Lebanese Civil War
1975 CE to 1990 CE
The Lebanese Civil War is a multifaceted civil war, the antecedents of which trace back to the conflicts and political compromises reached after the end of Lebanon's administration by the Ottoman Empire.
The conflict becomes greatly exacerbated by Lebanon's changing demographic trends, the Palestinian refugee influx between 1948 and 1982, Christian and Muslim inter-religious strife, and the involvement of Syria, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
After a short break in the fighting in 1976 due to Arab League mediation and Syrian intervention, Palestinian-Lebanese strife continues, with fighting primarily focused in south Lebanon, occupied first by the PLO, then occupied by Israel.During the course of the fighting, alliances shift rapidly and unpredictably.
By the end of the war, nearly every party has allied with and subsequently betrayed every other party at least once.
The 1980s are especially bleak: much of Beirut lies in ruins as a result of the 1976 Karantina massacre carried out by Lebanese Christian militias, the Syrian Army shelling of Christian neighborhoods in 1978 and 1981, and the Israeli invasion that evicts the PLO from the country.
A number of atrocities and terrorist acts are committed by the Palestinian and Lebanese factions participating in the war, including the Damour massacre in which Palestinians kill Christian inhabitants (from 25 to almost 600 according to different sources) of the coastal town 20 miles south of Beirut.
The war deteriorates ever further into sectarian carnage, and in the end Lebanon's effective independence counts among the casualties.By the time of the Taif Agreement in 1989, Israel holds on to a security zone in southern Lebanon as a buffer to prevent attacks on northern Israel.
The Israeli Army eventually withdraws in 2000.
Syria itself, which had heretofore controlled the rest of the country, will not withdraw its troops until 2005, when it will be forced out by the joint pressure created by Lebanese protest and powerful diplomatic intervention from the United States and the United Nations in the aftermath of the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
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Palestinian guerrilla activity against Israel in 1975 is largely confined to the southern Lebanese border area, where it provokes heavy Israeli reprisals from air, land, and sea against Palestinian refugee camps that the Israelis allege are used as guerrilla bases.
Israeli raids, however, are overshadowed by the civil strife in Lebanon that has developed along Muslim-Christian lines.
The PLO had initially tried to stay out of the fighting, but by the end of 1975 groups within the overall organization, particularly the "rejection front" groups, are being drawn into an alliance with the Muslim side fighting against the Christians.
Either case appears to the Syrians likely to bring Israeli intervention.
This realization forces a reversal of Syrian policy, ending in President Hafiz al-Assad's support for the Christians.
Ironically, both the Syrians and the Israelis, so opposed to one another on other issues, take up the cause of the Lebanese Christians.
Syria prevents the Palestinians from taking strategic points, while ...
However, just at the time when Arafat is scheduled to make a conciliatory statement, as part of the plan, the Israeli navy begins capturing boats belonging to Lebanese Muslims, turning them over to Israel's Lebanese Christian allies, who kill them. (In a March 6, 1981 interview with the Jerusalem post, Rabin, who was Prime Minister at the time, will concede the facts but says that the boats were captured before the proposed gesture, and that this was simply an excuse for the PLO to back out of the agreement. Shimon Peres, who was Defense Minister at the time, will decline to comment.)
Syrian military units had entered Lebanon from the east with about twenty thousand soldiers during the summer of 1976.
The Christians, with strong support from Syria, begin to win the civil war as they attack Palestinian refugee camps.
In August, after a two-month siege, Christian militiamen aided by Syrian troops kill an estimated two thousand to three thousand Palestinians in Tall Za'tar camp northeast of Beirut, near Nabay.
At least sixteen hundred people die during the siege, four thousand are wounded, and six thousand surrender, the rest remaining in the camp, later to be placed in other settlements in Lebanon.
The destruction of Tall Za'tar completes the partitioning of Lebanon between Muslims in the south and Christians in the north.
Lebanese president-elect Élias Sarkis is not inaugurated until September 23, by which time Lebanon has effectively been partitioned along the "Green Line," which passes through the center of Beirut (east-west) and along the main road to Damascus; to the north is a Christian government, to the south a leftist (Druze-Muslim-Palestinian) government led by Kamal Jumblatt.
Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin cannot agree on the details of a comprehensive peace, and the negotiations are complicated by events in Lebanon, the southern portion of which is now a launching point for terror attacks against Israelis living in the Upper Galilee.
The number and size of PLO operations in southern Lebanon had accelerated throughout the late 1970s as central authority deteriorated and the country became a battleground of warring militias.
Continued fighting among the Lebanese factions has led to the loss of prestige of the former political elite and to the emergence of a new generation of militia leaders, except in the Phalangist Party, whose existing leadership dominates the Christian-rightist coalition so successfully that the Syrian army of occupation once again begins to support the Muslim-leftist-Palestinian groups in 1978.
The destruction and violence have caused hundreds of thousands of Lebanese to flee their homes in southern Lebanon, where the threat of Israeli intervention stops Syria from imposing a peace.
Trouble looms, despite Israel's accomplishments on the diplomatic front, as the civil war in Lebanon allows an increasingly well-armed PLO to raid Israel's northern border.
Israel has also begun to fear a military buildup in Iraq, especially its potential for producing nuclear weapons.
Nor is the cabinet happy.
Moshe Dayan resigns from it in anger over Begin's plan to assert Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank area, which is legally still part of Jordan.
Dayan, who as Begin's foreign minister had been one of the chief architects of the Camp David Accords, charges that the prime minister does not want to settle the Palestinian issue.
The Begin government has also been much less successful in its domestic policies, and the economy, after a brief recovery in 197879, enters another inflationary spiral.
Menachem Begin, perceiving that the Israeli public supports a more active defense posture, appoints Yitzhak Shamir as foreign minister and the hawkish Ariel Sharon as minister of defense, replacing the more moderate Ezer Weizman, who, like foreign minister Moshe Dayan, had in 1980 resigned in protest against Begin's settlement policy.
Sharon is unquestionably an Israeli war hero of longstanding; he had played an important role in the 1956, 1967, and 1973 wars and is widely respected as a brilliant military tactician.
He is also feared, however as a military man with political ambitions, one who is ignorant of political protocol and who is known to make precipitous moves.
Aligned with Sharon is chief of staff General Rafael Eitan, who also advocates an aggressive Israeli defense posture.
Because Begin is not a military man, the minister of defense and the chief of staff increasingly decide Israel's defense policy.
The combination of wide discretionary powers granted Sharon and Eitan over Israeli military strategy, the PLO's menacing growth in southern Lebanon, and the existence of Syrian SAMs in the Biqa Valley points to imminent Syrian-PLO-Israeli hostilities.