Multinational Force in Lebanon

During the military operation " Peace of Galilee " in the summer of 1982, the Israeli army besieged the capital of Beirut for two months, where the headquarters and main forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were located. In mid-August, PLO Executive Committee Chairman Yasser Arafat finally agreed to evacuate the organization’s military forces from Lebanon to several Arab countries; the agreement was brokered by the special representative of the US president in the region, Philip Habib . To monitor the withdrawal of Palestinian troops at the request of Lebanon, an international contingent was introduced into the country consisting of troops of the USA , France and Italy ^[1] .

The French were the first to arrive in Beirut ( August 21 ), followed by the American Marines. For the US Marine Corps, this was not the first experience of operations in Lebanon: in 1958, it already landed here to support the Lebanese government during the first civil war in this country. The evacuation of Palestinian militants took place without incident, and in mid-September, international troops left the country, but not for long.

On September 16 - 18, 1982, right-wing Christian groups with the connivance of the Israeli army massacred Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps. The event had a wide international response. US President Ronald Reagan announced that American troops, together with units of France and Italy, are returning to Lebanon to assist the government in stabilizing the situation. In late September, the Multinational Force began deploying in Beirut. They included the reinforced battalion of the US Marine Corps (its strength was later brought up to 1800 people) and about the same French (1500 people) and Italian (1400 people) forces. In early 1983, a small British contingent joined the international group.

The mission of the Multinational Force has not been clearly defined; they patrolled their sectors of responsibility in Beirut, monitored the ceasefire in the capital and carried out some humanitarian operations. It was assumed that the MNF should have been a neutral side in the civil war, separating hostile groups (Shiites, Christian phalangists and the Israeli army stationed south of Beirut). In one case, which received rather great fame, an officer of the US Marine Corps refused to let an Israeli tank convoy through his checkpoint, and the incident resulted in a confrontation between the Marine Corps and the Israelis ^[2] . At the same time, Lebanese-Israeli negotiations continued, culminating in the signing of a joint agreement on May 17, 1983 . This agreement ended the state of war between the two countries, and also made the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon dependent on the withdrawal of Syrian peacekeepers. It seemed that the agreement would become the basis for stabilizing the situation in the country, but this did not happen. In April, a month before the signing of the agreement, a suicide bomber attacked the American embassy in Beirut (63 dead) in a car bomb.

In the summer of 1983, US Marines engaged in armed clashes with Shiite and Druze formations several times, while at the end of August they suffered casualties for the first time, after which American ships fired on militant positions near Beirut. In the future, US units began to periodically undergo mortar and sniper attacks. The culmination came in the early morning of October 23, 1983, when terrorists in mined cars simultaneously attacked the barracks of the American and French contingents . The building, which housed the headquarters of the American battalion, was completely destroyed. As a result of these attacks, 241 American and 58 French troops were killed. The leaders of the two countries said that their contingents would not be withdrawn from Lebanon, despite the tragedy. In early November, a terrorist attack was carried out against Israeli forces in Tire , killing about 30 people. In mid-November, French Super Etandar attack aircraft attacked the positions of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards in the Bekaa Valley (there was a version of Iran ’s involvement in the organization of terrorist attacks).

On December 3, U.S. F-14 planes flying reconnaissance over Lebanon were fired by Syrian anti-aircraft artillery. In response to this shelling on December 4, U.S. Navy aircraft bombed Syrian positions in Lebanon. The attack was unsuccessful: two aircraft ( A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair II ) were lost, one pilot was captured (was released a month later due to the intervention of Jesse Jackson ). Later, in December and February of the following year, the American battleship New Jersey was called on several times to shell the Syrian forces in Lebanon. During the shelling on February 8, a high-ranking Syrian general was killed ^[3] .

Multinational forces failed to stabilize the situation in Lebanon. In early February 1984, Shiite and Druze units resumed hostilities in the Beirut area, and the Lebanese army began to fall apart. Ronald Reagan, already under pressure from Congress on the legitimacy of the use of US forces in hostilities without the approval of the lower house and the Senate, ordered the evacuation of US forces. France, Italy and the United Kingdom did the same. The Marines left Lebanon on February 25 , the last of the French left Beirut ( March 31 ). On March 5, the Lebanese government announced the denunciation of an agreement with Israel. The civil war in the country lasted another six years.

During the year and a half in Lebanon, the Multinational Force lost 265 Americans, 89 French ^[4] and 2 Italians ^[5] . The bulk of these losses occurred in the attacks of October 23, 1983.

• US Multinational Force (USMNF) Lebanon
• Tom Cooper & Eric L Palmer. Disaster in Lebanon: US and French Operations in 1983
• PETER J. FERRARO. BEIRUT, LEBANON: 24TH MAU, MAY-DEC 1983