Israeli Crisis Decision-Making in the Lebanon War: Group Madness or Individual Ambition?

Abstract

ON 6 JUNE 1982 THE Israel Defense Forces crossed the northern border and invaded Lebanon. Operation Peace for Galilee was announced to the public as a limited, 48-hour operation to remove Palestinian Fedayeen bases. Four months later, however, Israel was still in Lebanon. The objectives of the operation were to destroy the PLO's military and political infrastructure, to strike a serious blow against Syria, and to install a Christian regime that would sign a peace treaty with Israel. Accordingly, Israeli troops advanced beyond Beirut, engaging Palestinians, Lebanese Muslims, and Syrians in battle. Yet the achievement of their objectives remained elusive as Israel became embroiled in Lebanon's on-going civil war and became incapable of extracting itself for the next three years. What was supposed have been a brief operation with a quick victory ended up as Israel's worst war in its short history. Lebanon had become Israel's Vietnam. The conventional explanation of why Israel had gone to war focuses on the personal ambitions of Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari's book Israel's Lebanon War, for example, describes Sharon as a cynical, headstrong executor who regarded the IDF as his personal tool for obtaining sweeping achievements--and not necessarily defensive ones and a minister prepared to stake the national interest on his struggle for power., The argument advanced by Schiff and Ya'ari is that it was not until Sharon took up his post in 1981 that a large-scale military operation