1973 Israeli raid on Lebanon

The 1973 Israeli raid on Lebanon (known as Operation Spring of Youth, Hebrew: מבצע אביב נעורים, ''Mivtsa Aviv Ne'urim'') took place on the night of April 9 and early morning of April 10, 1973, when Israeli army special forces units attacked several Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) targets in Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon. The operation is generally considered to have been part of Operation Wrath of God, Israel's retaliation for the Munich massacre at the Summer Olympics in 1972.

The Israeli troops arrived at the Lebanese beaches on speedboats launched from missile boats offshore. Mossad agents awaited the forces on the beaches with cars rented the previous day, and then drove them to their targets and later back to the beaches for extraction.

During the operation, three of the highest-level PLO leaders, surprised at home, were killed, along with other PLO members. Several Lebanese security people and civilian neighbors were also killed, as were two of the Israeli soldiers.

Background

In February 1973, Ehud Barak, the then commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, obtained photographs and precise information on the whereabouts of three senior PLO leaders:
* Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar (Abu Youssef) – an operations leader in Black September, the group responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre. He was also a PLO veteran, previously head of the Lebanese Fatah branches, head of Fatah internal intelligence organization. His latest duties were head of the PLO's political department and one of Yasser Arafat's deputies (third in line of Fatah's leadership).
* Kamal Adwan – a PLO chief of operations, responsible for armed attacks against Israeli targets.
* Kamal Nasser – PLO spokesman and member of the PLO Executive Committee.

The men lived in a pair of seven-story buildings in the fashionable neighborhood of Verdun in West Beirut. These buildings were residential housing for both British and Italian families along with Arab families. One building housed Al-Najjar, and a building across the street housed Adwan and Nasser.

Barak and his team immediately began planning an operation to kill them. The final plan was to land operatives from navy ships on the Lebanese coast who would infiltrate into Lebanon disguised as tourists. Some of the commandos were to be disguised as women (Barak was disguised as a brunette woman). Before the mission, the forces trained using similar apartments in northern Tel Aviv. They also practiced cross-dressing and walking around disguised as lovers.

The operation

On April 9, 1973, Israeli Navy missile boats departed from Haifa naval base, carrying the commandos and Zodiac speedboats on board. When the missile boats reached the shores of Beirut, the Zodiacs were lowered into the water. To avoid being heard, they turned the motors off when they were a few hundred meters from land and rowed the rest of the way in. The commandos came ashore where Mossad agents were waiting for them with three cars. The agents drove them to their targets.

Three Sayeret Matkal commando teams entered the buildings and planted explosive fuzes at the apartment doors of their targets, while a backup team led by Barak remained outside and stood guard to repel PLO reinforcements or Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) Gendarmerie units. When the fuzes exploded, the commandos stormed the apartments, gunned down the three targets, and seized whatever documents they could find. Kamal Nasser, a Christian, was according to Palestinian reports, shot in front of his family, with his bullet wounds tracing the sign of the cross. Al-Najjar's wife was killed during the melee, as was an elderly Italian woman responding to the commotion. At the same time, the backup team engaged in a firefight with a few dozen Lebanese ISF gendarmes and PLO reinforcements. Two Lebanese policemen were killed. The responding forces were beaten back, and Mossad cars were used to extract the commandos. While driving to the beach, they encountered a Lebanese Army armoured personnel carrier (APC) as it scanned the shore. They were not confronted and continued on to the beach, where the commandos and drivers abandoned the cars and returned to the missile boats in Zodiacs.

At the same time, 14 Israeli commandos, mainly Sayeret Tzanhanim paratroopers, raided a multi-story building that housed militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The team was disguised as civilians and led by Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The Israeli team met strong resistance early on from nearly 100 militants guarding it, and engaged in a close-quarters battle. Teams of PFLP gunmen on the building's upper floors repeatedly attempted to take the elevator to the ground floor and join the battle, but each team was wiped out by commandos waiting near the doors. The team managed to place a large explosive charge inside the building and detonate it, causing part of the building to collapse. Lipkin-Shahak then requested an air evacuation. The commandos were extracted by Israeli Air Force helicopters. Two Israeli soldiers and dozens of PFLP fighters were killed during the fighting.

Two secondary forces attacked the Fatah headquarters for Gaza operations and a Fatah workshop in south Beirut. A third force of Shayetet 13 naval commandos landed in north Beirut and destroyed a small Fatah explosives workshop, while another paratroop unit raided and destroyed the PLO's main garage, located just south of Sidon.

Reactions in Lebanon

The Israeli operation sharply polarized public opinion in Lebanon. The Muslim Prime Minister Saeb Salam tendered to the resignation of the cabinet. 250,000 people, 10 per cent of the Lebanese population, turned out for the funeral in Beirut of the slain PLO leaders and further tens of thousands attended demonstrations in other parts of the country.
The opponents of the armed Palestinian presence, chiefly the army command and president Franjiyya, tried but failed to use the opportunity to restrict Palestinian freedom of movement. Two weeks of fighting between the army and Palestinian groups ended in stalemate.
In the end, Franjiyya had to admit that the Lebanese army was unable to defend the Palestinian refugee camps and he therefore reluctantly allowed the PLO to bring in heavier weapons and build fortifications.Sayigh, Yezid (1998). Armed Struggle and the Search for State - The Palestinian National Movement 1949-1993. Oxford University Press, USA, p.313

Popular culture

* Operation Spring of Youth was featured in the 2005 Steven Spielberg film ''Munich''.
* The Israeli children's book ''The Time Tunnel – Operation Spring of Youth'' (2005) by Galila Ron-Feder Amit, number 32 in the ''Time Tunnel'' series, is based on this operation.

See also

* Israeli casualties of war
* United Nations Security Council Resolution 332
* Palestinian casualties of war

References

External links

* Bregman, Ahron (2002). ''Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947''. London: Routledge.

''Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International''
Includes background material on the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre and Israel's hunt for its perpetrators.
* Simon, Bob
"An Eye For An Eye: Should The U.S. Use This As A Model?"
''CBS News'', November 21, 2001. Includes short testimonies by Barak and Adwan's daughter.


History of IDF operations vs. Palestinians from a Palestinian viewpoint, including this operation.

{{DEFAULTSORT:1973 Israeli Raid On Lebanon
Military responses by Israel to the Munich massacre
1973 in Lebanon
April 1973 events in Asia
Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon