LITANI OPERATION (1978)

Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978.

Following a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) assault on a civilian bus traveling Israel's Haifa–Tel Aviv highway that killed thirty-seven Israelis, in March 1978 20,000 troops of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon to the Litani River. The operation's goal was to destroy PLO bases and staging areas south of the Litani and to drive PLO guerrillas beyond the range of the Israeli-Lebanese border. The invasion caused an estimated 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian casualties and prompted UN Security Council Resolution 425, which called for a cease-fire, an Israeli withdrawal, the dispatch of Lebanese army units to the area, and the creation of a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeeping force. Israel objected to the resolution's failure to censure anti-Israeli PLO activity in and stemming from Lebanon. The IDF occupied a stretch of Lebanese territory 37 miles long and 3 to 6 miles deep, ceding it after three months as a buffer zone to UNIFIL and to an Israeli-supported local Lebanese militia headed by Saʿd Haddad. Over the next four years the PLO reinfiltrated south Lebanon, and the Litani Operation's failure to secure Israel's northern border figured in the larger scope of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

see also haddad, saʿd; united nations interim force in lebanon.

Bibliography

Evron, Yair. War and Intervention in Lebanon: The Israeli-Syrian Deterrence Dialogue. London: Croom Helm, 1987.

Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1990.

Haley, P. Edward, and Snider, Lewis W., eds. Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1979.

elizabeth thompson
updated by laurie z. eisenberg