Northern border security Decades of conflict

Since 1978 a series of Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, including a years-long occupation, have failed to bring security to northern Israel.

Operation Litani, 1978

In March 1978, after the “coastal road massacre”, when a group of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) members entered Israel from Lebanon and killed 35 civilians, Israel launched Operation Litani. Its targets were PLO bases in southern Lebanon. At its height, the operation involved about 25,000 Israeli troops including the bulk of the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) 36th Division. During the fighting the scope was extended to include operations up to the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli forces struggled to significantly engage the PLO fighters, who withdrew. About 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed in the operation, which lasted until June, when UN peacekeepers from the newly formed UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) were deployed under UN security council resolutions that called for Israel's withdrawal.

Lebanon war, 1982

Despite Operation Litani, security in northern Israel was not restored and clashes between the PLO and IDF around the border continued. When the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organisation shot and badly wounded the Israeli ambassador in London, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, blamed the PLO instead and used it as a pretext to launch Operation Peace for Galilee.

The aim was to restore security in northern Israel, and destroy Palestinian forces in southern Lebanon. More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon, backed by Christian allies of Israel, putting Beirut under siege for several months.

Amid the fighting 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of which 5,500 were civilians from west Beirut.