A Careful Minuet: The United States, Israel, Syria and the Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1976

Abstract

During the spring of 1976, the Syrian army unexpectedly intervened in the Lebanese civil war. Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad had shifted his allegiances, abandoning his Muslim–Palestinian partners and joining the conflict in order to prevent the Christians from losing. Assad feared that if the PLO managed to tip the balance of power in Lebanon in its favour, an Israeli response would be inevitable. Following his move to prevent this, Israel did nothing. This uncharacteristic prudence from Israel when faced with Syrian forces entering Lebanon has been attributed by many analysts to a ‘red line agreement’ which asserted a de facto partitioning of Lebanon into Israeli and Syrian spheres of influence, negotiated in secret by the powerful US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Drawing upon American and Israeli archival sources, this article argues that the ‘red line agreement’ was in fact no agreement at all but rather a short-lived Syrian–Israeli marriage of convenience within which the Americans acted as mediators. The Syrians and Israelis danced ‘a careful minuet’ in southern Lebanon, constantly probing each other’s strategic thresholds while seeking US assurances that neither would attack the other.