South Lebanon and Israeli Violence

In September 1983, the Israeli Army withdrew from Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and established a front line at the Awali River in South Lebanon, as per the May 1983 agreement. In the following years, most of the incidents of violence in that area related to Israel’s occupation, which continued until May 2000. In 1982 the Lebanese National Resistance Front was formed by the LCP, OACL, and the Arab Socialist Action to conduct operations against Israel. In the ensuing years however, Amal and increasingly Hezbollah, an Islamic Shi’a armed group, spearheaded the military action against Israel and its proxy, the SLA. In the context of this protracted war, several thousand Lebanese and Palestinians were deported to the detention center of al-Ansar, while a significant number of people disappeared following arrests conducted by the Israeli Army or the LF.

Timur Goksel, former spokesman and senior advisor to UNIFIL, described Israel’s practices generally in the south in 1985 as follows:
The Israelis called it the iron grip policy. I called it the worst practices of an occupation that I ever saw in my life. They would round up men in a schoolyard or mosque and leave them there under the sun the whole day, question them, humiliate them, search some houses.

Apart from its military activity in South Lebanon, the Israeli Army conducted sporadic military attacks
outside their occupation zone, notably in North Lebanon and the Beqaa.