Anita Arnand

You were a kid, weren't you?

Five years old in 1982 and your family lived on the front line.

Kim, people have this image of Lebanon back then as being some kind of war zone, some kind of sort of flattened landscape, just shell pockmarked.

What was it like?

I mean, you know, you were there, you knew it.

What was it like?

Describe what Lebanon was in 1982.

So, I mean, we should talk about the Falangists.

You've just mentioned them and this very charismatic leader of theirs, Bashir Gamal, because the Falangists do have roots in European fascism.

Can you just talk us through who they are and how they come to be in Lebanon?

They have this saying, don't they, uniting the Christian rifle.

There's very much a, you know, sort of religion at the point of a gun.

That's how we're going to make it prevail.

So this boat diplomacy, Kim, that you've described, is this the beginning of the relationship between, I mean, you mentioned sort of Pierre Jamel, who we should remind people is Bashir Jamel's father, but Bashir and Ariel Sharon are going to get particularly close.

What is the trajectory of that friendship?

Right.

OK, but for an invasion to happen, you need the spark, you need the catalyst.

And they get the catalyst, do they not?

It's in London, of all places, June the 3rd, 1982, with the attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador in London.

Tell us a little bit about that and what that then does to Ariel Sharon's plans.