June 15, 1992

A just and necessary war

By ARIEL SHARON

MUCH has been written about the Operation Peace for Galilee on its recent 10th anniversary. It may be useful to review the facts. On May 3, 1984, former mayor of Kiryat Shmona, A. Aloni (Labor), wrote in an open letter: "One thing is clear; in Kiryat Shmona living became impossible. From December 1968, when the town was first shelled by Katyusha rockets, life was hell ... The leaders who decided to embark on this war did so in no little measure because of our pressure."

Imri Ron of Mapam, a member of a kibbutz and a reserve battalion commander, said: "For how many PLO cannons must Israel wait, so that it can justify expelling the terrorists from areas from which Kiryat Shmona and Nahariya can be bombarded?" (Yediot Aharonot, July 16, 1982. ) Some two years after Operation Peace for Galilee, a woman kibbutz member at Rosh Hanikra said: "For us residents of Galilee, it is difficult to conceive a more just war than [this one]." (Ma'ariv, May 20, 1984. )

President Chaim Herzog (then a Labor MK) said: "The war was unavoidable ... No sovereign state can live for long with a loaded gun held to its temple." (Davar, July 11, 1982. ) Henry Kissinger told The Washington Post (June 21, 1982): "Whatever our opinion may be of the official reason given by Israel for the attack on the Palestinians, there is no argument over its strategic justification. No sovereign state can tolerate endlessly the strengthening along its border of a military force wishing to destroy it."

And on July 8, 1982, in the Knesset, Labor MK Yitzhak Rabin said: "All Israel's wars, since the War of Independence to this day, are just wars, without any doubt, without any question. How much more so is this the case when it is a war against the PLO, a murderous organization ... ?" Even eight months later, in February 1983, in an interview with Newsweek, Rabin was still saying, "I believe it [the incursion into Lebanon] had to happen, sooner or later, because no Israel government could permit a situation in which 200,000 of its residents are hostages to the PLO threat from South Lebanon." We repeatedly hear the claim that the PLO had observed a ceasefire in the 11 months preceding the operation, and therefore the entire war was superfluous and even evil. The above quotations should be sufficient to refute this claim. So do the facts: the ceasefire was observed only by Israel.

In that period, terrorist attacks caused the death of 23 soldiers of the IDF and the South Lebanon Army, tourists, Arabs and foreigners in Israel and abroad; 250 people were injured in these operations. In addition, the PLO was enormously strengthened, accumulating various heavy weapons, includin some 350 artillery pieces and Katyusha launchers.

It should not be surprising therefore that on June 14, 1982, Amnon Rubinstein (today a Meretz party leader and its information head) wrote: "The truth of the matter is that along the Lebanese border, a ceasefire was more or less kept by the terrorists - but the reason for Operation Peace for Galilee is not important. Important was the reality created across the border ... We are permitted to ask a simple question: 'Against whom are those weapons aimed ... which the terrorists have accumulated in South Lebanon?'

"Israel had the right, a right reserved for all states, to act against this aggression." It was no wonder that Rubinstein concluded that "Israel embarked on a just war against the terrorists."

THE achievements of the war in Lebanon were enormous. Wiping out the PLO as a military factor was the most important. In one more year of reinforcement, this force could have ignited a much larger and more lethal war at a place, time, and method of its choosing.

Explaining the reason for the terrorists' (very relative) restraint, a PLO commander on the eve of the war (May 18, 1982) told Thomas Friedman of The New York Times: "We know what the Israelis want ... We did not want to give them any pretext. When we fight them, it will be at a time and in conditions convenient to us."

Had we not expelled the PLO and destroyed its infrastructure - and, most important, its center in Beirut and south of there - long before the intifada erupted, the PLO in Lebanon would have become a foe to be reckoned with. In the framework of our given limitations, it would have been too strong for the IDF to attack successfully; and it already possessed the power to shell the North, paralyze life there, cause an exodus of many residents, and even destroy entire villages.

We broke the PLO and turned it from the dominant factor in the Arab world and the international community - and one must study the press then to recall the standing Arafat and his organization enjoyed - into a beggar living in Tunis on limited, selective contributions from Arab countries. It was this that forced the Palestinians, against their will, to the negotiating table.

It was the terrorists, not the Syrians, who were the enemy. But the blows suffered by the Syrians, especially from the air, also contributed to deterring Damascus and giving it decisive proof of the possible advantages of negotiating with Israel.

For 10 years, virtually no Katyushas have fallen in Galilee. True, by pulling the IDF out of Lebanon to a too-narrow security zone in 1985, Rabin and Shimon Peres committed what can only be described as a political and security crime. Yet even this egregious irresponsibility only enabled the PLO to return to South Lebanon, not to restore its power and freedom of action.

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