1978 South Lebanon conflict
1978 war between Israel and Lebanon and the PLO
The 1978 South Lebanon conflict, also known as the First Israeli invasion of Lebanon and codenamed Operation Litani by Israel, began when Israel invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in March 1978. It was in response to the Coastal Road massacre near Tel Aviv by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon. The conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,100–2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, 20 Israelis, and the internal displacement of 100,000 to 250,000 people in Lebanon. The Israel Defense Forces gained a military victory against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the latter was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon, preventing it from launching attacks on Israel from across its land border with Lebanon. In response to the outbreak of hostilities, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 425 and Resolution 426 on 19 March 1978, which called on Israel to immediately withdraw its troops from Lebanon and established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Israel launched a second invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Background
Though it took the form of an invasion by the Israeli military of southern Lebanon, Operation Litani arose from the long-running Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After 1968, militant groups that formed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian groups established a quasi-state in southern Lebanon, using it as a base for attacks against civilian targets in northern Israel as well as attacks on diaspora Israelis and other targets worldwide. This violence was exacerbated by an influx of some 3,000 PLO militants who had fled Jordan following the defeat of Palestinian groups to Jordanian forces during the Black September conflict; the Palestinian political cause began to regroup in southern Lebanon and re-shifted the focus of its attacks to Israeli targets, and did so via the Israel–Lebanon border. Israel responded to Palestinian attacks from Lebanon with extensive air raids against PLO bases of operations.
The public source identifies “1978 South Lebanon conflict” as 1978 war between Israel and Lebanon and the PLO. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around South, Lebanon and conflict.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1121402. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1982 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “1978 South Lebanon conflict” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.