tinian fighters from the border area. Despite a demand by the UN Security Council, in
Resolution 425 adopted in March 1978, that it withdraw completely from Lebanon,
Israel maintained the zone and then temporarily expanded it to a depth of twenty-five
miles during the 1982 invasion. The latter invasion resulted in the forced evacuation of
Palestinian leaders and most of their fighters from Lebanon, but it also allowed Syria to
tighten its grip on most of Lebanon (Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, pp. 334–337).
Israel had delegated to the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a proxy militia primarily
of Christian and Druze fighters, most of the work of patrolling the border area inside
Lebanon. Israeli troops manned the key positions in southern Lebanon, and Israel
retained overall control of the territory. Through the rest of the 1980s and into the
1990s, Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon became increasingly unpopular in both
countries. In Lebanon, the Israeli presence fueled support among Shiite Muslims for
the Iranian-backed Hizballah (Party of God), created in response to the 1982 invasion
to fight the Israelis. Many Israelis referred to Lebanon as their “Vietnam,” using words
such as “quagmire” to describe how their country had become bogged down in the
long-term occupation of a neighboring state.
In a successful campaign for Israeli prime minister in May 1999, retired general
Ehud Barak pledged to pull Israeli troops from Lebanon within a year. Once in office,
Barak first turned his attention to negotiating a peace agreement with Syria, report-
edly hoping that such an accord would lead Damascus to act as a stabilizing force in
southern Lebanon.
As the final stages of Israeli-Syrian negotiations got under way, Barak asked and won
his cabinet’s approval, on March 5, 2000, to withdraw from Lebanon. The withdrawal
was to be completed by that July, and the Israelis hoped that it would be carried out
“in the framework of an agreement” with Syria. Three weeks later, however, all pros-
pects of an agreement collapsed when Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad rejected as inade-
quate Barak’s offer on the central issue dividing the two countries: the scope of Israel’s
withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel had captured from Syria
in 1967. Barak wanted Israel to retain control of the shores of the Sea of Galilee, while
Assad insisted on the return of all territory he regarded as belonging to Syria.
When it became clear that the withdrawal would be unilateral, Israel began shift-
ing more responsibility to the SLA. Israel also asked the United Nations to beef up
its peacekeeping force—the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—
which had been monitoring the situation in southern Lebanon since 1978. UN mem-
ber countries, however, refused to provide more troops for a mission that would likely
bring peacekeepers into conflict with Hizballah.
Israel’s plans for an orderly withdrawal began to fall apart on May 21, when sev-
eral hundred Lebanese civilians surged into the security zone. In the next two days,
thousands more civilians, in some cases accompanied by Hizballah guerrillas, moved
into the area. The SLA fell away, and thousands of its troops and their family mem-
bers crossed the border into Israel along with the Israeli army. By May 24, the last
Israeli soldiers had withdrawn from Lebanon, weeks earlier than had been planned.
Hizballah leaders immediately proclaimed a great “victory” over Israel, asserting that
Israel had retreated from Lebanon because of its long-running military operations.
To determine Israeli compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425 of
1978 demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent a
delegation headed by his special Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen. UN officials
LEBANON AND SYRIA 355