Spring
A wave of uprisings against Israel breaks out in the Occupied Territories. Thirty-one Palestinians are killed and 365 are injured.March 12
Israel dismisses ten mayors in the West Bank and Gaza and appoints Israeli Army officers in their stead. With the dismissals, Israel’s relative tolerance toward individuals and institutions propounding a Palestinian nationalist stance ends. Later, travel restrictions are placed on workers’ leaders, heads of charitable societies, newspaper editors, and others. Israel also imposes regional travel restrictions, detains individuals, increases the pace of house demolitions, and closes schools.April
The Ministerial Committee for Settlement allows the establishment of settlements under private initiatives, thus approving the purchase of land in the territories by private persons while ending the Jewish National Fund’s monopoly on land acquisition.June 6
Israel invades Lebanon in what it calls Operation Peace for the Galilee. The attack is aimed at the PLO bases and institutions in Lebanon and seeks to establish a “new order” north of Israel. Despite statements that the operation is limited in scope and duration, the IDF reaches the outskirts of Beirut in a few days. Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps in Tzor, Tzidon, and other areas south of Beirut and in the capital itself are attacked. The war continues for months and years.August 21
Following two months of siege on Beirut and thousands of casualties among civilians, an agreement mediated by the United States allows PLO forces to leave the city without surrendering to the Israeli Army. The Palestinian forces disperse to a few Arab countries. PLO headquarters moves to Tunis.September 18
Soldiers from the Christian Phalangists, Israel's allies in Lebanon, massacre some eight hundred and fifty people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. IDF troops who are spread out around the camps do nothing to prevent the massacre. A week later, hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrate in Tel Aviv and demand appointment of a commission of inquiry. The commission will be established a few weeks later. Its report will be published in February 1983 and will eventually lead to the removal of Ariel Sharon from the Defense Ministry.December
The government presents a master plan for the development of Judea and Samaria. The plan foresees the settlement of some seventy-five thousand settlers in thirty-five new settlements.———
In 1982, the trend in the farming sector in the Occupied Territories turns sharply down, recording a decline in farming income for the first time. The decline in farming income, a permanent trend in the coming years, further encourages employment in Israel and abandonment of the land and indirectly enables Israel to expand the declaration of uncultivated land as “state lands.”
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Responsibility for the water economy in the Occupied Territories is transferred from the IDF to Mekorot, the Israeli water company. In the mid-1990s, 83 percent of the water drawn from the Occupied Territories goes to Israel, where per-capita water consumption is almost four times higher than in the Occupied Territories.
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Yesh Gvul, a peace movement supporting soldiers who refuse to serve in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories, is founded. Over the years, more than three thousand soldiers will refuse to take part in IDF actions in the Occupied Territories, with some three hundred and fifty of them being sentenced to military prison for their refusal.