To limit the damage caused by the incursions of the Fedayeen and curb the activities of the Fatah training camps, Israel attacks Lebanon. Alongside Christian forces in southern Lebanon, Tsahal pushed its military action into the heart of Beirut. 14,938 Palestinian fighters and their president Yasser Arafat were surrounded by Tsahal towards the port. Caught between the Lebanese armed forces to the north and the Israeli army to the south, the PLO and its leader Yasser Arafat were driven into the sea, with no means of escape. A ceasefire was imposed by various organizations, and after lengthy negotiations demanding recognition of Israel, cessation of PLO terrorist activities and peace with the Hebrew state, Yasser Arafat was authorized, on August 30 1982, to embark with 8,500 men on boats that would take them to Tunis. Private Meir Ben Hayoun wrote: ” By letting Arafat and his forces live, we have condemned the 1,500 Israeli civilians atrociously murdered in recent years.87 6,500 Palestinians are expelled by land to Syria.
Assassination of Bachir Gemayel
On September 14, Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel was assassinated in an attack that killed 32 people and wounded more than 50. It was signed by pro-Palestinian and pro-Syrian fighters. The agreement signed with the PLO lasted only two weeks! Tsahal, at the gates of Beirut, entered the city, along with units of the Lebanese phalanges. The Lebanese armed forces retaliated the following day, attacking two Palestinian camps, Sabra and Chatila. The Phalangist fighters killed all those they encountered, claiming 673 victims.
For many journalists, the responsibility for this massacre lies with Israel. IDF officers should have prevented this damned punitive action, perpetrated by a faction of Lebanese forces commanded by Elie Hobeika. Public opinion will mistakenly remember that Israel is the perpetrator of the massacres. As for the perpetrator of the attack that killed Bachir Gemayel, Habib Tanious Chartouni, a pro-Syrian militant, he was inadvertently released from Roumieh prison in 1990.
Hezbollah
An Iranian Shiite group wants to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. To achieve its goal, it finances a particularly virulent Lebanese hate preacher, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah went on to create his own movement of fighters for Allah: Hezbollah. His followers left Iran and quickly populated Fatah country and the Bekaa valleys deserted by the Palestinians.
International arrest warrant
For the Italian magistrates investigating the attacks by the Red Brigades (an Italian terrorist movement), one name comes up regularly, whether in connection with the transport of weapons, training in armed struggle, logistical support or finance. The Venice Public Prosecutor’s Office issues an international arrest warrant for Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO.88
First prisoner exchange
On the orders of the UN, Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanon. They left Beirut and stopped on the banks of the Litani River. In this way, Tsahal ensures the safety of the Christian citizens of southern Lebanon.
A peace agreement is signed, stipulating an exchange of prisoners. Six Israeli prisoners held by the PLO were released in exchange for 4,700 Palestinians and Lebanese. One hundred of them were considered to be security prisoners, or to have committed terrorist acts. The six Israelis – Eliyahu Abutbul, Dani Gilboa, Rafi Hazan, Reuven Cohen, Avraham Motevaliski and Avraham Kornfeld – had been captured in a military position in southern Lebanon.
The bodies of two pilots shot down over Lebanon were also returned in two coffins. The exchange was organized under the auspices of the International Red Cross. When the authorities opened the coffins, there were no bodies, only stones and sand. The Jewish nation was outraged. Even confidence in the institution of the Red Cross was crumbling.
1983 | Lebanon is systematically ransacked. Syria pursues a military and conquering policy there: the world tends to forget that Lebanon is still occupied and turns a blind eye to the tragedy being played out in Tripoli, where a city and its population are being systematically destroyed because that is Hafez el Assad’s political calculation.89
The Left takes up the Palestinian issue
Jean-Pierre Métral, Secretary of the Swiss Socialist Party, believes that the PLO is being martyred and treated with shame and guilt by the Israeli government. Like a vigilante, he is committed to the Palestinian cause, supported by Jean Ziegler, Professor of Sociology at the University of Geneva and Socialist National Councillor. They want international recognition for Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian cause.90
Peace artifice
1984 | The PLO officially signed a treaty of recognition, end of hostility and peace with Israel. For Palestinian leaders, ending the armed struggle is unthinkable! They will reform under another name to continue spreading terror. Under Syrian auspices, the Palestinian National Salvation Front was created, bringing together the PLO and George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Yasser Arafat was appointed Chairman of this movement.
By disregarding his international commitments in this way, Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian comrades have lost all credibility on the international stage. For the Israelis, he’s a puppet. The question is, who is manipulating him?
Hostages held by Hezbollah terrorists
1985 | To get on the air, gain recognition and make money, Islamists trained to fight in Iran, and Hezbollah members in particular, don’t hesitate to take hostages. No Westerner lives in safety in Beirut. Some forty of them have had traumatic experiences.
No one is spared. Even Swiss Red Cross employees Emanuel Christen and Elio Erriquez, specialists in the production of medical prostheses, are kidnapped and receive daily death threats for over a year before being released.
Some hostages, like journalist Terry Anderson of theAssocieted Press, were held for more than five years. Horror in the cruelest sense of the word. Journalist and writer Jean-Paul Kaufmann, at the end of three years in detention, as he stepped off the ramp of the plane, answered the question of how he had found the strength to survive the horror he had experienced with these simple words: “I remembered my mother’s prayers, and I learned to pray.”
Jibril Agreement
In a prisoner exchange agreement, Israel agrees to release some of its most notorious assassins. IDF men Yosef Grof, Nissim Salem and Hezi Shai are returned to their families, in exchange for 1,150 Palestinian prisoners. The exchange took place on May 21, 1985, and included the release of Japanese convert to Islam Kozo Okamoto, one of the gunmen involved in the 1972 Lod airport massacre.
Unconditional love
A number of prominent figures have benefited from the medical skills of Jews, coming to Israeli hospitals for treatment. I’ll mention just three: a sister-in-law of Yasser Arafat, a member of the family of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and a member of the entourage of Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. This is how the Jews put it into practice: If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for you are heaping coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.91
Active claims
1986 | The demands of the Arab Workers’ Movement become unrealistic. It turns out to be a very vindictive and revolutionary struggle. Palestinian workers are urged to sabotage their work, poison foodstuffs, even attack and kill Jewish colleagues.
A Palestinian, employed for many years on a kibbutz, directs his tractor at a group of Jews at work. So common is this tactic that there’s even a website where various perpetrators boast of their foul deed.
Others set fire to the forests. It’s hot, there’s no water and it burns very easily. The damage is enormous if the fire is not immediately extinguished.
A friend from the kibbutz will tell me: the Palestinians only know how to make demands and destroy. They don’t have that heart-to-heart relationship with all the flora and fauna that make up this region. This is the greatest proof that this is not their country.
As a result of the attacks and bombings, no one wants to work with Palestinians any more. Not knowing what they’re thinking or when they’re going to attack, Israeli employers stop giving work to Arabs and Palestinians.
Another consequence of the Arab Labor Movement is rising unemployment among a Palestinian population already on the verge of poverty.
The European left claims that the Jews are the cause of the misfortunes of the people of the Middle East. A French jurist has a different view of the situation: the falsifiers of history, the negationists, find the media open to their rhetoric. It’s the lowest way of rewriting history! Robert Badinter