.N. Condemns Israel for Planned Atrocity Bombing of Its U.N. Headquarters By Ramez Ismael; 05-31-1996; Reuters, top of page
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak Wednesday dismissed U.N. criticism of an Israeli attack on a refugee camp as "absurd" and said he did not think the report would have an adverse affect on a cease-fire in Lebanon. "I don't know if this is exactly what the (U.N.) secretary general meant but the whole idea is absurd," Barak told reporters when asked about the report, which concluded that it was unlikely Israel bombed a U.N. refugee camp in southern Lebanon by accident. Barak, posing for photographs with his Omani counterpart, said he did not think the U.N. report, released Tuesday, would have an impact on the situation in southern Lebanon, where a U.S.-brokered cease-fire has been in effect since April 26. "I believe that even the Lebanese know very well that there is no way Israel has done it intentionally or deliberately and that after all, with all the sorrow and regret, it's something that could happen in full scale military activties. The ultimate responsibility we believe is still with Hizbollah (guerrillas) who used the U.N. installation to cover the shooting," he said. The United Nations Tuesday said Israel's shelling of a U.N. camp in southern Lebanon that killed about 100 civilians last month was unlikely to have been the result of gross technical or procedural errors, as Israel claimed. The United States blasted U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros- Ghali for drawing "unjustified" conclusions about Israel's role in the attack. Barak was to meet Secretary of State Warren Christopher immediately after his talks with Oman Foreign Minister Yusef Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah. top of page


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Lebanon: Chapter 4C. Foreign Relations; Countries of the World By As'ad AbuKhalil, top of page
Palestinians have been an integral part of the Lebanese polity since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. At that time, many fled to Lebanon. This refugee population increased after the June 1967 War and the 1970 eviction of the PLO from Jordan. By 1987 there were about 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon (see The Palestinian Element, ch. 2).In 1978 Israel invaded Lebanon, clearing out Palestinian strongholds as far north as the Litani River. Another consequence of the Israeli invasion was the establishment in southern Lebanon of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, whose mission was to separate the various combatants.

As serious as the 1978 incursion was, it paled in comparison with the 1982 Israeli invasion, which affected all of the southern half of Lebanon as far north as Beirut (see The 1982 Israeli Invasion and Its Aftermath, ch. 5). This action had several direct consequences. First, it resulted in the deaths of several hundred Palestinian fighters and the expulsion of several thousand more, not to mention several thousand Lebanese and Palestinian casualties and massive destruction. For a time, the invasion and occupation diminished Syrian influence, as the Syrian Army was forced north and east. The Israeli occupation promoted the creation of the MNF, made up of military units from Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, which supervised the Palestinian evacuation and later stayed to keep the peace. The IDF occupation also created an expedient climate for Bashir Jumayyil (and, subsequently, for his brother Amin) to win the presidency.

In addition, there were several less direct consequences. The occupation of Muslim West Beirut allowed Christian forces, on September 27-28, 1982, to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where they massacred several hundred civilians. Lebanese Shias, who were severely affected by the invasion and occupation, turned their enmity on the Israelis. As a show of support for their coreligionists, the government of Iran, with Syrian approval, dispatched a contingent of the Pasdaran to the Biqa Valley. Anti-Israeli Shia opposition burgeoned during the occupation, and there were several suicide-bombing incidents perpetrated against IDF positions (see Suicide Bombings, ch. 5).

In 1987 Israel's relations with Lebanon continued to revolve around the issue of security. Israel retained its support of the SLA's activities in southern Lebanon, maintained its ties to the LF, and perpetuated its policy of attacking Palestinian and Lebanese targets that Israel labeled "terrorist" bases. top of page


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Israeli Atrocities History in Lebanon from The Economist The Economist; 04-20-1996, top of page
A WEEK into Israel's ferocious bombardment .. as thousand upon thousand of Israeli shells and bombs thump down on Lebanon, ancient Katyusha rockets continue to be plonked into Galilee' s deserted fields. Operation Grapes of Wrath, a resonant cliche from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", was launched to protect the Israelis of northern Galilee. It has not, in that respect, been a demonstrable success. Yet it has still been a domestic triumph. And, at the start when casualties were low, it won international sympathy; the reproaches were muted.

Strange that: Lebanon, though not Hizbullah, has been badly hurt, its land once again a battlefield, its people being killed and made homeless. Since the barrage began on April 11th, several hundred thousand Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes, trailing up the single road north, seeking temporary refuge in the streets, schools and mosques of Beirut. Their presence, plus Israel's surgical strikes at two of Beirut's power stations, have plunged the capital back into the disorder it thought it had escaped.

Close to 100 Lebanese, most of them civilians, had been killed in the first week of the bombardment, half of them on April 18th when Israel shelled a UN peacekeeping base near Tyre where hundreds of Lebanese refugees were sheltering. Earlier in the day, a family of nine, including small children, had been killed in a raid on a village near Nabatiyeh. The casualty rate, at first relatively low because of Israel's policy of telling people to get out before it blasted their homes, was rising fast. The number of dead Lebanese civilians, in just a few days, was many times more than the 12 people in northern Israel killed by Hizbullah rockets in the 14 years since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Israel has struck houses in Beirut, supposedly belonging to Hizbullah but not inhabited by them. Helicopter gunships attacked a Palestinian refugee camp, wounding the small son of a radical commander, the object of the chase.