Hello, welcome to this, the third episode of Realpolitik. I am your host, Firasmodad.

In the previous episode, we had gone over some of the history of the State of Israel, reaching,

I think, up to the Oslo Accords. Maybe before we begin, we can do a quick little recap on where we were.

So the State of Israel was founded in 1948. The intention behind it

was for Britain to have a foothold in the Middle East, close to the Suez Canal, and that could

separate Egypt and Syria and prevent the emergence of a unified Arab state that could become a

threat in the Mediterranean. There was a long list of

wars, 1956, 1967, 1973. The Arabs pretty much lost all of these wars, and what this led to

was the rise of Palestinian militancy through leftist groups as well as secular groups

that were trying to basically find a way to force the Israelis to recognize the Palestinians

and to find a way to end the state of Israel. In 1979 the Egyptians figured that they couldn't beat Israel and that their

economy couldn't continue with endless wars. So they signed a peace treaty with Israel. And the result of

that was the assassination of the president who had signed the peace treaty in 1981 but the

Egyptian military continued with its plan to make peace and exit the Arab

Israeli conflict and this led Israel to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and it led to the peace treaty that we still have today,

the Camp David Peace Accords, that still govern their relationship between Egypt and Israel.

Now, in 1978, because the Palestinians had been in Lebanon since 1970 after their expulsion from Jordan,

and because they were launching a series of attacks on Israel, the Israelis decided to invade

South Lebanon. And they took a small strip of territory, and then after a series of attacks, Ariar Sharon, the

defense minister of Israel at the time, decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Lebanon

that reached the capital, Beirut. This succeeded in forcing the Palestinians out of Lebanon. They went into exile in Tunisia,

and it seemed that the avenues for Palestinian militancy were closed. Then two things happened.

...