1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon

1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon
Part of Mossad assassinations following the Munich massacre (during Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon)

Israeli commandos and rubber boats on a missile boat during the operation
DateApril 9–10, 1973
Location
Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon
Result IDF special forces achieved their objective
Belligerents
 Israel

 PLO

Commanders and leaders
Emmanuel Shaked
Amnon Lipkin-Shahak
Ehud Barak
Shmuel Presburger
Amos Yaron
Shaul Ze'ev		 Yasser Arafat
Kamal Adwan  †
Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar  †
Casualties and losses
2 killed 50+ killed[1]
3 Lebanese policemen and 4 civilians killed[2][1]

The 1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon (also known as Operation Spring of Youth in Hebrew or the Verdun massacre in Arabic)[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]

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.

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Bergman was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Letter dated 11 April 1973 from the permanent representative of Lebanon to the United Nations addressed to the president of the Security Council" (PDF). April 11, 1973. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 9, 2015. Retrieved December 9, 2015.
  3. ^ Elias Khoury Remembering Ghassan Kanafani, or how a nation was born of story telling, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol.42 No. 3- Spring 2013
  4. ^ J. Bowyer Bell, Irving Louis Horowitz (2005) Assassin: Theory and Practice of Political Violence, pp137, Transaction Publishers ISBN 978-1-4128-0509-4 Retrieved May 4, 2010.
  5. ^ Maslin, Janet (December 15, 2005). "A Massacre in Munich, and What Came After". The New York Times. Retrieved April 20, 2010.