Lebanon conflict holds echoes of 1982 — and Israeli failure

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It was Mark Twain who famously said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” In other words, events rarely recur in exactly the same way, but the similarities can be striking, and often painfully so. The direction in which the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is heading, frighteningly, reminds me of what Israel calls the “First Lebanon War of 1982,” as well as several other Israeli military incursions into its northern neighbor, which ended with significant losses and no lasting political achievements. Back in 1982, under the guise of pushing Palestinian militants away from the Israeli-Lebanese border, Israel fell into the trap of using the attempted assassination of its ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov, as a pretext to launch a preplanned regime-change operation in Lebanon. The plan had been concocted in coordination with right-wing Christian factions in the country. It took Israel 18 years to leave Lebanon, and by then the genie was out of the bottle: Hezbollah, a Shiite movement allied with Iran, had emerged not only as a major political force but also as a formidable military one, and has posed a constant threat to communities in northern Israel ever since. Forty years ago, the decision to embark on what was initially described as an “operation” and later became a full-scale war was taken by the first Likud Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, and his hawkish Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon. Together with Mossad, Sharon was the mastermind behind a wide-ranging plan to destroy the PLO’s infrastructure in Lebanon, force Syria out of the country, and install a friendly Christian-dominated government led by Bashir Gemayel, who would then sign a peace treaty with Israel. At least in theory, it all appeared neat and carefully thought through, a strategy designed to translate military superiority into political triumph. It did not take long,........

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