Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners


The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners – FLLF or Front pour la Libération du Liban des Étrangers in French, was a formerly obscure underground terrorist organization that surfaced in Lebanon at the early 1980s. The group was originally set up on the orders of Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, who instructed Israeli General Avigdor Ben-Gal to create the group in the wake of the 1979 Nahariya attack.

Origins

According to Ronen Bergman, the FLLP was set up in the wake of a massacre of an Israeli family at Nahariya in 1979 by militants, such as Samir Kuntar, belonging to the Palestine Liberation Front. The operations, mostly unauthorized, which it carried out against the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon were coordinated by Meir Dagan, reportedly without informing the IDF, the Israeli Defense Ministry, the Israeli government and its various defense agencies. David Agmon at the time head of Israel's northern command was one of the few people who were briefed on its operations. Lebanese operatives on the ground from the Maronite, Shiite and Druze communities were recruited. The aim of the series of operations was to:
'cause chaos among the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, without leaving an Israeli fingerprint, to give them the feeling that they were constantly under attack and to instill them with a sense of insecurity.'

Activities 1979-1983

The group made its début in July 1981 with a bomb attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization offices at Fakhani Road in West Beirut, though it only reached the peak of its activities later in September by unleashing a spate of car-bombings that created havoc in the Muslim quarters of Sidon, Tripoli, Chekka and West Beirut until February 1982. In the latter case, the car-bombs were combined with a powerful command-detonated explosive device planted at a packed cinema – followed suit by another in early October – that left 300 civilians dead or wounded; other attacks undertaken that same month targeted Syrian troops of the Arab Deterrent Force, followed by a failed assassination attempt on the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon John Gunther Dean.
FLLF operations came to a sudden halt just prior to the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, only to be resumed the following year with four huge car-bomb attacks: the first one on 28 January 1983 struck a PLO headquarters at Chtaura in the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley, killing 40, coupled by a second on 3 February at West Beirut that devastated the Palestine Research Center offices and left 20 people dead, including the wife of Sabri Jiryis. A third bombing occurred on Syrian-controlled Baalbek on 7 August 1983, which killed about 30 people and injured nearly 40, followed by another on 5 December 1983 at the Chyah quarter of the Southern suburbs of Beirut that claimed the lives of 12 people and maimed over 80.
The group ceased its actions shortly afterwards, though some observers believe that they remained active as late as mid-1984, but nothing was heard of them since.

Controversy

The PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat accused the Israeli intelligence services of orchestrating the bombings claimed by the FLLF during the fall of 1981.