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Informed media commentary on the Israeli attack on Lebanon in the spring of 1996 explained to the reader or listener that the Israelis had been in occupation of a strip of South Lebanon since 1978. While Israel's control over the so-called security zone can be said to have been formalized then, Israel has been exercising hegemony over the area since at least 1976. There is no end in sight to the troubles that have resulted therefrom.
I arrived in Beirut on 13 February 1977, having been withdrawn from Algiers on short notice and rushed out to my new post in order to present my credentials before the new US secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, arrived on 17 February on his first trip to the Middle East. We had had no ambassador in Beirut since the assassination of my predecessor, Francis Meloy, the previous spring, and assignment of one had been requested by the Lebanese government as evidence that the situation was returning to normal. At the moment of my arrival, the Syrian army was poised to enter the Palestinian refugee camps (notably those of Sabra and Shatila) to seize heavy weapons, the first step in what was supposed to be a wholesale confiscation of arms from the various militias. Everyone knew there would be a fight when that started, and, not wishing to disrupt the Vance visit, the Americans (and others) prevailed on the Syrians to postpone the operation. The delay was fatal; momentum was lost, and arms, whether heavy or light, were never collected seriously. This meant that the various militias, both Palestinian and Lebanese, continued to have as much or more firepower than the Lebanese army, permitting them to resume fighting at will. (When I paid my farewell call on President Ilyas Sarkis in September 1978, he remarked that there were an estimated 600,000 automatic weapons in private hands in Lebanon, or roughly one per family, something far beyond his government's ability to control.)
I presented my credentials to President Sarkis on 15 February 1977, and Vance came and went. He brought an oral message of support for the independence and territorial integrity of Lebanon, told Sarkis the United States would do what it could to help the government materially and politically,...