After rigorous planning and thorough preparation, the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Peace for the Galilee in 1982. The stated objective was to free the Galilee from the constant threat of Katyusha rockets and to drive Palestinian terrorists away from Israel's northern border. But the operation also had a long-term political objective. While this was never stated publicly, Israel wanted to create a new political order in Lebanon and have an ally on its northern border. The maze of ethnic allegiances and affiliations created a complex and toxic reality for Israel, which eventually had to make do with a security zone, rather than an allied state. In 2000, Israel even had to withdraw from that sliver of land. The war taught us how much Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's strategic thinking still holds water. Namely, Israel cannot change the political reality with military might. "We cannot bring this conflict to an end so long as the Arabs do not want to do that ... we cannot end this conflict," Ben-Gurion told the military's top brass in 1955. Israel's decision-makers failed to follow Ben-Gurion's advice when devising the military objectives of the operation that would later be known as the First Lebanon War. The IDF found itself sinking in the Lebanese quagmire for years because of the scrambled decision-making process and the lack of national consensus about the war's rationale. Operation Peace for the Galilee marked a turning point in how we perceive and conceptualize the threats Israel faces. The rise of Hezbollah, the embrace of resistance and the First Intifada demonstrated a new approach adopted by Israel's enemies: They recognized Israel's homefront as its Achilles' heel and based their operational plans on targeting population centers. In light of the geostrategic reality, the operation's political objectives should have been motivated by Ben-Gurion's basic doctrine. The State of Israel must establish deterrence to create calm, which can then be exploited to develop measures to further entrench its security, develop the economy, improve education, integrate new immigrants and formulate political arrangements. In the event Israel's deterrence is weakened, it would have to resort to force to re-establish it for years to come. In such a scenario, the IDF would have to provide the country with two significant accomplishments: First, dealing Israel's enemies a harsh blow that would be hard to forget and would require massive resources, and second, minimizing the duration of the conflict so as to mitigate the interruption to our daily lives. But the main lesson from Operation Peace for the Galilee appears to be the need to establish a broad national consensus before going to war particularly if the military plans were years in the making as in that case. The public debate, which intensified as the war the dragged on, exacted a heavy price because it cast doubt on the use of force. The need to win legitimacy at home is just as relevant today, as Israel struggles to solve complex security issues. Forging a broad consensus domestically is conditioned on the understanding that force should be used a last resort to counter such threats. The main lesson gleaned from the First Lebanon War should not be overlooked: Allow the Israeli government full participation in evaluating the situation leading up to war, as Israel's de facto constitution, the Basic Law: Government mandates. This applies to the use of force, and its repercussions. This is one of the most important conditions for building national consensus, which we will require down the road as well. The writer is head of the Military and Strategic Affairs Program at the Institute for National Security Studies.
