On Saturday, August 21, 1982, at 14:25 P.M., at one of the climax of Operation Peace for Galilee – the early name of the First Lebanon War – the first PLO deportee ship left the port of Beirut, carrying 400 Palestinian terrorists on their way to Larnaca, Cyprus.
Not far away, at a convenient vantage point, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan stood and watched what was supposed to end a major chapter in the fierce fighting.
"Do you know how I feel?" Sharon asked Eitan as they both looked at the terrorists, who waved goodbye from the deck of the ship. "Like after a tough battle, when you lie down next to the jeep, but also know that this is the most critical moment and you can't turn a blind eye. You have to pay attention to what's happening around you."
The Israeli program in those days was quite orderly. All PLO members are deported from Lebanon to distant countries – including their notorious leader, Yasser Arafat. Two days later, in the general elections for the Lebanese presidency, Israel's ally Bashir Gemayel, commander of the Christian forces, is supposed to be elected, and thus, within a few months, the eternal threat from the north will be eliminated and Lebanon will sign a peace agreement with us.
"Not a client state and not a 'puppet regime,' as they said, but definitely an independent state that will live alongside us," explains Meir Sheetrit, who served as a young Likud Knesset member at the time. "It seemed then that it was possible to make peace with another Arab country over Egypt - Lebanon, which until the civil war was considered an economically developed country and the capital of the Arab world in the Middle East. It was an amazing place."
Looks just like Gaza. An IDF soldier against the background of ruins in the city of Sidon, Lebanon, June 1982, photo: GPO
It's just that plans are separate from reality. Gemayel was indeed elected president of Lebanon on August 23, but less than a month later, on September 14, 1982, on his way to meet with Israeli intelligence officials, he visited the Christian Phalange branch in Beirut, where he was killed by an explosive device planted by Tanios Shartani, a member of the underground Syrian National Socialist Party. Syrians, who were very anxious during Lebanon's brutal civil war in 1975, warned in advance that they would not accept Gemayel's election.
All Israeli plans for the "day after" quickly collapsed. Two days after the assassination of the president-elect, the Phalangists entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut, and for three days massacred the Palestinians living there, in numbers ranging from 800 to 3,000 murdered. Thus, instead of Sharon continuing to rest next to the jeep, the IDF remained in Lebanon for another 18 bloody years, and two years after the massacre, Hezbollah, which until then had operated as a militia, was officially established.
"If you want to build a thesis that the right solution is 'expelling Hamas from Gaza,' like the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon, it's okay to think about the day after," says Maj. Gen. (res.) Yoram (Ya-Ya) Yair, who was the paratroopers brigade commander during the First Lebanon War and was also present at Beirut port when the terrorists' ships left.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yoram (Ya-Ya) Yair as the Paratroopers Brigade Commander in 1982, Photo: Maj. Gen. Yossi Ben-Hanan Jerusalem
"But there's a big difference: The Palestinians were unwanted guests in Lebanon at the time. In Black September in 1970, King Hussein of Jordan stationed two tank brigades and an artillery brigade around where the Palestinians were concentrated in his home, and simply crushed them until they left Jordan for a place that was not interested in absorbing them, but also could not resist the move – southern Lebanon.
"In the 70s, they opened Fatahland there and harassed the Lebanese population, including the Shiite community. During the war, we 'liberated' the residents, because Fatah behaved like a gang that entered the town. Hezbollah was not yet a factor. The thing is that wherever there is a vacuum, they make sure it fills, and if you don't do anything, time probably won't work in your favor."
Yoram (Ya-Ya) Yair. "The Palestinians were unwanted guests in Lebanon," Photo: Yehoshua Yousef
Did you think at the time that the expulsion was the right move?
"Yes. As a major in the Yom Kippur War, I reached an agreement with the deputy commander of the city of Suez, and an Egyptian brigade withdrew 2 km from its seat – thus preventing an unnecessary battle. There is no better fight than the one you prevented, and if you got what you wanted without fighting, you will know that you won."
"Why are you raising your voice?"
It is impossible to ignore the similarities that exist between August 1982 and December 2023. Instead of Beirut, the IDF is now fighting Gaza, making its way through the narrow alleys, and the end, at least for the time being, does not seem imminent. Therefore, there have already been those who have raised the option of expelling Hamas members and its leadership to other countries in order to establish a friendlier leadership in the Gaza Strip, certainly at a time when global pressure to end the fighting is increasing.
Today, US President Joe Biden is monitoring what is happening in our region. 41 years ago, it was President Ronald Reagan who sent his special envoy, Philip Habib, to Jerusalem and Beirut to solve the problem.
Habib was an American diplomat of Lebanese origin who grew up in Brooklyn, in a Jewish environment, so he knew how to babble Yiddish a bit. He came to deal with the Lebanese problem after having already suffered three heart attacks, and here he needed iron nerves to reconcile the two sides.
In one of his meetings with Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, then foreign minister, Habib was steamed with anger. The prime minister said to him, in his characteristic tone: "Why are you raising your voice? I understand that in Beirut you sometimes speak like that, but here, in Jerusalem, they speak quietly."
Habib wanted to find a solution at the very beginning of the Peace for Galilee battles. Gilad Sharon's biography of his father, "Sharon: The Life of a Leader," recounts a meeting between the defense minister and the American envoy on June 15, nine days after the war began, during which Sharon presented Israel's demands – the expulsion of PLO terrorists and the evacuation of foreign forces from Lebanon. "Well, the Syrians have security interests in Lebanon," the American representative replied, as described in the book.
"'What security interests do they have in Lebanon? Has Lebanon ever attacked Syria? Have Syria ever been threatened? Has Syria ever suffered from terrorist activity coming from Lebanon?' my father asked. "Maybe we should politicize the PLO?" tried Habib. 'They have to leave,' my father said."
"I really liked Philip Habib, who was a businesslike person with a sense of humor," says former minister Dan Meridor, then cabinet secretary. "We had a great relationship, but Eric couldn't stand it. I remember meeting him at the home of the head of Lebanese intelligence. I went there with Arik and Major General Abrasha Tamir. It was a fascinating meeting. We saw that our man, Bashir Gemayel, was going to be the ruler of Lebanon, while the Americans said, 'He is ours.' No one said the words, but there was a competition over who was actually boss. Arik spoke harshly to Habib, even I didn't like to hear. Sharon was elated and said: 'We don't owe you (i.e., the Americans) anything.'"
Dan Meridor. "Sharon told the Americans: 'We don't owe you anything,'" Photo: Gideon Markowitz
Meridor in his youth, photo: Yaakov Saar/GPO
PLO terrorists were concentrated in the western part of the Lebanese capital, where Sharon increased military pressure on the main artery. Every shooting by the terrorists was met with powerful fire from the IDF. On July 31, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Robert Dillon sent an angry message to the State Department: "Tonight's shelling was more intense than anything we've seen. It was not against precise targets in the open space, nor was it a response to Palestinian fire. It was a blitz against West Beirut. At 21:00 P.M., we were supposed to declare a ceasefire on all radio stations, and instead there was an escalation by Israel."
Secretary of State Shamir hastened to announce the next day that the bloodshed must end, and when President Reagan was asked about his patience, he announced that he had lost it long ago. Shamir clarified in a tense conversation: "If a Palestinian sniper fires, and the shooting leads to 14 hours of Israeli shelling, that stretches the definition of 'defense' too much."
"One morning," Meridor recalls, "Begin told me: 'I want to stop the bombing of Beirut. If we don't, Reagan will ask — and I want it to be on our own initiative.' Eric didn't like it. This happened after a picture of a girl who lost her hands in an Israeli bombing was published around the world. I got a call from the White House that President Reagan wanted to talk to the prime minister. We were in the Knesset that day, and we arranged for them to speak in the afternoon.
"I overheard the conversation, and even wrote down its main points. She was instructive and difficult. Reagan saw the picture and said sentences that even mentioned the Holocaust. Begin, of course, answered him. In the end, in retrospect, it turned out that it was not a picture of a girl, but of a boy. He didn't lose his hands, and those who hurt him were Muslims. I remember saying back then, 'What kind of world do we live in? The American president, who has the CIA and the FBI and military intelligence, is mowing with a prime minister he admires because of a picture in the newspaper?' I realized how different the wars observed are from other wars. Such a picture determines public opinion. This is reality, and this is also what is happening to us today in Gaza."
Dan Meridor: "In 1982, Israel achieved something huge – and the Galilee flourished until 2006. But war doesn't solve problems. It's a circle: you think you're done – and in the end you go back to where you started. They think that if you hurt a bad guy, or an organization, the country will be quiet. It doesn't work that way."
Arik Sharon's sting
Sharon, a shrewd military man, was determined to achieve a decisive victory at the time. He knew that if Israel wanted to get what it wanted and expel the PLO, the pressure had to escalate. On 11 August, the Israeli Air Force significantly stepped up its airstrikes, and a stormy session of the Knesset plenum took place the next day.
"The Nazis murdered us, and now we are murdering women and children in Beirut in the name of negotiations," shouted MK Meir Willner, an opposition member of the Rakah movement. "You are sabotaging the negotiations, you are murderers like the worst." Roni Milo of the Likud replied: "It hurts you that the PLO is about to be removed, is that what hurts you?" Willner continued: "They bomb, they kill women and children. You are murderers."
Haim Bar-Lev, the eighth chief of staff and member of the Alignment Party (later Labor), also did not spare criticism from the Knesset podium: "The problem is not solved by comparing the destruction we are causing the Lebanese to the atrocities that the PLO has committed against them for years. We are expected and demand of ourselves, norms of behavior and fighting that are different from those of the PLO. The prime minister's claim that no amount of hasbara will help, since the world is anti-Semitic and hates Israel, does not solve anything.
"There have been wars in which the world has not pointed an accusing finger at us, so the fact that criticism of Israel is leveled at Israel in the Lebanese campaign is demanding. The destruction and killing taking place in the Lebanese capital, far from the 40-50 kilometers essential for the peace of the Galilee, will not soon be forgotten. Many years will be credited to us for this dark hour."
Begin was at his best that day, and there were no signs of the mental crisis he would experience at the end of the war. MK Victor Shemtov, who shouted "Commission of Inquiry!" replied: "After all, you are a kind person, you are not a Communist, so why are you stopping me? I'm talking about the most serious things, and you suddenly bring me a commission of inquiry."
Bar-Lev recalled the bombing of civilians during the Yom Kippur War, when the Division was in power: "Who was hurt deep inside Egypt? Didn't we ever send a warning that a bomb was about to explode on a factory?" Bar-Lev admitted that it was a mistake, and Begin clarified the point: "Oh, by mistake. After all, I say we never mean to."
At the cabinet meeting held the next day, Begin was already much tougher on Defense Minister Sharon, who received full criticism from the rest of those present, including Deputy Prime Minister David Levy and Interior Minister Yosef Burg of the National Religious Party, who said: "What is happening on the ground contradicts the government's decision." Sharon taunted him by asking if this was information Borg had received from his son, Avrom, who opposed the continuation of the fighting, and suggested to everyone present at the meeting not to capitulate to the Americans and their demands.
This sentence was enough for Begin, who confronted Sharon at the same meeting: "You should know that the government is the commander-in-chief of the army. You are the representative of the government in the army, not the representative of the army in the government. The chief of staff is subordinate to you, not the other way around. Let it be clear who here is running the affairs of the state."
"Begin didn't really trust Sharon," Meridor says, "so he passed an unprecedented decision in the government, according to which the defense minister is not allowed to operate the air force without government approval. Sharon was furious, and Begin disagreed with him. He belatedly came to the conclusion that the defense minister was not telling him the truth, or was not carrying out his policy. That's why he stripped him of the ability to operate part of the army."
Meir Sheetrit, who was then in his first term as a young Knesset member, sees it differently today: "The atmosphere in the Knesset was that Sharon worked on Begin, went all out in Lebanon, and Begin was not aware of it," he says. "Later I heard completely different things. I heard that Begin definitely knew where he was going, and even initiated and pushed."
Meir Sheetrit: "We didn't want a 'puppet regime,' but we definitely wanted an independent state that would live alongside us. It seemed possible to make peace with Lebanon, which until the civil war was considered an economically developed country and the capital of the Arab world in the Middle East. It was an amazing place."
במהלך המלחמה התראיין ראש הממשלה ליעקב אחימאיר בערוץ 1 הממלכתי (והיחיד אז), ונשאל אם הוא מודע לעובדה שיש בציבור חשש ששר הביטחון הוא זה שגרר את ישראל למהלכים שחרגו מהתחזית המקורית למלחמה. "איזה מין גרירה?" בגין ענה. "זו ממשלה מתפקדת שקיימה ישיבות, לפעמים פעמיים ביום. כל העובדות נמסרו לה. הדיון היה על כל פרט ופרט. על כל דבר נתקבלה החלטה. איש לא גרר אותה, איש לא היה גורר אותה. ומדוע צריך שר ביטחון, איש מנוסה בקרבות, פטריוט אמיתי, מסור בלב ובנפש לאומה, לגרור את הממשלה מאחורי גבה וכדומה? לא היה ולא נברא".
מאיר שטרית. "לימים שמעתי שבגין בהחלט ידע לאן הוא הולך", צילום: לירון מולדובן
שטרית בצעירותו, צילום: יעקב סער/לע"מ
מותר לקחת אקדחים
היה זה דווקא השליח האמריקני, חביב, שהודה מאוחר יותר שהמתקפה העצבנית של חיל האוויר ב־11 באוגוסט, זו שחוללה את רוב המהומה, היא ששכנעה את אש"ף להתגמש ולהסכים לתנאים שהוצגו בפניו - ובסיומם פינוי. באמצע אוגוסט ניסח חביב מסמך מוסכם על שני הצדדים לעזיבת אש"ף את שטח לבנון.
Selected clauses from the evacuation agreement: 1) A complete ceasefire. 4) Palestinians who are not combatants and who remain in Lebanon shall be subject to Lebanese laws and regulations. 5) On the day the evacuation begins, the multinational force will set up units to secure the exit of Palestinians from West Beirut, and will help the Lebanese government expand its authority. The multinational force will consist of 800 American, 600 French, 400 Italian, and 3,000 or more Lebanese as necessary to maintain law and order. 9) The evacuation will be carried out by sea from the port of Beirut, by air to Cyprus, and by land on the Beirut-Damascus road. Israeli military forces will withdraw from the international road to ensure a peaceful evacuation. 10) The evacuation will be carried out within 15 days and will be carried out in broad daylight, and the fighters (Palestinians, E.L.) will take with them their light weapons (rifles, pistols). The heavy weapons will be transferred to the Lebanese army. 13) The Israeli pilot captured by the PLO (Aharon Achiaz, E.L.) will be returned before the implementation of the plan begins.
Dillon, then the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, said in an interview: "Habib did a great job and achieved an excellent agreement. There was only one problem - where to evacuate the PLO members? This is an appropriate illustration of the Palestinian problem, which has no real place. Almost every Arab government refused to accept them, so the U.S. exerted heavy pressure on Tunisia to absorb them, until in the end it agreed, followed by Syria agreeing to take some, as well as Jordan and Sudan. The ceasefire has gone into effect."
Habib received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Reagan, one of the highest civilian decorations in the United States, for his work in the Middle East. There were also those who suggested him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The late U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, then deputy secretary of state, said in an interview with CBS: "Habib risked his life every day. Not only because of the terror and destruction in Beirut, but because of his heart problems. It was as if God had guarded him so that he could continue the mission." Habib died in May 1992, of a heart attack, while on vacation in France.
In the end there was also an elimination
Moshe Nissim, who was justice minister in 1982, remembers the turbulent days of the expulsion: "The intention was to keep the PLO as far away as possible from Beirut and the northern border," he says. "Tunisia was a destination, and Arafat definitely should have been on one of the ships. We didn't say at the time that we would eliminate him, but that we would be expelled, and as far as he was concerned, it was an act of victory."
When Arafat expressed concern that Israeli divers would booby-trap the evacuation ships, Sharon joked and invited him to "dive himself and check." Then he reassured that he had given his word for a clash-free evacuation.
Moshe Nissim, then and now. "I said that the IDF needs to do something great to prove its capabilities," Photo: Arik Sultan
Nissim speaking at the Knesset, photo: Hananya Herman/GPO
On the morning of August 21, at 11:25 A.M., a jeep flying the French flag drove into the Lebanese port, with three Rio military trucks loaded with PLO personnel behind it. They were the first terrorists to board the Greek ship Sol Georgios, which three hours later lifted anchor and made its way to Cyprus.
"I was honored to be at the port on that occasion and to see them board the ships," says Ilan Kfir, who was Maariv's political correspondent at the time and did reserve duty in Lebanon. "They came up neatly, in threes. There were also those among them who celebrated the evacuation like at a carnival, because they understood that their lives had been saved. There was shooting in the air, but the IDF certainly controlled the port. It was an unusual picture, and I wish we would have reached such a situation today."
The one who said goodbye to the first evacuees was Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), one of Fatah's founders and Arafat's allies. He shook hands with them and clarified: "Our revolution continues. We will remain loyal to each other. We will continue on our path together."
Arafat, Sharon's bitter and greatest enemy, evacuated Beirut on Monday, August 30. On the morning of the evacuation, the PLO leader met with the leader of the Muslim left in Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, and said: "I am leaving the city, but my heart remains here." He told reporters outside that he was now headed for "Palestine."
Italian soldiers from the multinational peacekeeping force that supervised the PLO's exit from Beirut, photo: Dalia Yankovic/GPO
From there, Arafat traveled to the port of Beirut and boarded the ship Atlantis, which took him to Greece, and from there continued into exile in Tunisia. "Sharon was of the opinion that he should be eliminated, as were many of the security personnel who said that expulsion is not enough, that he should be killed," Kfir says. "But under pressure from the Americans, it was decided to keep him alive. Not long ago, I spoke with a former Shin Bet official who admitted that it was a mistake, because Arafat was in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle, the cross was already on his head, and only permission was not given to pull the trigger. Like Sinwar, there are many who say that as long as we don't have his head, Hamas will fight. The same thing happened with Arafat, who was an arch-terrorist."
Ilan Kfir, former journalist: "I had the honor of seeing the terrorists board the ships in Beirut port. They came up neatly, in threes. Some of them celebrated like a carnival, because they understood that their lives had been saved. It was an extraordinary picture, and I wish we had reached such a situation today."
Meridor adds: "In an era of visibility rather than content, we are looking for a picture of victory. If you see Arafat boarding a ship, they say, 'We won.' In that war, which had terrible things, Israel achieved something huge – and the Galilee flourished from then until 2006. But war doesn't solve problems. If we look at that expulsion in historical terms, in '48 there was the War of Rebellion, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were scattered everywhere; In 70, the PLO was expelled from Jordan and located itself in Beirut; In '82, we managed to get him out of Lebanon and Tunisia, and in the end he returned to Judea and Samaria via Oslo. A kind of circle, which you think you're done - and in the end goes back to where you started. They think that if you hurt a bad guy, or an organization, the country will be quiet. It doesn't work that way."
During the 80s, after the expulsion, Israel made it clear that the fact that the terrorists were far away did not exempt them from punishment. At 16:1988 a.m. on April 1, 30, on the outskirts of Tunisia's capital, Tunisia, a force of Sayeret Matkal assassinated Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), head of the PLO's military wing and Arafat's deputy, to demonstrate that no matter where those who try to harm Israelis and Jews are found, the IDF will settle scores.
"We were in a unity government at the time," recalls Moshe Nissim, who served as finance minister in the late 80s. "They brought to the cabinet the proposal to assassinate Abu Jihad in Tunisia. Five Likud ministers voted in favor, five of the alignment voted against, meaning that it cannot be carried out, because a majority is needed. I asked Yitzhak Rabin to leave for a few minutes, and I told him in an adjacent room: 'Once an Arab was afraid of a Jew, today a Jew is afraid of an Arab. You are now the defense minister, and the IDF must do something great to prove its special abilities and creativity.'
"Rabin said: 'You convinced me.' We went into the cabinet meeting again and voted, six against four. Do you know what it's like to go all the way to Tunisia, assassinate Abu Jihad at home with his security guard, keep his wife alive and return to Israel safely? By the way, who was the commander of the naval ship that took in the assassins at the end of the operation? Yoav Galant, who was in the flotilla at the time.
Moshe Nissim: "The intention was to keep the PLO members as far away as possible from Beirut and the northern border. Tunisia was a destination, and Arafat certainly deserved to be on one of the ships there. We didn't say at the time that we would eliminate him, but that we would be deported, and as far as he was concerned, it was an act of victory."
"We must chase the terrorists wherever they are, and not talk, but carry out. After so many times the War Cabinet and the Chief of Staff have said, 'We will eliminate Yahya Sinwar,' failure to eliminate him would be the height of failure. The elimination of the initiator of the October 7 massacre has enormous significance."
In 1993, following the Oslo Accords, Arafat and PLO terrorists moved to Judea and Samaria and Gaza and established the Palestinian Authority there. Arafat signed Oslo with Yitzhak Rabin, and later, after Rabin was assassinated, his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, shook his hand. Arafat did not embrace Sharon, but in the eyes of many others he was an ally alongside a bitter enemy – against the backdrop of the controversy surrounding his treatment of the major terrorist attacks of the middle of that decade and the second intifada in the early 2004s. Arafat died of illness in 75 at the age of <> and was buried in Ramallah, near Jerusalem.
"Everything that was achieved in the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon to Tunisia was buried in the Oslo Accords," Nissim is convinced today. "After all, who brought Arafat back to us? He wasn't in the area, certainly not in Judea and Samaria. You can't write about the expulsion in 1982 without bringing in the Oslo element."
Like a Jew in a stormy sea
Former journalist Kfir also returns to the political agreement signed in 1993: "Politically, I'm not one of those who shout 'Oslo' every day, but even then I had the feeling that Arafat was working on us. The 'moderation' and the commitment in signing the agreement that there would be no more terrorism, and that we would live side by side, were not real. That didn't happen, so the fact that he wasn't eliminated in 1982 was in retrospect a big mistake."
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair, chairman of Yachad for the Soldier, who lit a torch on Mount Herzl in 2022, refuses to draw conclusions from those days to the present day. Yair is convinced that the problem lies, among other things, in the ways of solving them, which have not changed since then. That no single action, however large, can eliminate a problem.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yoram Yair: "As the paratroopers brigade commander, I thought at the time that the expulsion was the right step. During the Yom Kippur War, I reached an agreement with the deputy commander of the city of Suez, and an Egyptian brigade withdrew, thus preventing an unnecessary battle. If you got what you wanted without fighting, you'll know you won."
"Don't be brainwashed. At the beginning of 88, during the first intifada, when I was commander of the Northern Corps, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir appeared at a General Staff meeting and asked us: 'Be quiet.' I asked: 'What will happen then?' After all, in the army, when you drop a mission, you also have to say what the ultimate goal is, because with your military action you can destroy the chances of the political echelon above you from getting what it wants.
"I said to Shamir: 'Do you know what this is like? For a Jew who sails in stormy seas and the waves threaten to drown him. He prays and asks God to save him, God hears and the sea becomes a plate. But the Jew doesn't know where he wants to sail, so he sails in circles, until the next storm comes.'"
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