Forty years ago this week, on August 16, 1982, Israel forced Yasser Arafat and his PLO fighters out of Beirut into exile in Tunisia. The government that had launched the first Lebanon war two months earlier believed that expelling the PLO would make the terror organization and its leader forever irrelevant.
In fact, Prime Minister Menachem Begin speculated during a speech to the Knesset earlier that month that Israel was on the verge of enjoying 40 years of peace. As JTA reported at the time, Begin "cited the Biblical passage ‘and the land was quiet for forty years,’ saying it might well apply to Israel now that the northern border threat had been dealt with."
Begin continued: "The peace with Egypt is holding…Jordan cannot attack us. Syria cannot attack us, it does not have the capability. With Lebanon, we shall sign a peace treaty."
Ah, if it were only that simple. Then again, that’s what so many of Israel’s leaders have done since 1948 – they sell us the false narrative that initiating military force will usher in a more peaceful world. They think they don’t need to address the underlying grievances of the adversary because they don’t see those grievances as legitimate.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat inspects the bomb damage to West Beirut's Arab University following heavy bombardment by Israeli forces the day beforeCredit: MOURAD RAOUF / AP
What did the 1982 invasion of Lebanon bring Israel? Not forty years of peace, but forty years of painful, unintended consequences. Begin did not understand that resistance to Israeli occupation in general and by the Palestinian movement in particular was much bigger than the PLO. The Lebanon War led to the rise of Hezbollah, which has hurt and threatened Israel more than the PLO ever did.
Arafat’s exile and the weakening of the PLO over the next several years sowed seeds of desperation among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who saw no way out of the occupation and took matters into their own hands with the launch of the first intifada in 1987. The first intifada, in turn, gave birth to Hamas.
Begin’s speculation about forty years of peace was as foolish and presumptuous as George Bush’s "Mission Accomplished" declaration about the Iraq War in 2003. Speaking of foolish predictions, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a "guarantee" in 2002 that taking out Saddam Hussein would have "enormous positive reverberations on the region," and that "people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone."
Using force to change the political status quo in one’s favor is tempting when one has military superiority. It’s intoxicating, and it’s dangerous. The same could be said regarding the occupation of the territories since 1967. The quietest period in Israeli history was the decade before the Six-Day War. The latest Gaza-Israel conflagration shows that it took just six days to occupy the territories but a lifetime to rule them – or to realize such control is unattainable.
Israeli soldiers during an urban warfare exercise at 'Mini Gaza,' an army training facility simulating a Palestinian urban areaCredit: Oded Balilty /AP
Israel needs less hubris and more recognition that there are underlying causes to its conflict with the Palestinians that no military operation, no matter how many targets the army eliminates, can address.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to turn back the hands of time: Hezbollah and Hamas are not going away. Wars create more problems than they solve, and it is now harder for Israel to achieve peace with the Palestinians than it was in May 1967 or even in May 1982. The Abraham Accords do not make a significant difference because they do not address the root causes, either.
It is hard to see a path forward right now. But one thing is for sure: If Israel is to have any hope, it has to be far more skeptical of politicians who advocate offensive military force as the country’s best option to defend itself. And it should certainly shun politicians who make sweeping guarantees that such a use of force will lead us to a permanent peace. That is a sure recipe for the next forty years to repeat the same mistakes, and cause the same suffering, as the past forty.
Steven Klein is an editor at Haaretz and adjunct instructor at Tel Aviv University’s International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation. Twitter: @stevekhaaretz