b) The media are to be directed towards the consolidation of the cease-fire, the
establishment of peace and the propagation of a spirit of cooperation and fra-
ternity among all parties.
c) The governmental media must be reunified....SOURCE: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Foreign Affairs and National Defense Divi-
sion, The Search for Peace in the Middle East: Documents and Statements, 1967–1979. Report Prepared for
the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), 336–337.Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Palestinian guerrillas remained in southern Lebanon following the first round of the
Lebanese civil war during 1975–1976. The next round of the war can be divided into
two phases driven in large part by Israeli actions: a limited Israeli invasion in March
1978 followed by a much broader and longer-lasting Israeli invasion starting in June
- The 1982 invasion resulted in consequences whose effects would be felt through-
out the region for more than two decades.
In the 1978 invasion, Israel attempted to shore up a “security zone” that it had
tried to create along its border inside Lebanon at the end of the fighting in 1976.
Israel at that time had equipped a predominantly Christian militia led by Saad Had-
dad, a renegade major in the Lebanese Army. Israel had hoped that the zone would
prevent Palestinian guerrillas from using the border area as a base for launching attacks
against it. Haddad’s militia, however, was unable to control the territory, so on March
14, 1978, Israel sent its army into Lebanon to clear a zone some six miles deep.
At about the same time, the United Nations deployed the UN Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) in a multinational peacekeeping operation. This 6,000-man force
operated in the area just north of the zone established by Israel but was unable to stop
Palestinians from launching mid-range rockets and other operations against Israel. A
series of cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas in mid-
1981 ended in a U.S.-brokered cease-fire that had the distinction of being the first
diplomatic arrangement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).
Although the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire was relatively successful in halting fur-
ther cross-border violence, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin
decided late in 1981 on another invasion of Lebanon, to be launched when appro-
priate circumstances arose. As a pretext, the Begin government cited the June 3, 1982,
attempted assassination of its ambassador to Great Britain by the Palestinian group
334 LEBANON AND SYRIA