Israel Withdraws from Lebanon: A Step Toward Peace

Israel completed its withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, ending a twenty-two-year military occupation that had begun with the 1978 Litani Operation and expanded dramatically during the 1982 Lebanon War. The United Nations certified on June 16, 2000, that Israel had complied with Security Council Resolution 425, which had demanded full withdrawal since 1978. One conspicuous exception remained: the Shebaa Farms, a roughly twenty-five-square-kilometer area claimed by Lebanon but considered by the UN to be part of the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The occupation had been intended to create a security buffer against Palestinian and later Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel. Israel established the South Lebanon Army, a predominantly Christian Lebanese militia, as a proxy force to control the occupied territory. The SLA operated a notorious prison at Khiam where detainees were held without trial and subjected to torture, a facility that became a symbol of the occupation's brutality across the Arab world. Hezbollah, the Shia Islamist movement that emerged during the 1982 Israeli invasion, waged a sustained guerrilla campaign against Israeli forces and the SLA throughout the 1990s. Israeli casualties mounted, and domestic opposition to the occupation grew. Prime Minister Ehud Barak campaigned on a promise to withdraw and executed it rapidly, catching even the SLA off guard. Thousands of SLA fighters and their families fled to Israel as the withdrawal unfolded, and Hezbollah forces moved into abandoned positions within hours. Hezbollah declared the withdrawal a historic victory and used it as the foundation of its political legitimacy in Lebanon. The Shebaa Farms dispute gave Hezbollah a continued justification for maintaining its arsenal. Six years later, Hezbollah's cross-border raid and the subsequent 2006 war demonstrated that withdrawal had not resolved the underlying conflict.