582
PARTISAN REVIEW
Over the next six weeks, we participated in the shelling of Tyre ,
Sidon (particularly the two refugee camps-PLO bases nearby, Ein El
Hilweh and Rashadiya), and West Beirut. We argued among our–
selves as to what we were doing, even as we did it, although it is
important to understand the parameters of the debate: those of us
who questioned the initial phases of the war wondered whether it
constituted a solution to the Palestinian question; those who argued
with us insisted that it was meant only to clear the PLO away from
the Israeli border and out of shelling range of Israeli settlements, a
goal that, in and of itself, one could not find objectionable.
We directly experienced the confusion and the changing direc–
tion the war took. Three weeks into the war we heard over the radio
that both Sharon and Raful were promising to release all the reserv–
ists who had been called up at the beginning of the operation; by the
next week we would be home, a cause for some rejoicing. About a
week later, we were told by a high ranking officer how well we had
performed as a unit, and sent back to our base in Israel. We cleaned
our guns, returned our small weapons and sleeping bags and
assorted paraphernalia, returned unused ammunition, and waited;
we had the proverbial one foot back home, when we received new
orders sending us "back up," this time to Beirut.
At about the same time, Chaim Herzog, a very popular mili–
tary analyst who was kept off the airwaves by the Likud this war and
who was elected to the Knesset on the Labor Party ticket, began to
sum up in the Israeli weekly
Newsview:
"As the dust begins to settle
with the final phase of the Israeli action in Lebanon being
reached ... " As we pulled into the Beirut area with our 155s, it
became clear that the "final phase" had only just begun.
At the beginning of Operation Peace in Galilee, the stated goal
was
to
clear PLO artillery from the forty-kilometer range of Israel's
northern border. For more than a year, Begin had been promising
residents of Kiryat Shmona, who voted for him in greater propor–
tion than their kibbutznik neighbors in the Upper Galilee, "that no
more katyushas will fall" on them. In the summer of 1981, there was
a miniwar of attrition between Israeli and PLO artillery that
severely strained Israel's northern settlements. The PLO evidently
grew overconfident; Israel would not likely provoke another round
in that no-win situation. The Saudi-managed cease-fire held up for
most of the next year. When tension mounted this April and May,
three former chiefs of staff who are now Labor Party MKs, Yitshak
I
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