I The Importance of the Military
The untold story of the 1982 war is how over a period of ten weeks, generals who had never lost a battle, and who had at their disposal a potential force of half a million men in 70 army brigades, 8000 armored vehicles, more than 550 combat aircraft and 90 naval vessels, and the best weapons in the world,
1 proved unable—using a considerable part of this force—to decisively defeat less than 15,000 men, mostly poorly armed militia, supported for less than two weeks by part of the Syrian army.
In many ways, this was the most difficult war ever waged by either of its two protagonists, as well as the longest and one of the costliest of Arab-Israeli wars. Militarily, it was unique in many ways. It was the first full-scale Palestinian-Israeli war; it was the first Arab-Israeli war involving extended military operations in urban terrain; and it was the only one not to come to a decisive conclusion. The numerous writings already devoted to military aspects of the topic attest to the interest it has already generated.
2Although a comprehensive assessment of this war’s strategy and tactics is beyond the scope of a study of P.L.O. decisionmaking, there are two good reasons for beginning such a study with a careful look at events on the battlefield during the summer of 1982. The first has already been cited: the course of the fighting was a major element in the background against which P.L.O. decisions were taken, and at times was the decisive input in these decisions.
The second is that any account of what the P.L.O. did and why must at least touch on the military expectations and performance of a movement which was partly militarized, and described itself as dedicated to a strategy of armed struggle. This is particularly important here since, although many Israelis and some foreign military analysts have already written on the subject, relatively little attention has so far been devoted to it from the Palestinian side.
The pre-war expectations of Israel and the P.L.O. are the central element in assessing the fighting. Because it was obvious from the outset that the two sides were so unevenly matched that the Israelis could not possibly have “lost,” and that the Palestinians could not possibly have “won,” what must be weighed is how much better, or worse, each side’s performance matched their own—and others’—expectations. Moreover, since the invasion was neither hastily planned by the Israelis, nor a surprise to the P.L.O., the extent to which the two sides foresaw correctly and planned for what was to come must also be judged.
II “Operation Peace for Galilee” in Retrospect
As its name indicates, “Operation Peace for Galilee” was supposed to remove hostile forces forever from Israel’s northern borders, smash the military capabilities of the P.L.O., expel its fighters from Lebanon, and eliminate the allied Lebanese leftist and Muslim militias. At this writing, the full measure of its failure on every count is readily apparent.
P.L.O. attacks deep inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have not been halted. In spite of over 4500 Israeli military casualties, including 655 soldiers killed, rockets have crashed into Galilee several times, Israeli warplanes have attacked alleged targets in Lebanon over twenty times since January 1984, and there remained the constant fear that Shi‘ite and Druze militias in areas just north of Israeli lines would allow the return of Palestinian guerrillas. Israel must now deal with Shi‘ite hostility engendered by the occupation of South Lebanon, which may last even after its withdrawal, leaving a new and intractable problem on its northern frontiers.
3For three years after the invasion, the only immediately apparent difference from the pre-war situation was that Israeli lines were deep inside Lebanon rather than a few miles north of the border in the Haddad zone. It was thus far easier to attack Israeli forces spread out in Lebanon than it was when it was necessary to penetrate Israel’s well-guarded frontiers. Moreover, those carrying out such attacks were more likely to be Lebanese than Palestinians.
Beyond the fact that there is no peace in Galilee, there has been deep unease in Israel at the meager results of the war. Reflecting this mood, an Israeli journalist recently wrote: “Israel is … smarting from the effects of a misadventure whose likes it has never experienced in its history and whose conclusion appears to be beyond its ken.” And in the words of former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, the war has cost more Israeli lives “than all the world’s terrorists had been able to inflict on Israelis in all the decades …”
4However, the failure of “Operation Peace for Galilee” goes far beyond the objectives implied by the war’s shrewdly chosen code name, since those who planned it had set their sights much farther afield. Of course, Galilee’s demonstrated vulnerability to P.L.O. bombardment during the 1981 fighting placed the issue of the safety of the area’s inhabitants foremost in the Israeli public mind, and made this a major domestic political issue.
But for Begin, his fellow ministers, and Israel’s senior generals, war was necessary because of three things, only indirectly related to Galilee, which they found intolerable: (1) the P.L.O.’s exploitation of its commitment to the ceasefires—which ended cross-border fighting in March 1978, August 1979, and July 1981—allowed it to pose as a responsible political actor and demand participation in international negotiations; (2) the P.L.O.’s ability in July 1981 to defy Israel militarily, in spite of the vast military disparity between them, had enhanced its political and diplomatic stature; (3) these new realities had an effect on the West Bank and other occupied Palestinian areas the Likud government was committed to annex.
Their aim was thus not simply to drive back the P.L.O. from the border region, thereby making Galilee “safe” for its Israeli inhabitants. It was rather to destroy utterly the P.L.O., thus making the West Bank and Gaza Strip “safe” for annexation. Shattering both the P.L.O.’s military power and its claim to be a major political actor would end the danger that Israel might at some stage be forced to negotiate with it, and thus come to terms with Palestinian nationalism. “Operation Peace for Galilee” was in a very real sense a war for the future disposition of Palestine.
5Over and above this basic aim, the planners of the invasion had other objectives, which went far beyond Galilee or any other part of Palestine.
6 Lebanon, under Syrian influence but badly divided internally since 1976, was to be reunited under Israel’s ally, Bashir Gemayel, and brought under Israeli domination. Syria, which had defied Israel during the 1981 missile crisis, was to be defeated, expelled from central Lebanon, and thereby cut down to size. In consequence, Syria’s backer, the USSR, was to be pushed further out of the region, while the rest of the Arab states were to be taught an object lesson about the might of Israel.
Reviewing these far-reaching objectives today, it is obvious that, on the strategic level, Israel’s war in Lebanon has been a fiasco. What will concern us most in this chapter, however, are those aspects of Israeli objectives which were apparent at the time, and which most influenced decisionmaking during the war. These were the tactical and operational levels: the progress of units in the field, and the overall battlefield strategic situation.
Even here, it is possible in retrospect to see major failures on the part of the Israelis, in spite of their overwhelming military superiority. These shortcomings had a significant impact on the course of the P.L.O.’s decisionmaking, its indirect negotiations with the U.S. and Israel, and ultimately affected negatively the latter’s ability to reach its strategic objectives.
As in all of its wars, if Israel were to achieve its aims on every military and political level, the key lay in the ability of its troops in the field to win a rapid, indisputable, and psychologically overwhelming triumph. It was not enough for the “Israeli Defense Forces” (IDF), arguably the best, and very likely the third or fourth most powerful army in the world,
7 simply to beat the P.L.O. For both the grand strategic plan and the day-to-day operational plans to succeed, it was essential that in virtually every battle, P.L.O. forces, those of the LNM, and Syrian units in Lebanon be routed, and their men either killed, captured, or sent streaming in flight, sowing panic before them.
Because of the pressing need for speedy execution, this collapse of enemy will was an absolute prerequisite for the success of the Israeli war plan, but it did not happen. The reasons are at the root of the failure of Israel in Lebanon, both operationally and strategically. To understand why, it is necessary to go back to the beginning.
III The Four Phases of the 1982 War
From a Palestinian perspective, the 1982 war can be divided into four phases. The first, the battle of South Lebanon, lasted only from June 4 to 9. The second, involving the encirclement of Beirut, was also short, ending on June 13 with the arrival of Israeli troops at Ba’abda in the city’s eastern suburbs. The third phase, which lasted from June 14 to 26, was marked by the battle for the control of the mountains overlooking the Lebanese capital. It was followed by the last phase, the siege of Beirut, which continued until the August 12 ceasefire.
The first phase of the 1982 war encompassed Israel’s swift penetration of South Lebanon along multiple axes, combined with heliborne and amphibious landings at key points deep behind the front lines. The main objective in this phase was for units driving up the coast road to link up with others landed from the sea north of Sidon, thus preparing a jumping-off point for an advance toward Beirut. According to one account, “three Israeli divisional forces” were involved in this coastal push.
8 At the same time, other columns advanced through the mountains and up the Biqa‘ Valley in the central and eastern sectors of the front.
The initial phase took the better part of three days of ground combat. These were preceded by two days of massive “softening-up” bombardments from air, land, and sea directed at Beirut, the coastal region down to the border, and large areas of South Lebanon, beginning on June 4. (This was the day the war actually started, although the invasion was launched only at midday on June 6.) This phase ended when a linkup between Israeli armored colums advancing from the south and troops landed at the Awwali River bridgehead was effected east of Sidon, around midday on June 9.
The second phase consisted of a continuation of the drive up the coast toward Beirut, combined with another through the mountains to cut the east-west roads linking the capital to the Biqa‘ valley and Damascus.
9 In this stage also, the ground push was supported by seaborne and heliborne forces which cut off JF or Syrian positions which were holding up the ground advance. Simultaneously, Syrian forces in the Biqa‘ to the east were pushed back by tank columns advancing north up the valley, after Syrian air defences had been badly battered by the Israeli air force.
The advance was only briefly interrupted by a deceptive ceasefire, described by Israel as applying to Syrian forces only, which the IDF used to move troops up for another push, while fighting continued unabated with the P.L.O. The second phase concluded on June 13 with the arrival of Israeli troops at the Lebanese Presidential Palace at Ba’abda on the eastern outskirts of Beirut, and the consequent encirclement of the city. Israeli forces in the mountains and the Biqa’ also reached positions to the south of the Beirut-Damascus highway in a number of places, not quite managing to gain control of the road itself.
Although Beirut was now surrounded and under heavy Israeli bombardment, the next phase was not an assault on the city, but rather a series of attacks culminating in a major assault on June 21 to expel Syrian and P.L.O. forces from Bhamdoun and other mountain towns along the main road to Damascus. Although Bhamdoun and ‘Aley were taken, Syrian troops held on to Sofar, farther along the road in the mountains to the east. With the ceasefire five days later which marked the end of this operation, Syria was out of the war, and its forces had been pushed well back from Beirut.
The final and longest phase of the war, the seven-week siege of the P.L.O in the western sector of Beirut, now began in earnest. This involved intensive air, naval, and artillery bombardments and agressive psychological warfare directed both against the defenders of the city and its civilian population, and included calculated pressure on the morale of the besieged via the cutting off of food, water, and electricity.
Long periods of what at times resembled classical siege warfare were punctuated by heavy Israeli ground assaults. These resulted in the seizure of the airport and other areas of open terrain in the southern suburbs of the city. By war’s end, the siege perimeter had been severely constricted—to about eight miles of land lines plus six more of seafront. However, the IDF never succeeded in encircling JF units, in rupturing the defending lines, or in overrunning key positions, such as the Museum and port crossing points, the Kuwaiti Embassy hill, or the city seafront from the Summerland beach resort to the port. It was on these lines that fighting ended on August 12.
To recapitulate, the decisive events which separate these four phases were the encirclement of Sidon of June 9, the isolation of West Beirut on June 13, and the capture of Bhamdoun and elimination of Syria from the war on June 26. This brief summary gives the impression of an inexorable progression of the invading forces, and an unmitigated series of defeats of the defenders. Although in one sense correct, the accuracy of this impression can be judged only in light of the extent to which the expectations and plans of the two sides were fulfilled.
IV The Plans and Expectations of the Combatants
Israel’s Expectations
From our summary of the course of the four phases of the war, it may already be apparent that all did not got as Sharon and his generals had originally planned. In fact, things seem to have gone wrong from the very beginning.
In an article detailing the surprise of the Israelis at the fight put up by the Palestinians in the refugee camps along the South Lebanese coast during this first phase, Ze’ev Schiff, the respected defense editor of
Ha’aretz, states: “According to the IDF campaign plan, the forces coming from the south were scheduled to link up with those landed from the sea within 24 hours.”
10 The failure to do this with the required rapidity (in reality, Schiff points out, it took nearly three times as long to effect the linkup) was only the first step in the unhinging of the Israeli battle plan, but it affected crucially the timing and implementation of all the later stages of the war.
As is pointed out by Schiff (and was asserted forcefully by the P.L.O. at the time),
11 what held up the Israeli army in the coastal sector during the first phase of the war was the intensity of the resistance in the built-up areas along some of its main axes of advance, in particular the five main Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon.
These were located on the eastern outskirts of Tyre and Sidon, both vital strategic nervepoints. Whenever possible, the heavily built-up camps were purposely bypassed by Israeli advance units and left to be reduced later. Unfortunately for the Israelis, while they could do this with the Tyre camps, in the case of ‘Ain al-Hilweh camp near Sidon, the largest in Lebanon, this was not possible because of its location astride key routes of communication.
Earlier, in the three camps near Tyre (Rashidiyeh, Burj al-Shemali, and al-Bass) the defenders had put up a fierce fight. This was particularly the case in the former two, which were much larger than al-Bass. Schiff indicates it took a whole Israeli division (of over 10,000 men) three or four days to reduce them, during which period it suffered nearly 120 casualties. This tallies exactly with WAFA reports at the time, which indicated their fall by the fourth day of the war, although WAFA estimates of Israeli casualties were higher.
12Unlike the Tyre camps, ‘Ain al-Hilweh could not simply be left behind as the northward advance continued. In Schiff’s words, it “had to be taken to allow passage through the town northward to where Israeli forces had landed from the sea, and onward to Beirut.”
13 It was here that both Palestinian and Israeli accounts agree that perhaps the most savage battle of the entire war was fought.
For days after a June 11 ceasefire had briefly halted the Israeli advance against Syrian forces far to the north, ferocious fighting continued inside ‘Ain al-Hilweh. The defenders were led by Muslim
shaykhs and spearheaded by young “
ashbal” (tiger cubs: the name given to youthful fighters) wielding deadly RPG antitank weapons at close quarters against Israeli armor. Again and again, at nightfall they managed to retake ground lost in daylong battles marked by intense Israeli bombardment. The camp held out until June 17, becoming a tiny, isolated Stalingrad (“the Masada of the Palestinians” one Israeli called it),
14 sucking unit after unit of the IDF into grueling house-to-house combat, in which the defenders were at a natural advantage, and Israel’s technological and numerical superiority were neutralized.
This vicious ten-day battle showed up a fatal flaw in the planning of Sharon and the IDF generals. They had estimated quite correctly that their forces would be able to overwhelm the semiregular units of the P.L.O. in combat in open terrain. But they had apparently not expected that many of these units would survive the initial blitzkrieg assault in the countryside and succeed in withdrawing into built-up areas, or that the lightly armed local militias and regular reserve units they joined there would fight with such élan, inflicting serious casualties on the attackers.
A second flaw was revealed by the course of the fighting in the eastern sector, in the ‘Arqoub region at the southern end of the Biqa‘ Valley. Here, it was apparently hoped that Israeli columns could rapidly break out of what the Israelis called “Fatehland”: the mountainous and constricting terrain controlled by the P.L.O. immediately north of the UNIFIL zone and south of the Syrian area of deployment, where the advance of large mechanized forces was restricted to two road axes.
The objective was as quickly as possible to get the highly mobile Israeli armor out of the narrow lower valley, where long-entrenched P.L.O. commandos awaited them, and into the broader plain to the north, where Syrian tank forces were located. Once there, the Israelis had confidence in their ability to overcome these Syrian units after destroying the air defenses which protected them.
But they apparently did not calculate on the resistance they would be offered at the southern end of the valley by P.L.O. guerrillas, enjoying the advantage of over a decade of familiarity with the terrain, and supported by well-dug-in Syrian artillery to the north. It took the better part of four days of heavy fighting for vastly superior Israeli forces to break out of the wooded, hilly, and nearly roadless terrain between their forward lines in the Haddad zone and those of the Syrians near Lake Qar‘oun.
15In this first phase of the war, the only sector where things went more or less according to plan was the center. Here, Beaufort Castle was captured after a bloody two-day battle in which its defenders were killed to a man, but heavy casualties were suffered by assaulting units of the elite Golani brigade; Nabatiyeh was bypassed and then taken; and powerful columns were sent northwest to join the assault on Sidon, and north to enter the Shouf, where relatively little resistance was offered by Syrian and Druze forces (the P.L.O. had always been forbidden to station men in the region).
Further Israeli miscalculations appeared in succeeding phases of the war. One was the assumption that the entire length of the coast road could be swiftly seized and put to use. The IDF had extensive air- and sea-lift capabilities,
16, but complete control of this road, the best in South Lebanon, was necessary within days of the launching of the invasion: it was the only route which could sustain logistically a multidivisional assault directed toward Beirut. The other north-south roads—narrow, winding routes which ran through the mountains to the east—would be supplying the Israeli forces facing the Syrians in these areas, and could not carry the logistical load of the coastal push as well.
This assumption was already badly damaged by the length of time it took to surround Sidon and reduce ‘Ain al-Hilweh. It was shattered in the fighting between Sidon and Beirut, particularly along the stretch of road in the Damour area, and between there and Khaldeh. Here, repeated amphibious and helicopter landings behind the lines of the JF, combined with outflanking sweeps through the mountains to the east, resulted in IDF advances but failed to clear the road, which could not be used in its entirety until after the IDF reached the outskirts of Beirut.
In the end, it was necessary for the Israelis to rely on their striking success in the Shouf mountains (one of the few areas where the speed of their advance came even close to their expectations) to swing to the east around the Khaldeh-Damour region. It was by this route, rather than by the coast, that Israeli forces finally arrived at Ba’abda and succeeded in encircling Beirut on June 13, at the same time outflanking the stubborn defenders of Khaldeh.
They did so at least four or five days behind schedule, coming from a different direction than planned, and with sections of the vital coast road still unusable. Indeed, heavy fighting continued at Khaldeh until June 14, and the Damour area was not fully cleared, according to one Israeli military source, until the nineteenth day of the war. By way of contrast, an Israeli journalist was told by one officer that IDF planners had expected three days would suffice to finish off the P.L.O.
17The battle for Khaldeh had another important effect on the course of the war, especially on the P.L.O. It was in some ways analagous to the effect of the grueling ten-day siege of ‘Ain al-Hilweh on the Israelis, symbolizing to all concerned just what the war was going to involve. The fighting at ‘Ain al-Hilweh was seen and heard, if only from a distance, by the men of most fresh Israeli units traveling north toward Beirut up the coast and Shouf roads to join the fighting or to relieve other units.
18 Even those Israeli soldiers who didn’t witness the fighting must have been affected by the length of time it took the vastly superior IDF, led by the crack Golani Brigade, to take the camp. This impact was undoubtedly compounded by the Golani’s heavy casualties in this battle (the unit’s second difficult engagement in one week, the first being at Beaufort Castle). Even though the drama of ‘Ain al-Hilweh was fully covered in both the P.L.O. and the Beirut media,
19 it took place too far away to have the same impact on the besieged defenders of Beirut as it did on the Israelis.
Khaldeh, on the other hand, is on the southern outskirts of the capital, and the fighting in and around it could constantly be seen and heard throughout much of the city. Indeed, it was virtually impossible for those in Beirut to ignore it. The stubborn five-day defense of this vital strategic crossroads and the area to the south and east of it by the JF, Amal militiamen, and Syrian troops boosted morale in Beirut considerably, and provided badly needed time for preparation of the city’s defense.
At this point the IDF made yet another critical mistake, in failing to launch an immediate thrust into Beirut. By doing so it would have capitalized immediately on the devastating impact on its opponents’ morale of the outflanking maneuver through the mountains to the east, which had encircled Beirut and eventually forced the evacuation of Khaldeh.
Here, for the first time, Sharon and his generals opted for caution. They sat on the outskirts of the city for several days as the fighting at Khaldeh and Ouzai just to the north of it dragged on, and brought troops into East Beirut by sea to complete the siege, all the while pushing tentatively north toward ‘Aley, located on the Beirut-Damascus highway. Only on June 21 did they open up a major new offensive.
Surprisingly, this was directed not at Beirut, but rather at pushing the Syrian division positioned together with P.L.O. forces in the mountainous ‘Aley-Bhamdun area further away from the capital. After four days of heavy combat involving severe casualties to both sides, the Israelis seized Bhamdun along the Beirut-Damascus highway. However, the IDF failed to cut off the retreat of the Syro-Palestinian forces involved, which managed to escape encirclement and withdraw eastward virtually intact. Their survival was due largely to the grim and determined defense of Bhamdun by crack Syrian commandos, who had been ordered to hold their ground at all costs until this withdrawal was complete.
The Israeli decision to fight this costly battle instead of assaulting Beirut was fully justified in terms of orthodox strategy (although it was probably primarily a response to the absence of any decision by the Israeli Cabinet to enter Beirut). At the same time, the Khaldeh road was not yet open until after June 17, and thus there was no major overland supply route for Israeli forces in the Beirut area. In addition, the Syrian division and P.L.O. units in the mountainous ‘Aley region, well supplied with artillery and easily reinforced, in theory threatened the rear and flanks of any Israeli force attacking Beirut. Finally, there were probably not enough Israeli troops on hand for a major push into the capital.
Yet without a daring drive on Beirut, exploiting the great psychological effect of the arrival of the IDF at Ba’abda on June 13, and ignoring the many dangers, what little hope the Israelis ever had of swiftly seizing the capital and thereby achieving their initial objectives evaporated. In any explanation of the reasons for what seems curiously like a failure of nerve on the part of the normally aggressive Sharon, the senior IDF generals, and the Cabinet, the searing impact of the fighting of the first two weeks of the war, and the relatively heavy casualties already suffered by the IDF, undoubtedly take a major place.
This was the last grave mistake the Israeli generals made on the battlefield, and the last time events deviated from their plans, which were now obselete. The entire logic of their operation had been predicated on swift, cumulative success, just as the entire tactical philosophy of the IDF has always been rooted in movement, maneuver, and deep penetration. Once the last chance of a rapid advance to the gates of Beirut, and a P.L.O. collapse and surrender of the city, were gone, the IDF was in uncharted waters, both doctrinally and in terms of what they had planned for before the invasion.
In the seven succeeding weeks during which Beirut was besieged, there were progressively less coherent attempts by Israel to improvise and to bluff. During this period, the initiative eventually slipped from the hands of Sharon within the Israeli leadership, events were determined increasingly in the politico-diplomatic rather than the military sphere, and control of outcomes shifted from Israel to the United States in the larger context.
The primary reason for this complex development, which many at the time perceived but had difficulty explaining, lay in the way events on the battlefield had developed beyond the control of Sharon and the Israeli military planners from the very outset of the war.
Palestinian expectations regarding an Israeli attack must naturally be looked at quite differently from those of the IDF command: whereas the latter had the advantage of being able to chose the time and place to strike, the P.L.O. could only wait and wonder where and when the blow was coming. Of course, the IDF had to revise its pre-war expectations in light of results in the field. But the Israelis should have had less need to do so than the P.L.O., because of their wide experience, their vastly superior intelligence-gathering capability, and the inestimable advantage of holding the initiative.
As regards of the pre-war period, a distinction must be made between Yasser ‘Arafat’s repeated public warnings that an Israeli attack was imminent, and what P.L.O. leaders and senior military commanders believed or actually did about these warnings. For at least five months before the invasion began, ‘Arafat stressed publicly and privately that Israel was preparing a major attack, aimed at trapping the P.L.O. between Israel forces coming up from the south and hostile forces in East Beirut. The terms he used for this were an “accordion” or a “pincers” operation. On other occasions, he referred publicly to the possibility that the attacking forces would reach Damour, Khaldeh, or even Beirut itself.
20The P.L.O. leadership was in receipt of information from a variety of sources—French, Egyptian, Soviet, Lebanese, and American to name only some of them—that such an attack was being planned. At least one of these reports indicated, in the words of one of these bearers of bad tidings, that during a visit to Washington, Sharon “would unroll his maps and show anyone who would pay attention how the Israeli army planned to reach Beirut.”
21What did ‘Arafat and senior P.L.O. military commanders do about this information, which was corroborated by P.L.O. military intelligence and by observations of Israeli preparations along the frontier both in April (when an attack was planned and then cancelled), and June 1982?
22 One view, that of military analyst Yezid Sayigh, is that Israel achieved a large measure of surprise, and that many P.L.O. military commanders did not realize Israeli objectives until well into the war,
23 although he admits elsewhere that “there was some prediction and planning” by the P.L.O.
24 Overall, Sayigh gives its military commanders low marks for their preparation to meet the attack, noting that the units which did best were those which had done their own contingency planning for this eventuality, whereas others “taken completely by surprise lost all cohesion.”
25 Schiff has offered a similarly negative assessment of the performance of P.L.O. regular forces and commanders.
26Granting the validity of some of these strictures, it must be asked how much effect preparations by commanders of a semiregular force of less than division strength could have had when they were about to be attacked by what General Chaim Herzog indicates was “a force of eight divisional groups” with absolute air and naval superiority?
Justifiable criticisms can certainly be made of the armament, training, logistics, and doctrine of P.L.O. military forces, as well of their pre-war dispositions. The responsibility for these basic shortcomings was long-standing, and should probably be divided between the P.L.O.’s political leadership and the senior military officers at the operations, sector and unit command levels. However, it has not been sufficiently appreciated by some critics that many of these dispositions were an inevitable function of the P.L.O.’s need to prepare to meet a multitude of perceived threats—local, Arab, and Israeli—at different levels of intensity. For example, the P.L.O. had to prepare to meet Israeli pinprick raids, use its miltary forces in paramilitary or police funtions in some areas, and (after the withdrawal of Syrian troops from many areas of the littoral in 1979–80), take precautions against hostile action by the LF. This naturally prevented single-minded concentration on the threat of a major Israeli attack.
But given the serious structural flaws in the organization of P.L.O. military forces, much was done in certain fields to prepare for the Israeli invasion. This included deployment of large reserve forces in the Beirut area; stockpiling of arms, fuel, food, medicines and other supplies in Beirut and elsewhere; widescale military training of Palestinian civilians and their organization on a militia basis beginning in the fall of 1981; and the building of a number of secret underground emergency military command posts in various parts of the capital.
Ultimately, better military preparations in the south might have saved a few units that were overrun by the IDF advance, and allowed a more effective and coordinated partisan war to have been waged more quickly against the IDF once it occupied the region. But excepting extensive pre-war preparation of the city of Sidon for a siege (which was politically out of the question), or breaking down semicon-ventional units into guerrilla formations before the war, or posting more able senior officers to commands in South Lebanon which were sure to be overrun, it is hard to see what more the P.L.O. command could have done in the way of dispositions.
As we saw in the last chapter, ‘Arafat and the P.L.O. leadership can certainly be faulted for their political mistakes, such as incorrectly reading the angry mood of the Lebanese toward the P.L.O. on the eve of the war, alienating the Syrian regime unnecessarily, and perhaps for crying wolf too often about an imminent Israeli attack. But these are quite different from purely military failings, which were many, but largely structural or long-standing.
When Israeli troops attacked on June 6, after two days of bombardment, they benefited from an element of strategic surprise. This was the result of a certain decline of alertness on the part of some P.L.O. front-line units, after many months of awaiting an enemy attack. The July 1981 cross-border clashes, during which Israeli forces had never crossed the frontier, and a false alarm in April 1982, when heavy Israeli bombing and shelling were not followed by a ground attack, probably helped in this. At the same time, many in the P.L.O. felt a certain paradoxical relief that at last the long period of suspense was over.
27Tactical surprise was provided by the rapid speed with which Israeli ground forces moved forward (especially as compared with 1978); by their willingness to surround and leave behind P.L.O. strongpoints; by their massive use of air- and sealift capabilities to move forces deep behind the front lines, including armored vehicles; by the intense weight of the combined air, sea, and artillery bombardments employed; and finally by the deep penetration of their advance.
But the “Palestinian surprise” for the IDF (the words are those of Ze’ev Schiff) was that many P.L.O. units left behind or surrounded were apparently prepared for this and fought on; others cut off by Israeli helibome or amphibious forces would turn on them and force them to withdraw (this happened at the Zahrani and Khaldeh beachheads, and in the ‘Arqoub); and most often when Israeli spearheads broke through a defensive position, they would find another awaiting them farther north.
28 In sum, Schiff noted, “in this war Palestinians did not shrink from direct confrontation with IDF units.”
29This would seem to argue for a reasonably accurate prewar set of expectations and some preparations on the part of the P.L.O. forces in the field, if not of their most senior commanders. As a general rule, a high degree of surprise combined with adverse battlefield circumstances can normally be expected to provoke panic and flight among unprepared troops. Israeli planners were counting on their massive offensive doing this, if what several sources indicate about their projections for the rate of the advance is correct.
30 Yet it did not happen, except in a few cases.
To conclude, the P.L.O. was ill-prepared in many ways to meet the attack it knew it was coming, but this was a function of underlying flaws and weaknesses in its military organization. Its basic problem was that it was utterly mis matched in the field against a large part of the total forces (including eight of fifteen divisions) of the preeminent regional superpower. Given this imbalance, given the numbing effect of waiting for months for the inevitable attack their leaders kept telling them was coming, and given the tactical surprise the Israelis managed to achieve on a number of levels, it is surprising that P.L.O. forces fought as well as they did.
The wartime reaction and adaptation to a new situation of these same forces presents a somewhat different picture. While most units in the field appear to have reacted as well as could have been expected to the massive assault they faced, regional and large unit commands frequently failed to respond to the emerging situation, particularly in the south in the first three or four days of the war.
This was especially noticeable in the Sidon region, where the crucial Awwali landing was not dealt with effectively. This was partly because the commanding officer, Colonel Hajj Isma‘il, abandoned his post on the second day of the invasion, and in consequence there was a lack of central direction in a key battle.
31 There was a similar loss of control in the Tyre area, although there the regional commander, Lieutenant Colonel ‘Azmi Sghayir, fell in combat, after leading his forces in a battle in which an Israeli brigade commander was killed.
This underlines the fact that pitted against the vast superiority of the IDF, it made little difference what was done by the regional command: ultimately there was no way to maneuver large bodies of men or to move heavy weapons in the face of Israel’s total command of the air and sea, and its dominance on the ground. Thus, throughout the south during the first days of the invasion, large P.L.O. units broke up, their heavy weapons destroyed or abandoned, and the men sought the cover of built-up areas or the hills. Where they were able to do this—in the Tyre and Sidon areas, and in the mountainous ‘Arqoub—they effectively held up the Israeli advance.
Only when fighting reached the southern approaches to Beirut and during the siege of the city did the P.L.O. command begin to plan effectively, respond rapidly, and direct the battle so as to have an impact on the flow of events. Here, after an initial period of shock and paralysis, IDF axes of advance were foreseen, swift preparations made, reserves moved, defense lines established, and advances stopped again and again. From the initial battles at Khaldeh to the final attacks in August, when the IDF made its last attempt to breach Joint Forces lines and penetrate the city, the command and control problems which had plagued the P.L.O. military forces in the south seemed to diminish progressively.
In part this was a function of the battle becoming more static as it moved closer to the P.L.O. central leadership and military command, and further away from those of Israel. In part it derived from the uniquely favorable battlefield that the heavily built-up Beirut metropolitan area provided to a force which excelled in street fighting that was opposing another which preferred a war of maneuver in the open country. And in large measure it was a result of the time the defenders of ‘Ain al-Hilweh, the other camps in the south, and Khaldeh had bought for those in Beirut to catch their breath, adjust to the reality of the vast weight of the IDF bearing down on them, and make appropriate preparations to meet it.
32In addition to all these givens, which the P.L.O. leadership in Beirut could do little to change, they were responsible for a number of actions which positively affected the situation. One was the appointment of a top-ranking officer, known for his courage and respected by the men in the ranks, to command the vital Khaldeh sector at the outset of the war.
Colonel ‘Abdullah Siyam was a founding member of Fateh, and had been a senior officer in the Egypt-based ‘Ain Jalout brigade of the Palestine Liberation Army (P.L.A.). After years of distinguished combat service in South Lebanon, he had been languishing in a minor posting, only to be propelled into what at that moment was the most important P.L.O. field command. The highest-ranking P.L.O. officer to be killed during the war, he died when his command post was overrun in the vicious battle for this intersection, but the five days the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese defenders of the Khaldeh/Ouza‘i area held up the Israelis amply justified his appointment, and his sacrifice.
Another such action was the redeployment in the Beirut area of units which had escaped the IDF steamroller in the south. While this may seem an obvious decision, it was not the only possible one: these forces could have remained safely in the mountains or the Biqa‘, where most of them first withdrew to. But impelled by their individual commanders, by orders from the P.L.O. command, or by the desire of their men to get back into the fight, these units were rushed into Beirut in spite of the impending isolation of the city, until the Beirut-Damascus road was finally cut on June 13. Smaller formations succeeded in infiltrating through the siege lines even later.
These fighters measurably stiffened the militia and regular forces already in position defending the city, bringing both their numbers and their valuable combat experience in the south to this crucial battle. In addition, several officers who managed to reach Beirut from the south were given senior commands, and played important roles during the siege. They were especially helpful in the constitution of the command, staff, and field operations headquarters of each of the eight military sectors into which the besieged city was divided, and in reinforcing the P.L.O. central operations staff.
33It is ironic in view of the P.L.O. decision to move as many fighters as possible into the soon-to-be-besieged city that some Israeli military analysts have faulted Sharon and the IDF for not leaving a route open for the P.L.O.’s escape. Had they done so, quite the opposite result would most probably have obtained, and the Israelis would have had to face even larger numbers of opponents inside the city.
The last phase of the war contrasts strikingly with the prewar period, when P.L.O. planning and preparation was indifferent in some areas and negligent in others, and with the early part of the war, when most of the forces in the field were rapidly overwhelmed, and organized resistance could continue only in the built-up areas and the mountainous ‘Arquob. Indeed, the siege of Beirut provides many examples of accurate expectations, and of excellent preparation by the P.L.O. command and the units in the field.
Deserving of particular mention are the building of massive antitank earth barriers on virtually all main roads, and the laying of extensive minefields along the projected axes of the IDF’s advance.
34 After delays in launching this work early in the war, these precautions proved their worth during Israeli attacks in July and August, when key sectors of the siege perimeter in built-up regions like the port and Museum crossing points, as well as the vulnerable seafront, proved virtually impenetrable.
Only in open areas such as the airport, the Golf Club, and the Bir Hassan region in the southern suburbs was it impossible for P.L.O. engineers to take effective measures capable of halting Israeli armor: and only here did the Israeli army succeed in advancing, from beginning to end of the siege. If anything, P.L.O. planners erred on the side of caution, preparing for a full-scale Israeli ground assault up to the last moment, although as the battle inched closer to the more heavily built-up areas of central Beirut, there were many indications that it was impossible for the IDF to storm the city without a politically unacceptable level of causalties.
On the other hand, that such caution was necessary was shown by the extraordinary measures taken to protect the P.L.O. central military command structure, the P.L.O. political leadership, and in particular its head, Yasser ‘Arafat. All were targets of persistent, deadly Israeli attacks, with the Chairman’s office, including its underground section, and two alternate and heavily used headquarters destroyed by Israeli air attack using precision-guided munitions (PGM) in the first weeks of the war.
35 Later on, several buildings apparently suspected of harboring members of the P.L.O. leadership were completely destroyed in air strikes.
Previously prepared substitutes for existing command posts were already staffed and manned before these attacks began, and when one was discovered (through use of radio direction-finding equipment, “traditional” espionage, or other means) and destroyed, a new one was rapidly brought into use. Except for one period of a few hours’ duration, the Central Operations room was never out of radio or field telephone contact with the sector commands during the entire siege, in spite of this intense Israeli pressure on the P.L.O. command structure.
Although there were casualties among the key headquarters staff, including duty officers, radio operators, and guards in these unremitting attacks
36 the IDF bombers never were able to hit the site where the Central Operations HQ was located, as it moved rapidly from one fully staffed bomb shelter to another. This was a direct result of meticulous preparation and acute foresight, for as the war went on it became apparent that killing the P.L.O.’s top political leadership and knocking out its military command structure was a main Israeli priority. It would very probably have been achieved had these precautions not been taken long before the war.
As for expecting what might happen to the Palestinian civil population after the P.L.O. departed, its leaders were deeply fearful. They had every reason to be worried. The history of the Lebanese war was replete with massacres of defenseless civilians, most of them directed against Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims. Then, in late June, the LF were allowed by their Israeli patrons to enter the Druze areas of the Shouf, and promptly began killing unarmed civilians. This was perceived by many in Beirut as a harbinger of what could be expected in the wake of an Israeli victory, a P.L.O. withdrawal, and a Phalangist takeover.
37As early as June 30, 1982, a telex from ‘Arafat in response to U.S. proposals for a P.L.O. withdrawal transmitted via the French was explicit in this regard: “The important subject is what are the guarantees against a massacre of Palestinians, both civilians and military, in view of what happened in Tyre and Sidon, and after what the Phalangists did yesterday to Lebanese patriots in the mountains.”
38Securing ironclad guarantees for the safety of the Palestinian civilian population after the departure of P.L.O. military forces was a central focus of the wartime P.L.O.-U.S. negotiations. Tragically, the subject was never given sufficient importance by Philip Habib and the policymakers he represented.