London Assassination: 1982 Israeli Invasion. Bondi Beach Attack: 2025 Invasion?

In 1982, the tensions between the Palestine Liberation Organization (based in Beirut) and Israel were at a peak. Lebanon had been taken over by Syria's Assad, by the Palestinian resistance movements, and by their allies the Lebanese Sunni Muslims. They were all backed and funded by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Lybia WITH THE APPROVAL AND ENDORSEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES who did not want to upset the oil-drenched Sunni Muslim Arabs. The Lebanese state was paralyzed because its army had split into hostile Christian and Muslim armies. The only forces on the ground to stand up to this charade were the Lebanese Christian militias.

With the PLO in charge of 70% of Lebanon's territory, Arafat was able to run terror operations across the world using Beirut as his capital. On June 3, 1982, three men attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London. He was injured and survived. But this action gave the  extremist right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin the pretext he had been waiting for to dismantle or evict the PLO out of Lebanon. The Israeli army invaded on June 6.

Today, more than four decades later, Lebanon finds itself in the same exact configuration, with a couple of differences: Instead of the PLO (backed by the Sunni Muslims of the region), there is Hezbollah (backed by the Shiite Muslims of Iran). But everything else remains pretty much the same: Like the PLO, Hezbollah controls the southern strip of Lebanon south of the Litani River and imposes its will on the government. Like the PLO, Hezbollah refuses to put down its weapons. Like the PLO, Hezbollah has engaged in horrific acts of terrorism both inside and outside of Lebanon.

The Bondi beach (Sydney, Australia) attack yesterday in which 12 Jews were killed as they celebrated a Jewish feast could be a pretext of the same magnitude as the London attempt to trigger another Israeli invasion (the 4th or 5th in many decades; all failed) of Lebanon by the extremist Zionist terror government of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The goal, as it was in 1982, is to dislodge, dismantle, destroy, eliminate ... (use whatever verb you want) Hezbollah so that it no longer poses a threat to Israel. The Americans are, by blind default, behind Israel. The Sunni Arabs probably too because Hezbollah is their Shiite enemy. The Lebanese government, which has all the accoutrements of a normal government but is otherwise a dummy, incapable of doing anything lest it triggers a civil war, is secretly wishing that Israel does the "cleanup". 

In 1982, after the "cleanup", the PLO was evacuated to Tunis, a peace accord was negotiated between Israel and Lebanon in May 1983, but the cowardly Lebanese president Amin Gemayel was too scared of Syria to sign it. As a reason for his refusal to sign the accord, he said, "I don't want to close 21 doors in order to open only one". He did not want to have all 21 Arab countries against him. In reality, he was afraid for his life: His brother Bashir had been assassinated by the Syrians less than a year earlier (September 1982) because he intended to sign an accord with Israel. 

In 2025, assuming Israel manages to "clean up" the country, or at least the part south of the Litani river, will the Lebanese government finally make a peace deal with the Israelis? All indicators are positive for a deal with Israel. The Lebanese president Joseph Aoun has repeatedly declared his intentions to negotiate with Israel. Most Sunni Arab countries have "normalized" with Israel. The Lebanese Sunnis, who follow the Arabs like a herd of sheep, would not stand against such a deal. 

But unlike the PLO - representing some half a million Palestinian refugees expelled by Israel on Lebanese soil - is a "foreign" entity (Palestinians are foreigners for the Lebanese), while Hezbollah represents a third of the Lebanese population: The Shiites of Lebanon are Lebanese, even as their ideology, money and ascendancy are rooted in Iran. 

The question therefore is: Can an Israeli land invasion of Lebanon rid Lebanon and Israel of Hezbollah's threat? I think not. An invasion will cause massive deaths and destruction in Lebanon, as happened many times over the past several decades, and it will usher another lull - just a lull - in the ongoing 100-year old rape of Palestine by Jewish western settlers serving as an outpost of western colonialism in the Levant, so long as there is oil beneath the sands of Arabia.