March 14, 1978: Israel invades South Lebanon
On March 14, 1978, Israel invaded South Lebanon, killing over a thosuand Lebanese and Palestinians over the next week. For the past ten years, several Palestinian groups including the PLO and the PFLP had used South Lebanon as a base for resisting the Israeli occupation. The Israeli Defense Forces invaded on the pretext of responding to an aborted hijacking three days earlier that had killed some three dozen Israelis. After the invasion, Palestinian forces retreated northward, past the Litani River (in fact, this had been the goal of the invasion, which the IDF officially called Operation Litani); most of the IDF shelling and air strikes killed Lebanese civilians. The IDF used American-provided cluster bombs and transferred weapons to a Lebanese militia, both of which violated U.S.-Israeli agreements. Israel continued fighting despite the March 19 passage of two UN Security Council resolutions calling for withdrawal, prompting the necessitation the creation of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL); the UN did not conclude that Israel had fully withdrawn its forces from Lebanon until 2000. During the week-long seige, at least 1,100 people and possibly as many as 2,000 were killed; from 100,000 to 250,000 people were displaced after their homes were destroyed or occupied.
