In 1982, following the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Israel invaded Lebanon. The Israeli government intended to destroy the power of the PLO in Lebanon, deprive it of its bases there, and drive Arafat out of the country or kill him.
The Israelis allied themselves with Maronite Christian militias in Lebanon, one of which perpetrated the mass murder of several hundred Palestinian refugees. Many people around the world blamed Israel for the massacre, and only another U. S. veto prevented the United Nations from intervening in the Israel-Lebanon conflict.
The Israelis succeeded in driving Arafat out of Lebanon. He moved his headquarters to Libya and continued to orchestrate ineffectual guerrilla raids against Israel. The Israeli government seemed to have achieved relative security without a peace settlement with the Arab states—other than Egypt—of the Middle East. In 1987, however, the Palestinian people began a revolt that eventually brought Arafat back and promised to end with the creation of a Palestinian state.
In the beginning the Intifada, as the Palestinians called their rebellion, took the form of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and policemen. The rebellion was a grassroots, antiIsraeli, pro-Palestinian statehood movement with no leadership. As the years passed, a leadership for the movement did develop and coordinated other activities such as strikes and boycotts of Israeli products. The Israelis reacted to the rebellion with force, equipping their police and soldiers with plastic bullets, which were often fatal when used against Palestinian adolescents and even children. The death toll among Palestinians averaged about one per day for the next two years. Israeli prestige abroad declined precipitously as television audiences around the world watched the escalating violence.
World History
