the Greek Orthodox), ‘national’ meant perpetua-
tion of Christian and right-wing predominance in
an independent pro-Western Lebanon.
In 1970 the Palestinian militants failed in their
attempt to achieve domination over Jordan. Yasser
Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation
were forced out and with their militant followers
moved into the hapless Lebanon, where they pro-
ceeded to build up their last territorial stronghold
in the areas controlled by the refugees. The term
‘refugee camps’ applied to these strongholds, is
really a misnomer, for the Palestinians created a
state within a state. From the Lebanon Palestinian
commandos raided Israel, attacking settlements
and provoking Israeli counter-strikes against
Palestinian targets in the Lebanon.
In 1975 civil war was renewed. The Muslim
groups forged an alliance with the Palestinians,
the army split and the central government lost
control over the country. It could regain it only
with outside help. The Lebanon was now divided
into warring factions; Christian family clans
fought each other for supreme power even as they
battled with the Muslim–Palestinian–left alliance.
The Israelis sent arms to the Maronite Christians,
and the Syrians, responding to pleas for help from
the Christian-dominated central Lebanese gov-
ernment, intervened militarily in 1976, driving the
Muslim–Palestinian forces back. Yasser Arafat’s
independent PLO was as little loved in Syria as it
was in Jordan. In 1978, to stamp out Palestinian
commando raids, the Israelis occupied the south-
ern Lebanon, and before withdrawing installed a
‘friendly’ Maronite Christian militia under Major
Saad Haddad to keep order and prevent further
PLO attacks. The Lebanon had long since ceased
to be a unitary state and was becoming a quagmire
of internecine factions, none of which was suffi-
ciently powerful to control more than a particular
area, each with its own stronghold. As if these
internal rivalries were not enough, Syrian–Israeli
hostility, the Palestinian–Maronite Christian con-
flict and, after the outbreak of the Gulf War in
1980, pro-Iraqi and pro-Iranian Muslim rivalry
accelerated the disintegration and destruction of
the Lebanon.
For the Israelis, the continued presence of the
PLO in the Lebanon, not to mention the Syrians,
represented a serious threat. So the civil strife
offered opportunities, but it led them into the ill-
fated invasion of the Lebanon in 1982, which was
intended to settle once and for all the Palestinian
question and to prove that continued Arab enmity
towards Israel was unrealistic in view of its military
superiority. The militant PLO would be driven
from their last land base in a neighbouring coun-
try. Israeli prospects seemed favourable, because
Syria and the Palestinians were practically isolated
and their forces much inferior. Israel had already,
by concluding peace with Egypt, secured its south-
ern border against the only strong army that might
have threatened it. Its first war of aggression was
the consequence of a fundamental change in inter-
nal politics during the previous five years.
In Israeli politics a major turning point occurred in
1977 with the victory of the right-wing Likud
Party over the broad labour grouping led by the
Labour Party (Mapai). Labour’s support had suf-
fered after the heavy casualties of the Yom Kippur
War in 1973, which had found Israel inadequately
prepared and had placed the country for a time in
real danger. Golda Meir fell from office and was
succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin, who had been chief
of staff in the Six-Day War of 1967. During
Rabin’s premiership, the US made great efforts to
mediate a peace between Israel and its neighbours.
This introduced the diplomatic world to the new
concept of ‘shuttle diplomacy’, as the American
secretary of state Henry Kissinger carried out
negotiations, tirelessly flying between Damascus,
Cairo and Jerusalem. Kissinger succeeded at least
partially – disengagement agreements were con-
cluded between Israel, Syria and Egypt. What
blocked a more comprehensive settlement was the
requirement of the Arab states that Israel should
withdraw from the territories it had conquered in
1967 – the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem. This raised the possibility of a hostile
Palestinian presence or even state as Israel’s new
neighbour. Israeli militants were already creating
their own settlements, and there was broad sup-
port from large sections of the electorate that the
West Bank, biblical Judaea and Samaria, must
remain a part of an enlarged Israel. With
Arab–Israeli talks deadlocked, only Nasser’s suc-
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