The Lebanon War and Sabra and Shatila
Israel invades Lebanon to destroy the PLO, drives it to Tunis, and is tarnished by the massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila by its Lebanese allies.
- Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (Kahan Commission) — Yitzhak Kahan, Aharon Barak and Yona Efrat, Government of Israel (1983)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
- Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)
On 6 June 1982, after an assassination attempt on Israel’s ambassador in London, Israel invaded Lebanon. Defence Minister Ariel Sharon’s aims went far beyond the stated 40-kilometre zone: to destroy the PLO, which had built a state-within-a-state in Lebanon, and install a friendly Christian-led government. Israeli forces besieged West Beirut for weeks, and in August the PLO’s fighters and Arafat were evacuated by sea, mostly to Tunis.
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
On 14 September Israel’s ally, president-elect Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. Israeli forces moved into West Beirut, and from 16 to 18 September Lebanese Phalangist militiamen, allowed into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, massacred hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians; estimates run from several hundred to over 3,000.
- Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (Kahan Commission) — Yitzhak Kahan, Aharon Barak and Yona Efrat, Government of Israel (1983)
- Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 — Benny Morris, Vintage (2001)
- Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (Kahan Commission) — Yitzhak Kahan, Aharon Barak and Yona Efrat, Government of Israel (1983)
- Israel: A History — Anita Shapira, Brandeis University Press (2012)
Israel kept a “security zone” in south Lebanon until May 2000, fighting the Shi’a militia Hezbollah, which emerged in the war’s aftermath.
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
The government called it "Operation Peace for Galilee", aimed at ending PLO rocket and guerrilla attacks from Lebanon. Many Israelis came to see it as a war of deception led by Ariel Sharon, and the Kahan Commission found Israel indirectly responsible for the massacre.
- Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (Kahan Commission) — Yitzhak Kahan, Aharon Barak and Yona Efrat, Government of Israel (1983)
- The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World — Avi Shlaim, W. W. Norton (2014)
An assault aimed at crushing Palestinian nationalism itself. Israel surrounded the camps, lit them with flares and let the Phalangists in; its responsibility was direct, not indirect.
- The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood — Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press (2006)
- Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993 — Yezid Sayigh, Oxford University Press (1997)
Why it matters today
Lebanon was Israel's first "war of choice" and its first deeply divisive war, sparking mass protest and an eighteen-year occupation of a southern strip. It gave rise to Hezbollah, an enemy Israel was still fighting in 2024.
Sabra and Shatila is one of the darkest memories in Palestinian history, and the PLO's expulsion to distant Tunis left refugees in Lebanon exposed and abandoned. Their descendants still live in the camps.