he confessed that he was not personally involved in the planning of the operation. âIf I had anything to do with it I would say so because my relations with the Americans are not so good,â he said with a chuckle.
When the United States declined to retaliate for the attack on the marines, Israel on November 16 struck the IRGC training camp at Janta,the first time it had staged an air raid against its new Shia foes. The jets swooped low over the valley dropping bombs for thirty minutes, killing nearly three dozen Hezbollah recruits and Iranian instructors, among them the youthful-looking Farhan Ali Ismael, who is buried in the âmartyrsâ cemeteryâ in nearby Brital.
For the Israelis, there was no escaping the fact that they had, as Yitzhak Rabin later put it, âlet the Shia genie out of the bottle.â Israel could have taken advantage of the early goodwill shown by the Shias of southern Lebanon to cultivate an amicable and mutually beneficial cross-border relationship. Instead, through a combination of ignorance, negligence, recklessness, and bad luck, Israel had created a ferocious and resolutely determined new enemy.
The Israeli author of a study on the post-1982 Israeli experience in Lebanon wrote, âThe quick change in the south of Lebanon from a relatively hospitable territory to an extremely hostile one was among the greatest failures of national intelligence estimates that Israel had ever known. No one, not even the most persistent opponents of the war, had ever raised this possibility.â 6
The Military Genius
After the Nabatiyah incident, Amal could no longer ignore the sentiment of its constituents in the south, and at last they came off the fence and endorsed a campaign of active resistance. In the months ahead, the focus of the Amal resistance campaign centered on Marakeh and six other villages lying in the hills to the east of Tyre. Known as the âarc of resistanceâ or the âseven villages resistance,â it was led by the unlikely figure of Mohammed Saad, an electronics teacher at the Jabal Amil Institute in Bourj Shemali and a prominent activist within the local Amal movement. With his narrow shoulders and skinny âchildlikeâ physique, Saad hardly looked the part of an influential underground military leader. His thick mane of wavy black hair, thin mustache, and scraggly tuft of beard on his lower chin gave him the appearance of an Americanbeat poet from the early 1960s instead of a charismatic guerrilla commanderâBob Dylan rather than Che Guevara.
Although the Amal leadership had instructed the cadres not to confront the Israeli invasion, Saad and his comrades around Tyre were certain that an active resistance was only a matter of time, and they began making preparations. They shaved off their beards, destroyed any documentation linking them to Amal, and collected and hid any weapons left by the Palestinians.
One of the main cell leaders in Tyre was Mohammed Zaghloul, then a lean, bespectacled twenty-nine-year-old who had joined Amal in 1978 and was close to Mohammed Saad. âMohammed was very clever, a military genius, and he put the idea of resistance into peopleâs heads, convincing those who thought it was hopeless to fight the Israelis,â he recalls. âAs young men at the time, we saw something special in him and we decided to follow him.â
Saadâs key lieutenant in Marakeh was Khalil Jerardi, a charismatic theology teacher at the Jabal Amil Institute. As Saad became more involved in directing resistance attacks, he disappeared from public view, and it was Jerardi, with his languid eyes and his beard, which grew longer and more pointed as the resistance progressed, who became the public face of the Amal resistance.
The first attacks consisted of roadside bombings and assassinations of collaborators. The Israeli military headquarters in Tyre was constantly monitored for Lebanese collaborators entering and leaving.
When the United States declined to retaliate for the attack on the marines, Israel on November 16 struck the IRGC training camp at Janta,the first time it had staged an air raid against its new Shia foes. The jets swooped low over the valley dropping bombs for thirty minutes, killing nearly three dozen Hezbollah recruits and Iranian instructors, among them the youthful-looking Farhan Ali Ismael, who is buried in the âmartyrsâ cemeteryâ in nearby Brital.
For the Israelis, there was no escaping the fact that they had, as Yitzhak Rabin later put it, âlet the Shia genie out of the bottle.â Israel could have taken advantage of the early goodwill shown by the Shias of southern Lebanon to cultivate an amicable and mutually beneficial cross-border relationship. Instead, through a combination of ignorance, negligence, recklessness, and bad luck, Israel had created a ferocious and resolutely determined new enemy.
The Israeli author of a study on the post-1982 Israeli experience in Lebanon wrote, âThe quick change in the south of Lebanon from a relatively hospitable territory to an extremely hostile one was among the greatest failures of national intelligence estimates that Israel had ever known. No one, not even the most persistent opponents of the war, had ever raised this possibility.â 6
The Military Genius
After the Nabatiyah incident, Amal could no longer ignore the sentiment of its constituents in the south, and at last they came off the fence and endorsed a campaign of active resistance. In the months ahead, the focus of the Amal resistance campaign centered on Marakeh and six other villages lying in the hills to the east of Tyre. Known as the âarc of resistanceâ or the âseven villages resistance,â it was led by the unlikely figure of Mohammed Saad, an electronics teacher at the Jabal Amil Institute in Bourj Shemali and a prominent activist within the local Amal movement. With his narrow shoulders and skinny âchildlikeâ physique, Saad hardly looked the part of an influential underground military leader. His thick mane of wavy black hair, thin mustache, and scraggly tuft of beard on his lower chin gave him the appearance of an Americanbeat poet from the early 1960s instead of a charismatic guerrilla commanderâBob Dylan rather than Che Guevara.
Although the Amal leadership had instructed the cadres not to confront the Israeli invasion, Saad and his comrades around Tyre were certain that an active resistance was only a matter of time, and they began making preparations. They shaved off their beards, destroyed any documentation linking them to Amal, and collected and hid any weapons left by the Palestinians.
One of the main cell leaders in Tyre was Mohammed Zaghloul, then a lean, bespectacled twenty-nine-year-old who had joined Amal in 1978 and was close to Mohammed Saad. âMohammed was very clever, a military genius, and he put the idea of resistance into peopleâs heads, convincing those who thought it was hopeless to fight the Israelis,â he recalls. âAs young men at the time, we saw something special in him and we decided to follow him.â
Saadâs key lieutenant in Marakeh was Khalil Jerardi, a charismatic theology teacher at the Jabal Amil Institute. As Saad became more involved in directing resistance attacks, he disappeared from public view, and it was Jerardi, with his languid eyes and his beard, which grew longer and more pointed as the resistance progressed, who became the public face of the Amal resistance.
The first attacks consisted of roadside bombings and assassinations of collaborators. The Israeli military headquarters in Tyre was constantly monitored for Lebanese collaborators entering and leaving.
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