Global Journal of Human Social Science, F: Political Science, Volume 22 Issue 5

that the war constituted a national trauma. The titles of numerous books written in the first decade following its eruption— A War of Deception , Another War , Snowball , The Lebanese Labyrinth , etc.—reflect precisely such a reading. The syndrome can be summarized in five points: 1) The First Lebanon War was undertaken at Israel’s own will and whim. Unlike Israel’s other campaigns—1948, 1967, and 1973—the military operation undertaken by the IDF was not supported by a national consensus. Its voluntary nature thus caused much frustration and resentment. The controversy over the Second Lebanese War stemmed directly from that over the First, its goal being to fulfill the Great Oranim Plan . 3 The fact that Israel initiated a war that did not, according to its critics, realize its aims, exacerbated the bitterness over the large number of casualties, harm to Israel’s reputation, and ongoing enmeshment to which it led. Arye Naor, Israeli Secretary of State between 1977 and 1982 quotes a military officer close to Sharon as saying that, despite substantial reservations, Ariel Sharon’s appointment as Minister of Defense was understood as indicating Begin’s firm resolve to embrace the military option. 4 2) It was a war of deception in two senses: a) Ariel Sharon’s appointment as Minister of Defense constituted a watershed in internal Israeli politics, being viewed as a duping of the Prime Minister, government, and Israeli public into a grandiose plan that never had any chance of succeeding. As veteran Israeli journalists Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari observe: Born of the ambition of one willful, reckless man, Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was anchored in delusion, propelled by deceit, and bound to end in calamity. It was a war for whose meager gains Israel has paid an enormous price that has yet to be altogether reckoned; a war whose defensive rationale belied far-reaching political aims and an unconscionably myopic policy … [that] drew Israel into a wasteful adventure that drained much of its inner strength, and cost the IDF the lives of over 500 of its finest men in a vain effort to fulfill a role it was never meant to play . 5 b) Israel was deceived and ultimately betrayed by her Maronite allies. Israeli historiography of the Jewish State’s relations with Lebanon has largely theorized that Israel was misled in particular by the Phalanges led by Bashir Gemayel. As Jacques Neriah, Rabin’s 3 Ronen Dangur, “The Third War of Choice,” Haaretz , 14 September, 2019 (Hebrew). 4 Arye Naor, Cabinet at War: The Functioning of the Israeli Government during the 1982 Lebanon War (Tel Aviv: Lahav, 1993) 25 (Hebrew). 5 Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, War of Deception (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1984), 380 (Hebrew). political advisor and a great admirer of Gemayel, notes: To a certain extent, Bachir was not honest about his real intentions, or at the very least was very unclear about his plans for peace. In Israel, they were convinced—and apparently there was something to support his assurance—that Bachir would strive for a very special relationship with Israel … For this reason, from the very first day of the war, questions such as, “What are you doing? Why aren’t they moving? Why aren’t they liberating their capital city” bothered the Israeli prime minister . 6 Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari sharpen the idea of Christian betrayal even further: “The Christian leaders misled Sharon into trusting in the [IDF’s] power to impose sovereignty on the state, deceiving him with regard to their true intentions—even though today the party leaders claim that they explained the considerations and spoke clearly. ” 7 1) The entrenchment of the view that the Jewish State was dragged into a war with which it had nothing to do. This is reflected in statements made by two high-ranking officers who formed part of the command of the military operation in its first year. The sense of moral betrayal and deception by its Christian allies led to the belief—which became prominent after the siege of Beirut—that the war was both unnecessary and futile. Per Rabin’s well- known thesis that Israel should “help the Christians help themselves,” it was purely a Christian affair. Within a year, many Israelis had thus concluded that the State was sacrificing its young men on the altar of freedom or for the complex/ conflictual reality of Lebanon, entangled by the Maronites in a non- Israeli campaign . The motifs of betrayal and deception form the central axis of Israeli accounts of the First Lebanon War. The core argument is that the Maronites—specifically the Phalanges—deliberately duped Israel, drawing it into the Lebanese quagmire in order to strike a mortal blow against the PLO and the Syrian army’s military and organizational presence without any intention of keeping their word to join the fighting at some stage to remove the PLO from Beirut. 8 4) In addition to the military and political failure, the historical discourse regarding the First Lebanon War is grounded in the belief that Israel was convinced that the IDF could destroy the PLO and establish a pro-Israel regime that would lead to peace between Israel and other Arab states. These assumptions proved specious almost immediately after the IDF’s 6 Jacques Neriah, The Rise and Fall of Bachir Gemayel: Israel and the Lebanon Quagmire (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2018), 263 (Hebrew). 7 Schiff and Ya’ari, War of Deception , 388. 8 Yossi Alpher, Periphery: Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies (Tel Aviv: Matar, 2015), 79. See also the interview with Amos Yaron, commander of the Beirut area, during the war. © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue V Version I 26 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 F Israel, the Syrian Crisis and the Unbreakable Lebanese Syndrome