Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

If you want to get technical, it was the PLO... After King Hussein (the elder) tossed them out of Lebanon in September (Black September) 1970.

Your whataboutism is duly noted, but to say Israel's ethnic cleansing had nothing to do with it is a stretch.

Of course the introduction of a large Palestinian cohort in Southern Lebanon fucked up Israel's plan to take that for themselves, leaving an allied Christian state to the north of the Litani River.

From the beginning, Zionists advocated a "Jewish State" not just in Palestine but also in Jordan, southern Lebanon, and the Golan Heights as well. In 1918, Ben-Gurion described the future "Jewish state's" frontiers in detail as follows:

"to the north, the Litani river [in southern Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi 'Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-'Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan" (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 87) Click here (https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1045.html) to view the "Greater Israel" map that was submitted by the Zionists to the peace conference after WWI.

On July 29, 1937, Ben-Gurion stated to the World Convention of Ihud Po'alei Tzion in Zurich that Maronite-ruled Lebanon would serve the Christian minority better if it allied itself with the future "Jewish state." He said:

"Having Lebanon as a neighbor ensures the Jewish state of a faithful ally from the first day of its establishment. It is not, also, unavoidable that across the northern side of the Jewish state border in southern Lebanon the first possibility of our expansion will come up through agreement, in good will, with our neighbors who need us." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 88

Adds a little color to Sabra and Shatilla too.

Lest you forget:

one of the most brutal and least remembered acts of violence in modern history: the massacre of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Beginning on September 16, 1982, Lebanese militia, operating under the direction of Israeli forces, massacred, wounded, and left homeless thousands of defenseless men, women, and children in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. The indiscriminate killing was carried out methodically over the course of two days until the morning of September 18. By the end of this campaign of violence and terror, at least 1,200 Palestinian civilian refugees had been murdered.

During the massacre, Israeli forces controlled the area surrounding the Sabra and Shatila camps. They allowed militants to enter the camps, blocked Palestinian refugees from escaping, and illuminated the night sky with flares as the killing raged on. The day after the killings stopped, the United Nations Security Council condemned the “criminal massacre of Palestinian civilians.” Three months later, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously condemned the killings as an act of genocide. A UN-established commission concluded that Israeli authorities were responsible for the massacre, with the intention to destroy the national and cultural identity of the Palestinian people.

https://adc.org/42-years-later-the-massacre-of-sabra-and-shatila-still-haunts-us-amid-gazas-ongoing-genocide/