 17th of May 1983, but president Amin
Gemayel did not ratify it.
No one in Lebanon could see a glimmer of hope in the
horizon, but that was to change soon, and in the most dramatic manner.
To Israel and the USA, the plot seemed to have worked. What
they did not prepare themselves for, was a Syrian-sponsored resistance group
that rose from the ashes of the defeat of 1967, the betrayal Sadat in 1973, the master plans of Kissinger
that left Syria standing alone, and the plucking of the PLO out of Lebanon.
For before too long, the headquarters of the Israeli
operations in Tyre was flattened by a huge explosion killing tens of Israeli
troops. Sporadic clashes between local resistance fighters and Israeli
occupiers erupted here and there. The resistance gained momentum very rapidly turning
the life of Israeli troops in Lebanon into a nightmare. They would walk with
their backs to the walls and their fingers on the trigger. They flattened many
banana groves and other orchards to prevent fighters from hiding, but nothing
was able to stop the surge of resistance.
Then on the 23rd of October 1983, a triple
suicide attack on the US Marines headquarters as well as the French and
Italians, killing 241 Marines and tens of French and Italians. This sent them
packing and Lebanon was left with Israel to contend with.
It took this resistance group, Hezbollah and its supporters,
18 long years of struggle to finally score a victory that combined Arab state
armies were not able to achieve for over five decades.
The potion that was most difficult for Israel to swallow was
that they replaced the fragmented relatively ill-equipped unpopular PLO with a highly
organized extremely popular formidable army with far-reaching missiles that
can, and did penetrate “as far as Haifa and beyond”.
When negotiating with Sadat on Sinai, Israel’s main aim was
to isolate Syria, and Sadat, the fool, thought that he was truly negotiating. Israel and the US kept the Palestinians out of
the equation, refused to engage in a comprehensive peace deal, and for every
inch of land they returned to Egypt, they scored more and more gains.
The Israelis were never used to being dictated to. They have
been taught that they can dictate to the USA itself. After all, they coerced
the feeble Carter to go their way in the Camp David negotiations, and made him
pledge more and more financial and military aid.
For Israel to give up Arab land for no gain was totally
unfathomable. And the South of Lebanon is not cheap real estate. It is rich in
a very precious commodity that Israel has dire need for; water. But it had to
give it all up and retreat with its tails between its legs. Israel referred to
its defeat as a tactical pull-out. It was in fact the very first unconditional
defeat and retreat of Israeli troops.
After more than thirty years of extreme duress and living
under the mercy of Israel, having their crops burnt, their homes bombed and
bulldozed, and their youths sent to jails….after more than thirty years of rolling
funerals and displacements, the people of South Lebanon were finally free, and
they owed their freedom to their own sacrifices, not to concessions and pleas
from superpowers or the UN that would at best have given them empty promises
and more and more subjugation.
That was the story I told my Scottish friend. The epic story
had him riveted giving me his full attention. He could not believe that such a
gallant victory was reported on Western media with such disdain and inaccuracy.
This is a day I will never forget.
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