Lebanon Army. Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon would last for nearly eigh-
teen years, until 2000 (Israeli Withdrawal from Lebanon, p. 354).
Israel’s third objective, the peace treaty with Lebanon, proved more elusive. As
Israel had hoped, Bashir Gemayel was elected president on August 23. Before he could
take office, however, he was assassinated, on September 14. His killers were never iden-
tified, but most evidence pointed toward Syrian military intelligence. Amin Gemayel,
Bashir’s younger brother, was then elected president, and on May 17, 1983, he signed
an agreement with Israel. Under intense Syrian pressure, however, Gemayel later abro-
gated it.
The assassination of Bashir Gemayel led, at least indirectly, to another defining
event of the invasion. Under orders from Sharon, Israeli troops on the evening of Sep-
tember 16 allowed Phalange militia members to enter Sabra and Shatilla, two adjacent
Palestinian refugee camps in southern Beirut. The stated purpose of the operation was
to find Palestinian guerrillas supposedly hiding there. Instead, the Phalange fighters—
apparently seeking revenge for the killing of Gemayel—indiscriminately killed Pales-
tinians in the camps, including children and women. A subsequent Israeli investiga-
tion concluded that it was impossible to determine the exact number of people killed
over the course of nearly two days in the camp. The Lebanese Red Cross counted
more than 300 bodies, Israeli military intelligence estimated the dead at 700 to 800,
and Palestinian authorities in the camps claimed at least 2,000 killed.
The massacre of the Palestinians caused an international uproar, during which
Israel generally was blamed for allowing the Phalange into the camps, making much
worse an image already damaged by the invasion in general. Hoping to calm the sit-
uation, the United States, France, and other countries sent another peacekeeping force
into Lebanon. These troops began arriving in late September, but their stay was cut
short after suicide bombings in October 1983 killed approximately 300 U.S. and
French servicemen (U.S. Involvement in Lebanon, p. 339).
The Israeli government appointed a commission to investigate the Sabra and
Shatilla massacres. The report it issued in February 1983 faulted senior Israeli officials
for not having prevented the killings. The commission laid particular blame on Sharon
“for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Pha-
langists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to take this
danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps.” Sharon,
though forced to resign as defense minister, remained in the cabinet as minister with-
out portfolio.
No accurate count exists of the casualties from Israel’s invasion, but most estimates
put the number of Lebanese civilians in the low thousands. Another 1,000 or so PLO
fighters probably were killed, along with at least 500 Syrian troops. Israel had lost 650
soldiers by the time it withdrew the bulk of its forces in 1985. The physical damage
to Lebanon was immense, adding to the toll of destruction from the civil war that
started in 1975. Beirut neighborhoods that had escaped damage during earlier rounds
of fighting were turned to rubble, and thousands of acres of cropland in southern
Lebanon were destroyed.
Israeli gains from the invasion proved to be only temporary. With the departure
of the Palestinians, Shiite Muslims in Lebanon became more assertive politically and
militarily. With support from Iran, a Shiite faction formed Hizballah, an organization
with a militia that starting in 1983 began carrying out guerrilla attacks against Israel.
336 LEBANON AND SYRIA