Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [26]
During the Falklands war, which began in April 1982, when Britain and Argentina fought over control of the Falkland Islands, we were given “dog tags” for the first time—metal tags that soldiers wear around their neck with personal information so they can be identified if they are killed in battle. I called my father and told him they were issuing us with dog tags and it looked like we might be deployed. Without a pause, he said, “If they go, you go with them.” As it turned out, another unit was sent, and we spent the conflict on a training exercise in Fort Polk, Louisiana.
In June 1982, as the Falklands war was ending, halfway around the globe another war was beginning. On June 6, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon—just four years after it had last crossed the border and occupied southern Lebanon with the purpose of destroying PLO bases and expanding the buffer zone it had established where a surrogate force, under the leadership of a renegade Lebanese army officer, was providing support. By June 1978, Israeli forces had been replaced by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), established under UN Security Council Resolution 425. Their mandate was to confirm Israel’s withdrawal and to assist the government of Lebanon with restoring peace and security.
This time, in contravention of a cease-fire brokered by U.S. envoy Philip Habib in July 1981, the Israeli army, under the command of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, conducted an aggressive campaign—Israel called it “Operation Peace for Galilee”—in pursuit of Yasser Arafat and his PLO guerrilla fighters. Sharon pushed all the way to Beirut. This was one of the first Middle Eastern wars to be televised, and millions watched in disbelief as for the first time Israeli tanks rolled into the streets of an Arab capital. For me and for all Arabs, this was a tragic, traumatic event. It was a defining moment, and to this day people can tell you exactly what they were doing when the invasion took place. I watched on television in the officers’ mess at Carver Barracks in Saffron Walden, just south of Cambridge, as Israeli forces shelled Beirut. They were using eight-inch artillery, which are not known for their accuracy, and I knew that there would be many civilian casualties. But what none of us could know was that civilians would be deliberately and brutally targeted.
By the end of August 1982, PLO forces had been evacuated from Beirut. Then, on September 14, the Christian Lebanese president-elect Bachir Gemayel was assassinated. Two days later, Israeli forces entered West Beirut, and Sharon authorized a group of Christian militia fighters to go into the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps to settle some old scores. In the resulting tragedy some eight hundred refugees were massacred. As stories and pictures began to make their way to a horrified world, gruesome scenes unfolded to match the worst of human history. We saw pictures of bodies piled upon each other in the streets, women and children hacked to death with knives and axes, and old men lined up against a wall and shot. Throughout it all, the Israeli army surrounded the camps, firing flares at night to illuminate the way for the murderers going about their sickening work. I was furious, and for days after that I had trouble sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes I was haunted by visions of mutilated bodies.
Across the globe people were horrified by what had taken place. How could Israel claim to be a democratic, law-abiding nation and let its soldiers stand idly by while such crimes