1982 Lebanon War in the context of "Syrian Arab Army"

The Syrian Arab Army is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. Up until the fall of the Assad regime, the Syrian Arab Army existed as a land force branch of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, which dominated the military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and had the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army originated in local military forces formed by the French after World War I, after France obtained a mandate over the region. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year and 2 years after official independence.

After 1946, it played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting six military coups: two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and one each in 1951, 1954, 1963, 1966, and 1970. It fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and 1982 Lebanon War) and one with Jordan ("Black September" in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and from 2011 to 2024 was heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army had taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

The Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon lasted for eighteen years, from 1982 until 2000. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in response to attacks from southern Lebanon by Palestinian militants. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) occupied the southern half of Lebanon as far as the capital city Beirut, together with allied Maronite Christian paramilitaries involved in the Lebanese Civil War. The IDF left Beirut on 29 September 1982, but continued to occupy the country's southern half. Amid rising casualties from guerrilla attacks, the IDF withdrew south to the Awali river on 3 September 1983.

From February to April 1985, the IDF carried out a phased withdrawal to a "Security Zone" along the border, which it said was to protect northern Israel. From this point onwards, Israel supported the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the Lebanese Christian paramilitary, against Hezbollah and other Muslim militants. They fought a guerrilla war in Southern Lebanon throughout the occupation.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Arabic: قوة الأمم المتحدة المؤقتة في لبنان; Hebrew: כוח האו"ם הזמני בלבנון), or UNIFIL (Arabic: يونيفيل; Hebrew: יוניפי״ל) is a United Nations peacekeeping mission established on 19 March 1978 by United Nations Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426, and several further resolutions in 2006 to confirm Hezbollah demilitarisation, support Lebanese army operations against insurgents and weapon smuggling, and confirming Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, in order to ensure that the government of Lebanon would restore its effective authority in the area. The 1978 South Lebanon conflict came in the context of Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil War.

The mandate had to be adjusted due to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Following the 2006 Lebanon War, the United Nations Security Council enhanced UNIFIL and added additional tasks to the mandate such as aiding displaced persons.

The Israeli Ground Forces (Hebrew: זרוע היבשה, romanized: z'róa hibshá, lit. 'Land arm') are the ground forces of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The current commander of the ground forces is Major General Nadav Lotan.

An order from Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion on 26 May 1948 officially set up the Israel Defense Forces as a conscript army formed out of the paramilitary group Haganah, incorporating the militant groups Irgun and Lehi. The Ground Forces have served in all the country's major military operations—including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1976 Operation Entebbe, 1982 Lebanon War, 1987–1993 First Intifada, 2000–2005 Second Intifada, 2006 Lebanon War, and the Gaza War (2008–09). While originally the IDF operated on three fronts—against Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Egypt in the south—after the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, it has concentrated in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, including the First and the Second Intifada.

Ba'athist Syria launched a military intervention in the Lebanese Civil War in 1976, one year after the breakout of the war, as Syrian Arab Armed Forces began supporting Maronite militias against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and leftist militias. Syria also raised a proxy militia of its own, the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA). Hafez al-Assad's primary objective was to suppress the rise of PLO and allied pro-Palestinian militias in Lebanon which toed a hardline stance against Israel; and the invasion received widespread rebuke in the Arab world.

The involvement was later legalized under the pretext of Arab Deterrent Force of the Arab League. In 1982, Syria battled Israel over control of Lebanon.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. Its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army in 2016.

Hezbollah was founded in 1982 by Lebanese clerics in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's model of Islamic governance, Hezbollah established strong ties with Iran. The group was initially supported by 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) instructors, who helped unify various Lebanese Shia factions under Hezbollah's leadership. Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto outlined its key objectives, which include expelling Western influence from the region, destroying Israel, pledging allegiance to Iran's supreme leader, and establishing an Islamic government influenced by Iran's political ideology. However, the manifesto also emphasized Lebanese self-determination. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah fought against Israeli forces and the South Lebanon Army (SLA), eventually leading to Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah also played a prominent role in the 2006 Lebanon War and later became involved in the Syrian civil war, where it fought alongside the Syrian government against rebel forces.

The 1978 South Lebanon conflict, also known as the First Israeli invasion of Lebanon and codenamed Operation Litani by Israel, began when Israel invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in March 1978. It was in response to the Coastal Road massacre near Tel Aviv by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon. The conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,100–2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, 20 Israelis, and the internal displacement of 100,000 to 250,000 people in Lebanon. The Israel Defense Forces gained a military victory against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the latter was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon, preventing it from launching attacks on Israel from across its land border with Lebanon. In response to the outbreak of hostilities, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 425 and Resolution 426 on 19 March 1978, which called on Israel to immediately withdraw its troops from Lebanon and established the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Israel launched a second invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon was a multi-sided armed conflict initiated by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) against Israel in 1968 and against Lebanese Christian militias in the mid-1970s. PLO's goals evolved during the insurgency; by 1977, its goal was to pressure Israel into allowing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and expelled the PLO, thereby ending the insurgency.

During the 1948 Palestine war, about 100,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Israel into Lebanon; it is from these Palestinian refugee camps that most insurgents were recruited. In 1968, PLO guerrillas began conducting raids into Israel, and Israel conducted retaliatory raids into Lebanon. At the time, PLO's objective was to establish a single democratic state in all of historical Palestine with equal rights for Jews, Muslims and Christians. By 1977, the objective had evolved to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, alongside Israel. The Lebanese army was too weak to prevent the PLO from using Lebanese soil as a base for the insurgency, and eventually the PLO succeeded in creating a "state within a state" in southern Lebanon.