News Background : 3 YEARS LATER, EFFECTIVENESS OF INVASION IS STILL ARGUED

On June 6, 1982, a Sunday, Israel’s armed forces crossed the northern frontier into Lebanon with what were described as limited objectives. But the invasion was massive in scale, involving land, sea and air forces, and within hours it was clear that Israel’s leaders had much more in mind than what they were saying publicly.

The Israelis, welcomed by Christian and Muslim villagers in southern Lebanon, swept aside Palestinian fighters and Syrian forces on land and in the air. By June 10, Israeli tanks were on the outskirts of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, about 75 miles above the northernmost point in Israel.

Three years later, and after much bitter debate in Jerusalem, the Israeli troops are being pulled back across the frontier.

Whether the objectives were achieved--even the limited objective that was given as the reason for the invasion--is a question still being argued.

On the day of the thrust into Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in a letter to President Reagan that the army had been ordered to push Palestinian guerrillas in the border area at least 25 miles to the north, in order to put Palestinian artillery beyond the range of Israeli settlements.

But it was soon made clear that the Israelis, under a plan drawn up by Ariel Sharon, then the minister of defense, intended from the outset to drive quickly to Beirut; to install a friendly Christian government there; to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, politically and militarily, and to drive out the Syrian forces that have occupied much of Lebanon since the mid-1970s.

Today, a Christian-led government hangs on in Beirut but is virtually without power to govern, the PLO has been weakened but is by no means destroyed, and the Syrians continue to hold positions in northern and eastern Lebanon. The Begin government in Tel Aviv has been replaced by a coalition.

During the invasion and occupation:

--PLO guerrilla forces were evacuated from Beirut, beginning in August, 1982, and scattered to other countries in the region; before the year was out, they were filtering back into the country, Since then, they have been involved in bitter fighting with Shia Muslim forces, including the battle that is still going on at Beirut’s Palestinian refugee camps.

--U.S. Marines were put ashore in Beirut as part of an international force to oversee the PLO departure; 241 of the American servicemen were to die Oct. 23, 1983, in a terrorist attack on their headquarters.

--Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s Christian president-elect, was killed Sept. 14, 1982, in a bomb explosion at his party headquarters in East Beirut. He was soon replaced as president by his brother, Amin.

--In apparent response to the killing of Bashir Gemayel, hundreds of men, women and children were massacred Sept. 16-18, 1982, when Christian militiamen attacked two Palestinian refugee camps just south of Beirut called Sabra and Chatilla. An official Israeli inquiry affixed “indirect responsibility” for the massacre on seven Israeli officials, including Sharon, for not taking steps to control the militiamen. Sharon later resigned.

--No official casualty figures are available, but Lebanese police estimate that about 20,000 people have been killed during the three-year invasion and occupation period. Another 30,000 are believed to have been wounded. The figures include casualties from Lebanese factional fighting.

In May of 1983, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement that called for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, contingent upon agreement by Syria and the PLO to withdraw their forces, too. The plan also defined a security zone in southern Lebanon that would be a buffer to provide for the safety of settlers in northern Israel.

That September, the Israelis began abandoning their positions unilaterally and pulling back to the security zone in the south. The Lebanese government, under pressure from Syria, soon scrapped the accord with Israel. Heavy fighting erupted in the mountainous Shouf region, southeast of Beirut, as various factions tried to fill the vacuum created by the departure of the Israelis.

There was fighting in Lebanon long before the Israelis invaded; Christians and Muslims have been locked in factional fighting since the mid-1970s. The fighting continued virtually without interruption while the Israelis were there: in Beirut, in Tripoli, in the Shouf and in the southern part of the country, where the Israeli forces were harassed all through the months after their withdrawal from Beirut.

On Jan. 14, 1985, the Israeli Cabinet announced that Israel’s troops would be withdrawn from Lebanon in three stages, the first of which got under way less than a week later.