I could see that Little Pines was a kind of fiction. All you had to do was take

I could see that Little Pines was a kind of fiction. All you had to do was take a map and draw in the 40-kilometer line. In the areas nearer the Mediterranean, in the western and central parts of the border area, it indeed covered territory controlled by armed PLO groups. But in the eastern sector, there were Syrian positions a mere 10 to 12 kilometers up from the border, well inside the “security zone”. Not much further north were two full Syrian divisions. That meant we’d be fighting not just the Palestinians, which was the ostensible aim of Little Pines. We would have to take on Syria. As soon as those hostilities began, we would have to destroy radar and SAM sites in the Syrian-controlled Beka’a Valley further north into Lebanon. After the first costly days of the 1973 war in the Sinai, we were not about to enter a major conflict without ensuring air superiority. Unless the Syrians retreated or surrendered, the inevitable result would be a wider conflict, not limited to dealing with Palestinian fighters in south Lebanon but paving the way for Arik to go ahead with his original plan and push all the way to Beirut. This wasn’t mere supposition on my part. In February 1982, we ran a simulation exercise in the kirya based on Plan B. The result: Little Pines became Big Pines. A clash with the Syrians proved inevitable, if only because one target even under Little Pines was the main road between Beirut and Damascus. It lay well beyond the 40-kilometer line. As the main supply route for their forces in the interior of Lebanon, it was also of critical importance for the Syrians. So any idea of a quick, limited strike to establish a security zone was fantasy. A few days later, Raful chaired a wide-ranging discussion on Lebanon. Near the end of the session, I asked him directly whether government ministers were aware that our war plan “will inevitably lead to a clash with the Syrians”. Raful hesitated for a second, but then answered briskly: “Yes.” That assurance would turn out to be untrue. But my wider concern, as the weeks passed, was Arik’s political plan, of which I was getting an ever clearer idea from him. It struck me as not just grand, but grandiose. Part of it was to obliterate Arafat as a political force, if not by killing him then by forcing him and every one of his fighters from Lebanon, a country Arik wanted to place under the unchallenged control of the most prominent of the younger generation of Christian Phalangist politicians, Bashir Gemayel. I felt all that would be challenging enough. But in Arik’s eyes, this was only part of a complete reordering of our conflict with the Arabs. He expected Gemayel’s Lebanon to openly align itself with Israel and expel all Syrian troops. As for the expelled Palestinians, they would go back to Jordan where they would resume — and, this time, win — their civil war with King Hussein. The result, with Hussein deposed, 195 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011666