A social and political crisis, fuelled by economic instability and the collapse of the Lebanese pound, led to Prime Minister Omar Karami's resignation May 6, 1992. He was replaced by former Prime Minister Rashid al Sulh, who was widely viewed as a caretaker to oversee Lebanon's first parliamentary elections in 20 years. The elections were not prepared and carried out in a manner to ensure the broadest national consensus.
The turnout of eligible voters in some Christian locales was extremely low, with many voters not participating in the elections because they objected to voting in the presence of non Lebanese forces. There also were widespread reports of irregularities. The electoral rolls were themselves in many instances unreliable because of the destruction of records and the use of forged identification papers. As a consequence, the results do not reflect the full spectrum of Lebanese politics.
Elements of the 1992 electoral law, which paved the way for elections, represented a departure from stipulations of the Taif agreement, expanding the number of parliamentary seats from 108 to 128 and employing a temporary districting arrangement designed to favour certain sects and political interests. According to the Taif agreement, the Syrian and Lebanese Governments were to agree in September 1992 to the redeployment of Syrian troops from greater Beirut. That date passed without an agreement.
Trouble in the South, Operation Accountability, Operation Grapes of Wrath and the Qana Massacre
Fighting continued in the south between Hizballah and the Israelis to various degrees of intensity. During the escalation in the fighting in July 1993 known as "Operation Accountability" in Israel and the "Seven Day War" in Lebanon, some 120 Lebanese civilians were killed and close to 500 injured by a ferocious Israeli assault on population centres in southern Lebanon, an offensive which also temporarily displaced some 300,000 Lebanese villagers. The stated goals of the Israeli operation were not only to punish Hizballah, but also to inflict serious damage on villages in southern Lebanon and create a refugee flow in the direction of Beirut so as to put pressure on the Lebanese government to rein in the guerrillas. Hizballah, in retaliation, indiscriminately fired a number of Katyusha rockets across the border into northern Israel during that week, killing two and injuring twenty four civilians.
To end the fighting in July 1993, the United States brokered an unwritten agreement between Israel and Hizballah, the July 1993 "understandings." The agreement supposedly prohibited attacks on civilians, but both sides understood the agreement to mean that if one side broke the rules, the other side could do so as well. As a result, between July 1993 and April 1996, both sides have accepted civilian casualties whenever their side had attacked civilians first.
In April 1996, the agreement that had ended the July 1993 fighting broke down under the weight of cumulative violations by both sides. Civilians in Lebanon and Israel were dying. On April 9, Israeli officials declared that "these rules of the game are not good and cannot remain," and that "residents in south Lebanon who are under the responsibility of Hizballah will be hit harder, and the Hizballah will be hit harder." Within forty eight hours, Israel launched what it referred to as "Operation Grapes of Wrath." Between 160 and 170 Lebanese civilians were killed during the sixteen day offensive and over 350 wounded. Fourteen Hizballah fighters were killed. Estimates of the number of displaced civilians range from 300,000 to 500,000 civilians, including well over 150,000 children. In the single most lethal event of the operation, on April 18, 1996, at least seventeen Israeli high explosive artillery shells hit a UNIFIL compound near the village of Qana, in which over 800 Lebanese civilians had taken shelter. Some 102 civilians were killed. A U.N. inquiry found that it was "unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors," strongly suggesting that the base had been deliberately targeted. According to the Isrealis "At 1352 and 1358 hours, respectively, Israeli locating radar had identified two separate targets in Qana from where fire had originated. The first target was located 200 metres or so south-west of the United Nations compound. The second target was located some 350 metres south-east of the compound. The data had been sent automatically to the Northern Command and to an artillery battalion located on the Israel-Lebanon border, about 12 kilometres from the sea. The battalion comprises three batters with four guns each. It is equipped with M-109A2 guns (15-millimetre calibre). When the battalion received the data, it checked the targets on a map and found that one of the two locations was between 200 to 300 metres from the United Nations position at Qana. The commanding officer had therefore sought instructions from Northern Command, which rechecked the data and gave permission to fire. This decision had not been taken lightly; officers of some seniority had been involved. When the order to fire came, the first target had been engaged by one battery, using all four guns. Thirty-eight shells (high-explosive) had been fired, about two thirds with impact fuses and one third with proximity fuses. (Proximity fuses cause a round to explode in the air above the target; they are often used for anti-personnel fire.) The two types of fuses had been employed in random order. Convergence fire had been used so that the impacts would be concentrated in the target area. Regrettably, a few rounds had overshot and hit the United Nations compound. "
A UN team questioned a number of witnesses on the activities of Hezbollah fighters in Qana prior to the incident. The following was found:
(a) Between 1200 and 1400 hours on 18 April, Hezbollah fighters fired two or three rockets from a location 350 metres south-east of the United Nations compound. The location was identified on the ground.
(b) Between 1230 and 1300 hours, they fired four or five rockets from location 600 metres south-east of the compound. The location was identified on the ground.
(c) About 15 minutes before the shelling, they fired between five and eight rounds of 120 millimetre mortar from a location 220 metres south-west of the centre of the compound. The location was identified on the ground. According to witnesses, the mortar was installed there between 1100 and 1200 hours that day, but no action was taken by UNIFIL personnel to remove it. (On 15 April, a Fijian had been shot in the chest as he tried to prevent Hezbollah fighters from firing rockets.)
(d) The United Nations compound at Qana had taken a large number of Lebanese seeking shelter from Israeli bombardments. By Sunday, 14 April, 745 persons were in the compound. On 18 April, the day of the shelling, their number is estimated to have been well over 800. When the Fijian soldiers heard the mortar being fired not far from their compound, they began immediately to move as many of the civilians as possible into shelters so that they would be protected from any Israeli retaliation.
(e) At some point (it is not completely clear whether before or after the shelling), two or three Hezbollah fighters entered the United Nations compound, where their families were.
The UN findings were that the distribution of impacts at Qana shows two distinct concentrations, whose mean points of impact are about 140 metres apart. If the guns were converged, as stated by the Israeli forces, there should have been only one main point of impact. The pattern of impacts is inconsistent with a normal overshooting of the declared target (the mortar site) by a few rounds, as suggested by the Israeli forces. The findings conclude "While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors."
The Israeli offensive in April 1996 ended with a cease-fire agreement, brokered by the U.S., that was an improvement over the July 1993 understandings. This time, the agreement was contained in a public written document that included a commitment by both Israel and "armed groups in Lebanon" to "insuring that under no circumstances will civilians be the target of attack and that civilian populated areas and industrial and electrical installations will not be used as launching grounds for attacks." The agreement also established a group consisting of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, France and the United States to monitor compliance with the agreement. However the agreement did not stop the fighting altogether, it only toned it down carrying on in a low intensity form for the next couple of years without major incident.
Hit and run attacks by Hizballah and ambushes against the Israelis and the SLA caused high casualties and in 1999 the SLA were no longer able to maintain their positions in and around Jezzine and so in the last few days of May 1999 they withdrew. The SLA moved south but some 250 SLA militiamen chose to remain behind and surrendered to Lebanese authorities, they were then jailed them for various terms ranging from one year to ten.
Over the next few weeks fighting between Hizballah, the Israelis and the SLA intensified and slowly began to target civilians. On the 23rd June 1999, three civilians were wounded, including a 12 year old boy, in Israeli artillery attacks on Qabrikha and Yater, and on the 24th June, shells fired from the Israeli occupied enclave wounded a woman in Qabrikha. Hizballah listed 21 attacks on 11 Lebanese villages between June 19 and June 23 1999 and said it had on several occasions fired warning mortar rounds at border outposts, but when the Israelis failed to get the message it was compelled to fire deeper into Israel. Citing a marked increase in assaults targeting civilians in south Lebanon, Hizballah gunners unleashed four volleys of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel on the afternoon of the 24th June 1999 as a “warning message” to Israel to halt its violations of the April 1996 Understanding. Twenty nine rockets were fired. In Israel, military sources claimed five people suffered mild wounds or were treated for shock. The Israeli response was heavy. Israeli fighter-bombers on the night of 24th June blasted power plants, bridges, telephone exchanges, and other infrastructure facilities across Lebanon causing millions of dollars of damage. At least seven people were killed and more than 35 wounded. In response, Hizballah unleashed more volleys of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel, killing two Israeli civilians.
Dinnieh Uprising
On New Year's eve 1999, as Lebanon entered the year 2000 full of hope and joy, attention was quickly turned away from south Lebanon as a group of Sunni fundamentalist militants went on the rampage in north Lebanon.
The mountainous area of Dinnieh northeast of Tripoli suffered a 4-day "war" between Lebanese Army units and a group of 150-200 Sunni fundamentalist militants, in which 11 troops(including one officer), 5 civilians and 27 attackers were killed, and 6 soldiers, 12 civilians and 20 attackers wounded. The events started when the militants ambushed an army unit in the village of Assoun, killing five soldiers and army Major Milas Naddaf was kidnapped. The militants belonged to the "At-Takfir wal-Hijra" organization. The ambush and abduction triggered the largest military operation since the end of the civil war, involving 4,000 troops, tanks and helicopters, and the fighting extended to the village of Kfar Habou, where the rebels leader Bassam Kanj was killed after a battle. In the house where Kanj took refuge, the body of Major Naddaf was found with his throat slit, along with the mutilated bodies of two hostages, 21-year-old Sarah Yazbeck and her mother Salwa Raad both of whom had been brutalised before being murdered. By January 5th 2000 security forces said that the operation was over and that 67 Islamic fighters had been captured.
The group's membership was extremely multifaceted. Although most were from Lebanon, there were also a significant number of Palestinians, Syrians, and others from elsewhere in the Arab world. Most had been previously affiliated with anti-Syrian Sunni Islamist movements such as Jama'a al-Islamiyya and Al-Tawhid al-Islami. The Lebanese-born leader of Takfir wa al-Hijra, Bassam Ahmad Kanj (also known as Abu A'isha), and many of its members reportedly fought with the Afghani mujahidin against occupying Soviet forces in the 1980's. It seems that Kanj received financial support from fellow Afghan veteran Osama bin Laden through bank accounts in Beirut and north Lebanon.
While the Dinnieh clashes were under way, on January 2, a gunman claiming to be "a martyr for Grozny" fired several rocket-propelled grenades at the Russian embassy in Beirut, killing a security guard and wounding several others before he was kileed by Lebanese security forces. Lebanese officials publicly dismissed the man, a Palestinian named Ahmad Raja Abu Kharrub (alias Abu Ubeida) as a psychologically unstable individual. However, according to reports, Abu Kharrub was a member of Usbat al-Ansar (the Partisan League), a Sunni Islamist Palestinian group linked to Takfir wa al-Hijra, based in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon. The leader of Usbat al-Ansar, Abd al-Karim al-Sa'di, is said to have sent members of group to Beirut and other areas of Lebanon in November to avenge Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Usbat al-Ansar is also suspected of responsibility for a grenade attack against a Lebanese army checkpoint near the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp that wounded a soldier on the same day. The following week, four unidentified gunmen disguised as Army soldiers attempted to launch another attack on the Russian embassy from the neighboring Bohsali building, but the plot was foiled by security forces.
South Lebanon flared up soon after and during January and February 2000 seven Israeli soldiers were killed in guerrilla attacks. Israel retaliated by bombing three power stations in Lebanon, wounding 15 civilians and causing $20 million in damage.
Israel Withdraws
As part of Ehud Barak's election campaign he promised to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon by July 7 2000. As the deadline approached the SLA began to collapse with many of its troops abandoning their positions.
As the deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon neared, fighting intensivied with ten people being wounded on May 18th 2000. The injured included two Israeli soldiers, two members of the Israeli-run South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia, a Hizbollah guerrilla, four Lebanese civilians and a U.N. peacekeeper. The exchanges of artillery fire and Israeli air raids on suspected guerrilla targets continued into the night.
With this, the causualty toll in fighting in the year 2000 stood at eight Israeli soldiers dead and 25 wounded, 24 SLA members killed and 37 injured, 10 guerrillas dead and eight hurt, five Lebanese civilians dead and 61 wounded, one Lebanese soldier injured and two U.N. peacekeepers wounded.
On 20th May 2000, the Israeli airforce attacted a military base of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) near Deir al-Ghazal in the Bekaa Valley. The Israelis destroyed 10 T-55 tanks killing a handful of Palestinian guerrillas in the process.
It was becoming obvious that the Israelis were going to pull out well ahead of the July 7 deadline and over the next couple of days dozens of Israeli allied Lebanese militiamen fled to Israel's border, asking for asylum after their military outposts fell to Hezbollah guerrillas. The SLA did put up a fight in some places with SLA fire claiming six Lebanese lives on May 22.
On the night of the 22nd May 2000, under cover of darkness the Israelis began their final pullout which was complete by the 24th.
SLA units throughout the security zone began to disintegrate almost immediately after Israeli troops began pulling out of the central sector and abandoned large stocks of heavy weapons and armored vehicles to advancing Hezbollah guerrillas, forcing the Israeli Airforce to divert aircraft from ground support missions to the destruction of SLA arms caches. Within 24 hours of the start of the pullout the SLA had completely collapsed.
The speed of collapse of the 2500 man strong SLA was surprising with some 1700 surrendering and the rest, along with their relatives, taking refuge in Isreal. While the speedy collapse of Shiite SLA units was expected, IDF military planners had assumed that predominantly Druze and Christian units in the more heterogeneous eastern and western sectors would remain intact. The rapid collapse of the SLA appears to have been a result of several factors. Firstly, a threat made by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to "liquidate" all SLA members who fail to surrender when the Israelis pull out was taken very seriously by the SLA rank and file. Secondly a secret deal reportedly negotiated in advance by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Nasrallah resulted in most Druze SLA units surrendering en masse to Hezbollah, this left the remaining units isolated and demoralized. Thirdly, General Lahd traveled to France in mid May for an extended visit with his family, the last opportunity to do so, he thought, before the situation in south Lebanon heated up prior to the scheduled withdrawal of Israeli forces by July 7. His abscence caused a tremendous drop in the morale of SLA troops. After belatedly learning of the turn of events in the south, Lahd quickly flew back to Tel Aviv and drove up to the border, only to discover that there was no South Lebanon Army left for him to lead.
The conduct of the Hizballah guerrillas in the areas previously held by the SLA was most honourable. Revenge killings, mass murders, and massacres that many feared would take place did not occur.
The Lebanese government welcomed the pullout but demanded that Israel abandon the Shebaa farms that were captured in 1967. Israel claims that these farms were Syrian but the Lebanese and the Syrians both claim that the farms are Lebanese. The matter was investigated by the UN and it was decided that the pullout was complete.
The Shebaa Shambles
On October 7th 2000, in an operation which had been planned for months, three Israel army technicians conducting a routine check of the border fence near the village of Shebaa suddenly came under rocket and machine gun fire from a team of Hezbollah guerrillas. During the fifteen-minute clash, in which all three of the soldiers were wounded (one of them seriously), another team of guerrillas proceeded to cut through the border fence and abduct the soldiers, while nearby Hezbollah units launched a heavy artillery bombardment of neighboring Israeli outposts to pin down IDF reinforcements, wounding six Israeli soldiers. The captured men, later identified as Omar Suwad, 25, Benyamin Avraham, 20, and Adi Avitan, 20, were shoved into two (or three) get away cars on the Lebanese side of the border which sped off in different directions, while an estimated 400 guerrillas deployed in forward positions in neighboring villages to prepare for an Israeli ground offensive.
Israeli television stated that "a severe ultimatum" threatening to "retaliate very forcefully" unless the soldiers were returned had been issued to the Lebanese government, while the Lebanese media reported that the Israel threatened to bomb Beirut if Hezbollah failed to release them within four hours. Although Israeli air force planes penetrated Lebanese air space after the abduction (which had been meticulously avoided since the IDF pullout in May), no retaliatory action was forthcoming.
On October 15, speaking before a joint session of the Arab and Islamic Nationalist Conferences at the Carlton Hotel in Beirut, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah announced the capture of a fourth Israeli, later identified as Elhanan Tennenbaum, a 54-year-old reserve air-force colonel. "God help the prime minister today," he added, turning to Lebanese Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss and other government officials in attendance, "in dealing with the many phone calls he will get from Albright."
Nasrallah later said that Tennenbaum was an undercover Israeli intelligence operative who had been attempting to infiltrate the group. According to this account, he was lured to Lebanon by the prospect of meeting with a senior Hezbollah official (with whom he had established contact through an intermediary) and was seized upon entering the country. Israeli officials insisted that Tennenbaum was a civilian employed by a consulting firm linked to two prominent Israeli electronic and military communications companies, Tadiran and Rafael, and that he was kidnapped in the Swiss city of Lausanne.
Israel held Syria responsible for the incidents and threatend retaliation against Syrian interests in Lebanon. Diplomatic efforts to gain the release of the prisoners which continued for months but were interupted as Hizbollah struck again four months later on February 16, 2001. In an anti tank missile ambush one Israeli soldier was killed and two others wounded when Hizbollah guerrillas destroyed a patrolling Hummer jeep in the Shebaa farms area. Israel shelled south Lebanon in retaliation to a Hizbollah guerrilla attack and again said that it held Syria responsible but did not retaliate against Syria as Isreal was still trying to secure the freedom of its captured soldiers.
On April 14 2001 Hizbullah fighters destroyed an Israeli tank in a cross-border missile ambush, prompting Israeli jets, helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery to blast the outskirts of Shebaa and Kfar Chouba in south Lebanon with sustained fire. Hezbollah guerrillas hit the Israeli Merkava tank with a Sagger missile and killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others in the Shebaa Farms area, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet. A special U.N. envoy said the next day that the rocket attack that killed an Israeli soldier in a disputed border zone violated the U.N.-drawn boundary between Lebanon and Israel. Again Israel said it would hold Syria responsible for the attack.
In the very early hours of April 16th Israel struck Syrian positions in Lebanon. Israeli jets bombarded a Syrian radar station in the mountainous region of Dhar al Baydar, 45 kilometres (27 miles) east of Beirut, at 12.30 am Monday (2130 GMT Sunday). The planes also fired at a Syrian anti-aircraft position two kilometres away in the Mdeirej-Hammana region near the Beirut-Damascus highway. Israel said the raid on a Syrian radar station in Lebanon was a clear message to Syrian leaders that they would pay if they did not drop support for Hizbollah guerrillas.
Security sources said four Israeli planes carried out three successive runs, firing six rockets on the Syrian radar station and one on a nearby Syrian position. The Israeli warplanes killed at least three Syrian soldiers and wounded six others in the attack. One of the Syrian soldiers killed was an officer.
The Assassination of Elie Hobeika
At 9:30 AM on January 24, 2002, Hobeika and three bodyguards left his apartment on Kamel Asaad street in suburban Hazmieh southeast of the capital en route to his office in Sin al-Fil. Shortly after their departure, the blue Range Rover they were driving slowed down to pass by a white Mercedes 280 parked on the side of a narrow road. As Hobeika's car passed the Mercedes, an estimated 22 kilos of high explosive in the Mercedes was detonated apparently by remote control. Hobeika and his bodyguards, Dmitri Ajram, Walid Zein and Faris Suedan, were instant'y killed. The explosion reportedly catapulted Hobeika's body over sixty meters from the wrecked SUV. The explosion injured six bystanders. The blast blackened neighboring apartment buildings, destroyed dozens of cars parked nearby, and even shattered glass windows up to one kilometer away from the scene.
There was no claim of responsibility for the mid-morning blast, but also no shortage of possible suspects. Lebanon was quick to accuse Israel, claiming that 45-year-old Hobeika was killed to prevent him from testifying in an impending court case against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Belgium. The prosecution in the case holds Sharon directly responsible for 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatilla. Although Hobeika's lasting claim to notoriety was his during the 1982 massacre, in July 2001, Hobeika broke his characteristic silence over the Sabra and Shatila massacre to plead innocent of any involvement, claiming to have documents and tapes that proved he was not in the vicinity of the camps at the time. In a secret meeting in Beirut with two visiting Belgian senators on January 22nd 2002, Hobeika reportedly informed them that he feared for his life. One of the senators, Josy Dubie said in Brussels on the day of the assassination that when he asked Hobeika if he felt threatened, he replied: "I feel threatened. I have revelations to make." The senator also said, "I then asked why he did not make these revelations now and he replied to me: 'I am saving them for the trial.' "
Since Israel has carried out similar assassinations of its enemies in Lebanon in the past (e.g. the January 1979 assassination of Abu Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander of Yasser Arafat's Force 17), it might have been able to carry out the assassination of Hobeika, either directly or through Lebanese proxies, even in an area like Hazmieh.
In the aftermath of September 11, Hobeika attempted to win American support by contacting the CIA to offer his help in locating and capturing Imad Mughniyah, the former head of special overseas operations for Hezbollah who is listed on the Bush administration's most wanted terrorist list. Hobeika had collaborated with CIA operatives in Lebanon in the early 1980s and attended a training course at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1982. His services would have been a valuable asset in the hunt for Mughniyah. Hobeika owned one of the largest private security firms in Lebanon (in effect, a small militia made up of bodyguards with legally-registered weaponry and skilled intelligence operatives) that has a presence in the largely Shi'ite southern suburbs of Beirut - the most likely location of Mughniyah.
By late 2001, the Syrians had completely withdrawn their protection of Hobeika and instructed the Lebanese judiciary to take action against him, or at least threaten to do so. Given the timing of the judicial moves, it appears likely that the Syrian intelligence learned about his attempts to approach the CIA and this would have given them a strong motive to eliminate him, or allow others to eliminate him, before he could do so. The event could serve as a pretext for a massive crackdown on opponents of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon. More generally, the assassination, which bore an uncanny resemblance to killings during the war, lent support to Syria's claim that a withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon would lead to internal violence and instability.
During the last month of his life, Hobeika was extremely distraught due to the steadily escalating measures taken against him by the Syrian-backed regime in Beirut and became wildly paranoid. During the funeral of a close ally and confidante, former MP Jean Ghanem, who died on January 14 from injuries sustained in a car crash in Hazmieh, Hobeika told several people that the latter's death was not accidental.
Hezbollah's political leadership has its own grudge against Hobeika dating back to the March 1985 car bomb attack against Fadlallah, as does the movement's main external sponsor, Iran, for his role in the deaths of four Iranian diplomats during the civil war. A more immediate motive for eliminating Hobeika would have been the desire to preempt his assistance to the CIA in locating Imad Mughniyah, the head of Hezbollah's Foreign Operations Branch (jihaz al-amaliyyat al-kharijiyya).
In light of the large numbers of Palestinians that Hobeika was responsible for killing during the war in Lebanon, the possibility that an armed Palestinian faction carried out the assassination cannot be discounted. In 2001, a senior official of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in Lebanon, Bassam Abu Sharif, threatened to kill Hobeika.
Another possible culprit is the radical wing of the LF. In 1991, according to the Lebanese authorities, LF operatives loyal to Samir Geagea carried out a 1991 bombing which destroyed Hobeika's car and killed one of his bodyguards. In June 1998, the Lebanese authorities claimed to have uncovered a plot by former LF intelligence operatives to assassinate Hobeika, as well as Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, and then-Interior Minister Michel Murr. The 13 alleged members of the cell who were arrested by security forces reportedly received their orders via the Internet from an LF office in Australia. However, as the above failures illustrate, radical LF factions have been thoroughly penetrated by Lebanese and Syrian intelligence over the last ten years. It is highly unlikely that any anti-Syrian faction of the LF could have undertaken an operation of this complexity in Hazmieh unless it was coordinating with the Syrians - which seems unlikely.
Hobeika's enemies had many reasons to despise him. He betrayed his people to the Syrians and was seen as a mass murderer by the Palestinians. For many, he was first an Israeli agent, and later a Syrian agent. For others still, he was a double agent and a hated and dangerous man.
The assassination was quickly forgotten as events in the south took center stage.
Operation Defensive Shield
Suicide attacks by Palestinians in Israel against civilians that had started in 1995 had become much more frequent and savage and by early 2002 the situation for the Israelis was becoming unbearable. In March 2002 suicide bombings had almost become a dialy occurence:
2 March: Nine people killed including two babies, and 57 injured after
suicide bomb attack in an ultra-Orthodox area of Jerusalem.
5 March: One person killed and several others injured in suicide bomb attack on
a bus at Afula central bus station.
9 March: 11 people killed and 50 injured in suicide bomb attack on busy cafe in
west Jerusalem, near the official residence of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
20 March: Seven people killed in a suicide bomb attack on a bus carrying mainly
Arab labourers near the northern town of Umm el-Fahem.
21 March: At least two people killed and more than 20 injured in suspected
suicide bomb attack in the centre of West Jerusalem.
22 March: Bomber kills himself and wounds an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint at
Salem, on Israel's border with the West Bank.
26 March: Three injured in car bomb blast near a shopping centre in Jerusalem.
27 March: In the Israeli resort of Netanya, a bomber blows himself up at a
hotel, killing 28 Israelis celebrating Passover.
29 March: A woman bomber kills herself and two others at a Jerusalem
supermarket.
30 March: A suicide attack on a Tel Aviv restaurant leaves the bomber dead and
30 Israelis wounded.
31 March: Bomber attacks restaurant in Haifa, northern Israel, killing himself
and 14 Israeli Jews and Arabs. On the same day, another bomber kills himself and
wounds four people in an attack on an office for paramedics at the Jewish
settlement of Efrat, south of Bethlehem.
The Israelis needed to act and so on March 29th 2002 they launched Operation Defensive Wall (Shield) in which the IDF entered the west bank and occupied Palestinians towns and cities so as to destroy Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. Soon Arafat was trapped in his head quarters confined to one wing and after heavy fighting some 4000 Palestinains were arrested across the west bank.
Hizbollah acting in support of the Palestinians immediately started to launch daily attacks against Israeli positions in the Shebaa farms sector in what can only be described as an attempted to open a second front. In a worrying development Palestinian guerrillas started launching Grad and Katusha missiles against Israel proper from south Lebanon, this was in breach of agreements established between Israel and Lebanon. Israel vowed a "cruel response" if Hizbollah and Palestinian attacks from Lebanon did not stop and blamed Syria for the escalation. Hizbollah attacks on Shebaa went on unabated and so on April 3, 2002 Syria began shifting some its occupation troops in Lebanon in an apparent bid to make them less of a target for any Israeli retaliation to attacks by Hizbollah. Most Syrian troops stationed in Mount Lebanon and along the coast were redeployed towards the Bekaa valley along the strategic Dahr el-Baidar mountain pass, 15 miles east of Beirut as stipulated in the Taif agreement. More incidents were reported of missiles striking Israel and so the Lebanese police moved to arrest those responsible.
On Thursday April 4 2002, three Palestinian guerrillas were caught in a car on the coastal road between the cities of Sidon and Tyre, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Chebaa Farms, with Grad rocket detonators in their possession. The Russian-made 120 mm Grad missiles have a firing range of up to 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) and so capable of hitting northern Israeli cities. The next day after Lebanese troops sent to south Lebanon to hunt Palestinian guerrillas seized a ready-to-fire katyusha rocket and after a fire fight arrested six armed Palestinians who were hiding in a cave at the southern edge of the Bekaa Valley, in the Rashaya area, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of the border. The Palestinians belonged to Ahmad Jibril's Syrian based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
In Beirut, Palestinians and communists started protests outside the US embassy in Awkar north of Beirut which soon turned into riots as the Palestinians and communists began to attack and stone Lebanese security forces after the latter tried to prevent the Palestinians from reaching the embassy compound. The scenes witnessed were similar to those of the late 1960s and 1970s when Palestinians and their allies confronted the Lebanese state.
Current Situation
To date, nothing has changed. Hizbollah continues to attack Israeli positions in the Shebaa Farms and Isreal retaliates with artillary and aircraft. The Lebanese Army has not deployed in the liberated regions of south Lebanon with security being handled by various armed militias, including those of Hizballah, Amal, and the SSNP.
The Syrians still occupy Lebanon.