page_title: Tyre, Lebanon
section_title: 1982 Lebanon War with Israel and Occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Tyre, Lebanon / History / 1943 Lebanese independence / Post-Sadr Era (since 1978) / 1982 Lebanon War with Israel and Occupation
caption_attribution_description: English: Graffiti on Rashidieh camp العربية: أحد الجداريات في مخيم الرشيدية في مدينة صور اللبنانية
context_page_description: Tyre is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido. The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1984.
  The historian Ernest Renan noted:
  One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins.
  Today Tyre is the fifth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli, Aley and Sidon, It is the capital of the Tyre District in the South Governorate. There were approximately 200,000 inhabitants in the Tyre urban area in 2016, including many refugees.
context_section_description: Following an assassination attempt on Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London the IDF started an invasion of Lebanon on 6 June 1982, which heavily afflicted Tyre once again:
  Shelling by Israeli artillery and air raids killed some 80 people on the first day. Though the PLO had reportedly left its positions on the peninsula, urban Tyre with the market area in particular was heavily bombarded as well. Historical buildings like the Serail and Khan Sour were partly destroyed. The latter had been taken over by the Al-Ashkar family from the Melkite Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Tyre after WWII and became known as Khan Al-Ashkar.
  
  However, the Palestinian camps were bearing the brunt of the assault, as many guerillas fought till the end. Noam Chomsky recorded that
  "The first target was the Palestinian camp of Rashidiyeh south of Tyre, much of which, by the second day of the invasion, 'had become a field of rubble.' There was ineffectual resistance, but as an officer of the UN peace-keeping force swept aside in the Israeli invasion later remarked: 'It was like shooting sparrows with cannon.'"
  On 7 June, the Greek-Catholic (Melkite) archbishop Georges Haddad succeeded in temporarily halting the attack of an IDF tank column in a bold appeal to the Israeli commander, mediated by a Swiss delegate of the ICRC, to evacuate the civilian population to the beaches. The fighting stopped after two days, but the humanitarian consequences were severe, also because "the IDF had few plans for management or detention of masses of civilians, let alone for feeding."
  The government of Lebanon claimed that the IDF attacks killed some 1,200 civilians and injured more than 2,000 Non-combatants, whereras the IDF claimed that "only" 56 civilians were killed in the Tyre District. Estimates of IDF casualties during combat in Rashidieh and Burj El Shimali ranged between 21 and "nearly 120".
  UNRWA recorded that in Rashidieh alone "more than 600 shelters were totally or partially destroyed and more than 5,000 Palestine refugees were displaced." Those in the Burj El Shimali camp were heavily affected as well There were 11,256 registered Palestinian refugees in Burj El Shimali at the time, and 15,356 in Rashidieh, altogether more than the entire population of urban Tyre which was estimated to be around 23,000. Much of the destruction was done "systematically" by the IDF after the fighting stopped, leaving some 13,000 Palestinians homeless in the Tyre area. Only El Bass camp with 5,415 registered Palestinians was spared much of the violence.
  
  Still in June 1982, the Israeli forces temporarily arrested some 14,000 men in Tyre and paraded them in front of hooded collaborators who advised the occupators whom to detain.  At the same time, the IDF set up a large compound in Burj el-Shemali right next to the Amal technical training center founded by Musa Sadr:
  "The centre doubled as office of the Amal leader in South Lebanon, Dawud Sulayman Dawud, nicknamed 'David David' because of his alleged readiness to negotiate with Israel. He was a native of Tarbikha, one of the five Shi'ite villages in northern Galilee, which were depoluated in October/November 1948, and his Lebanese opponents often called him a Palestinian. Dawud and other Amal leaders did not avoid discreet contacts with Israelis, but refused open clientship. The IDF soon lost patience and arrested thirteen Amal leaders as early as the summer of 1982."
  Moreover, the IDF set up a military post in Tyre and sponsored the return of Shia feudal lord Kazem al-Khalil to the city in July 1982 after an absence of seven years. When his attempts to reconcile with Amal failed, he formed a small militia of some 40 men with Israeli support, recruiting mainly young Shiites from a poor background. However, al-Khalil's collaboration not only "discredited" and "delegitimised him in the eyes of the Shi'a, but also earned him the anger of the Syrians. This simple miscalculation was an act from which he was never able to fully recover politically".
  Amal, on the other hand, in September 1982 managed to mobilise an estimated 250
caption: Graffiti in Rashidieh camp
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