Since 1978 a series of Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, including a years-long occupation, have failed to bring security and calm to northern Israel.
As Israeli forces escalate their current campaign, how does this operation compare with previous incursions?
Operation Litani, 1978
In March 1978, after the “coastal road massacre”, when a group of Palestine Liberation Organisation members entered Israel from Lebanon and killed 35 civilians, Israel launched Operation Litani. Its target was PLO bases in southern Lebanon and its objective to restore security in northern Israel.
At its height, the operation involved about 25,000 Israeli troops, including the bulk of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) 36th Division and the Paratroopers Corps. During the fighting the scope was extended to include operations up to the Litani River, a key demarcation point in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli forces struggled to significantly engage PLO fighters who withdrew. About 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed in the operation, which lasted until June, when UN peacekeepers from the newly formed UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were deployed under UN security council resolutions that called for Israel’s withdrawal.
Lebanon war, 1982
Despite Operation Litani, security in northern Israel had not been restored and clashes between the PLO and Israeli forces around the border continued. When the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization shot and badly wounded the Israeli ambassador in London, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, blamed the PLO instead and used it as a pretext to launch Operation Peace for Galilee.
The aim was to restore security in northern Israel, and destroy Palestinian forces and their infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon, backed by Christian allies of Israel, who Israel hoped would form the basis of a more Israel-friendly regime, putting Beirut under siege for several months.
Amid the fighting 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of whom 5,500 were civilians from west Beirut.
While Israel succeeded in forcing the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon under international supervision, the assassination of the Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, triggered the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Christian Phalangists killed 2,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Kahan commission later judged that Israel was “indirectly” responsible for the massacre.
Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, 1982–2000
Although Israeli forces withdrew from Beirut, Israel continued to occupy southern Lebanon for 18 years, operating largely south of the Awali River. From 1985 Israeli forces concentrated their operations in alliance with the Christian paramilitary South Lebanon Army [SLA], in the so-called security zone, which was between 5km and 20km deep and ran the length of the border.
The described purpose of the occupation and security zone was to ensure the safety of residents of northern Israel. However, with the PLO now gone, the zone became the focus of a new conflict between Israeli occupation forces and groups including the newly emerged Shia group Hezbollah, which would emerge at the forefront of a guerilla war against Israeli troops.
The occupation was much smaller in size than previous active incursions, but ultimately failed to restore security to northern Israel. It ended over two days in May 2000 when the prime minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the withdrawal of Israeli forces in compliance with UN resolution 425, triggering the collapse of the SLA.
The most obvious immediate beneficiary of the occupation and withdrawal was Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was credited in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world with driving out the IDF.
Second Lebanon war, 2006
After a complex operation by Hezbollah across the border to kidnap Israeli soldiers to swap for prisoners, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, launched the second Lebanon war “to change the equation”, by attempting to force Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon to restore security in Israel’s north.
As the Israeli academic Prof Efraim Inbar noted a year after the month-long war, the IDF “planned for small skirmishes, not for a large-scale, conventional military campaign” and was caught out by the intensity of Hezbollah’s resistance, describing “overreliance on airpower [as] another strategic folly”.
The war began with a massive air operation including the bombing of Beirut’s airport, Hezbollah headquarters and rocket stockpiles in Beirut, and militia positions and rocket launchers in the south. An initial ground incursion of 2,000 troops escalated quickly.
The conflict is now regarded as one of Israel’s most inconclusive wars. The fighting ended with the unanimous passage of UN security council resolution 1701, which envisaged the disarmament of armed groups including Hezbollah and no armed forces other than UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces south of the Litani River. However, 1701 was never enforced.
Third Lebanese war, 2023-?
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Hezbollah began firing missiles, mortars and anti-tank fire from its positions in southern Lebanon in support of Hamas, in a campaign that gathered pace and violence on both sides over a year.
In recent months there has been growing political pressure to allow the return of 60,000 displaced Israelis and to restore calm and security in northern Israel.
In what now appears to have been a complex and well-laid plan, Israel began targeting Hezbollah in recent weeks, first through the use of exploding communications devices supplied to the group surreptitiously, and then via the assassination of its leadership, including Nasrallah, in a series of airstrikes.
A week ago, following a now familiar pattern, Israel launched what it said were limited operations on the border to clear Hezbollah infrastructure. That, however, has rapidly expanded, with elements of four separate Israeli divisions operating in the ground campaign.
At the time of writing the scope of the operation, and whether it is more achievable than previous campaigns, remains unclear. Since last October at least 2,036 people in Lebanon have been killed and 9,535 wounded.
