Word: plo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...negotiations get under way to evacuate all foreign troops from Lebanon, Israelis are beginning to ask themselves what the war they undertook this summer has accomplished. Even those who opposed the "Peace for Galilee" mission from the start admit one clear cut fact: by removing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, Israel has insured the security of its borders from outside aggression for the foreseeable future. With the siege of Beirut, Prime Minister Begin closed a circle he began at Camp David. Begin has created peace--albeit a tenuous one--with Egypt, knocked out the Iraqui nuclear threat, decimated...
Originally, the Lebanon venture was designed to create a 25-mile butter zone north of the Israeli border cleansed of the PLO. Israelis accepted this goal unanimously, or almost. When the Begin government decided to push through to Beirut, opposition made itself heard. What right did Israel have to play policeman for the entire Middle East? For the first time, the Jewish state had initiated a conflict, and the survival of Israel was not even at stake...
...notion that the PLO invited its own destruction and dispersion in order to "roast the Israelis on the spit of world opinion" is, more than anything, extremely humorous; It is also bellied by Sharon's openly stated aims, made public after the war (see the interview with Orion Fallacy from September), most of which are unabashedly aggressive...
...escape from the terrorists in time? Where did we get such omnipotence?" He has circled around it throughout the book, and having finally said it with a measure of clarity, he leaves it and moves on. Possibly if Timerman had a more informed sense of what the PLO actually is--he speaks of it, like many rational optimists, as though it were a benign bunch of rowdy children--his point would seem more credible...
...pooh-poohs the many tragic terrorist attacks by mentioning them only in passings, and he seems oblivious to the repeated border incidents which the PLO knew would eventually draw the Israelis into Lebanon. Is Timerman so naive, so purblind as to think the PLO hadn't intended to use the Lebanese they had so long terrorized as a spit on which to roust the Israelis in world opinion? It was an option they always knew they...