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[quote=Anonymous]June 3, 1980.

Over the previous weeks Israeli air and sea attacks on “Palestinian and leftist positions” have been “almost nightly events.” According to Christian Science Monitor journalist Helena Cobban, however, a “more sinister Israeli hand is seen behind some of the increased unrest throughout the country.” Indeed, “several enormous car bombs have exploded here recently in locations with a heavy concentration of Palestinian or Syrian population.” At least two were claimed by a group calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF).

The mysterious group’s modus operandi, Cobban writes, “seem[s] to indicate the influence of some Israeli extremist groups” like the ones behind car-bomb attacks against three Palestinian mayors in the West Bank on June 2. To an “embittered Palestinian scholar,” who spoke to Cobban, they also brought to mind “the terror-bombings launched against Palestinian villages by Mr. Begin’s own Irgun extremist group” in the 1940s. “Then, the aim was to drive us out of Palestine, and they largely succeeded… Now they want to drive us out of Lebanon. Where can we go? The Israelis are going mad, but this time round, the world cannot support their terror. Or can it?”

Over the following 3 years, hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed, and many more wounded, by explosive devices hidden in baskets, on bicycles or mules, in cars or trucks. After each attack, calls to the media were placed claiming responsibility in the name of the FLLF. Palestinian and Lebanese officials repeatedly insisted that the FLLF was merely a fiction intended to hide the hand of Israel and its Christian rightist allies. Israeli officials rejected such accusations, insisting rather that the bombings were part of an internecine war amongst rival Arab factions. Several of these bombings are included in the RAND and START “terrorism databases.”
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