The blunders of Lebanon

Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the start of the Lebanon War. It is good to see that some of the generals, politicians and journalists who gave the war their ardent support then, have a different opinion today. But what should be of interest to us now are not the ploys and stratagems that led to the war and its subsequent expansion; what we need to focus on are the strategic blunders that brought about the war and its consequences.

The first blunder derived from the far-reaching political goals of the war - such as the intention to impose a president on Lebanon - which caused a deep rift inside Israel. Wars that do not have a national consensus are doomed to failure - that is a lesson to be remembered. Israel received an American green light for a limited military move, and the expansion of the incursion led to a clash with Washington. The result was the development of an Israeli-initiated war without superpower backing. On top of this, the attempt to impose peace by the force of arms on our neighbor to the north was a lost cause from the outset.

The second blunder, which in some ways was more serious than the first, was the decision to remain in Lebanon indefinitely. It took three years before the government (a Likud-Labor government) decided, by majority vote, to withdraw and create a security zone with an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia (the South Lebanon Army). We took most of our losses in those three years inside Lebanon, including attacks by suicide bombers. The list of the excuses dredged up for remaining in Lebanon is incredible. We thought, for example, that holding Sidon would mean peace for Galilee.

Israel opposed the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, which placed responsibility for Southern Lebanon in the hands of the Lebanese army - a demand we are now putting forward. Over time, we made the Shi'ite population in Lebanon our enemy. Hezbollah, the militant organization we indirectly helped bring into being, supplanted the Amal and became the major armed militia in Lebanon. That, in turn, opened the door to intensive Iranian involvement in Lebanon. We found ourselves in the embarrassing situation in which a guerrilla group turned the Galilee settlements into hostages. And the story is not over yet, as the Iranians have created a rocket-based strategic arm in Lebanon. In all these years, there was no central figure in the defense establishment who was able to persuade his colleagues to reexamine the strategic conception regarding Lebanon.

The third blunder has to do with our various friends - with and without quotation marks - in Lebanon. The first were the Phalangists, our partners in the war of June 1982. Their chief purpose was to get us involved in a war in which we would expel the Syrians from Lebanon for them. They got us entangled in the massacre they perpetrated against Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut. Although they proved they were slicker than all our wise men in the Mossad espionage agency and in the government, the final result was that the war greatly enfeebled them. Lebanon is a treacherous land.

Even with Lebanon presenting a front of fighting terrorism shoulder to shoulder with the West, Qaida refugees from Afghanistan continue to slip into the country. The assassin of the president of Lebanon was released from prison and those who carried out the massacre of the Palestinians are today free men. They have a brutal attitude toward the Palestinians and even today, they want to get rid of the Palestinian refugees by sending them to Israel. Israel, too, demonstrated shameless ingratitude toward its most sincere ally, the SLA, hundreds of whose members were killed in the security zone in what was actually the defense of Israel's northern border.

History had a good laugh at Israel's expense during the Lebanon War and its aftermath. We expelled Yasser Arafat and his army from Lebanon partly in order to deliver an indirect blow to the Palestinians in the territories. When Arafat tried to return to Lebanon, the Syrians expelled him. Finally, because of the hasty strategy of the Oslo accord, we brought Arafat and his whole army into the Land of Israel and thus began a new round of the 1948 War of Independence.