Operation Grapes of Wrath (Hebrew: מבצע ענבי זעם Mivtsa Enavi Zaam), known in Lebanon as the April Aggression (Arabic: عدوان نيسان, romanized: ʿUdwān Nīsān), was a seventeen-day campaign of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Hezbollah in 1996 which attempted to end the Iran-backed group's rocket attacks on northern Israeli civilian centres by forcing the group north of the Litani River, out of easy range of these civilian centres.
While Israel did succeed in ousting the PLO from Lebanon, armed insurgency by radical Shia organizations emerged in the region.
[citation needed] A roadside bomb explosion that caused the death of a 14-year-old Lebanese boy and injury of three others in the village of Barashit was cited by Hezbollah as the reason for firing 30 missiles into northern Israel on 9 April.
[13] In the early morning of 11 April, Israeli aircraft and artillery began an intensive bombardment of Shiite villages in South Lebanon.
On April 14, an Israeli army spokesman said: "Anyone remaining in Tyre or these forty villages... is solely responsible for endangering his life.
"[17] According to Human Rights Watch, such warnings were “in part designed to provoke a major humanitarian crisis by internally displacing upwards of 400,000 Lebanese civilians”.
The orders to evacuate an entire region - in this case contrary to international humanitarian law - issued to the inhabitants of villages in southern Lebanon, do not exempt Israel from the obligation to respect the civilians still on the spot.
On 12 April, near Beirut, a Syrian military post was bombed by Israeli aircraft, resulting in the death of one soldier and injuring seven others.
It is estimated 400,000 people left their homes in southern Lebanon[23] and 16,000 residents of Kiryat Shimona fled south during the bombardment.
Lebanon's economic damage was estimated at $500 million by economist Marwan Iskandar, and endorsed as accurate by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
[28] The deaths of civilians in Operation Grapes of Wrath and in particular at Qana have been cited by Al-Qaeda as motivations for its actions and policies towards the United States.
Mohamed Atta is described in Lawrence Wright's account of the 11 September 2001 attacks to have committed himself to martyrdom in immediate response to the Israel strikes at the beginning of Operation Grapes of Wrath.
[29] In his 23 August 1996 declaration of jihad against the United States, Osama bin Laden wrote, addressing his fellow Muslims, "Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq.
In the wake of the Qana massacre, a wave of international condemnation ensued and there was diplomatic pressure on Israel to stop the operation.
[32] Hostilities retreated from their escalated level following the reaching of an Israeli–Lebanese Ceasefire Understanding – an informal written agreement – under American diplomatic auspices.
The Monitoring Committee for the Implementation of the Grapes of Wrath Understandings was set up, comprising representatives from the U.S., France, Syria, Israel and Lebanon.