Lebanon (1958, 1975-90). Lebanon was created in the post-WW I peace settlements. In 1920, France received the League of Nations Mandates for Syria and Lebanon; she then redrew the boundaries of Lebanon to create an artificial, ‘greater’ Lebanon. This Lebanon was formed at the expense of Syria, and included within its borders a multiplicity of religious communities: Christians, Muslims, and Druzes. France relied heavily on the Christian Maronite community, the largest single religious group, to run the country. In 1943, three years prior to France's departure from Lebanon, a ‘National Pact’ confessional system of politics attempted to share out power in the Lebanon between the different communities on the basis of a census taken in 1932.
As long as Lebanon was untouched by internal or external forces, this system was viable. However, once the system was put under pressure it was liable to collapse. Four factors, two internal, two external, threatened Lebanon after WW II and led to civil war in 1958 and from 1975 to 1990. First, demographic change eroded the Maronites' dominance as they had a lower birth rate and higher emigration rate. Secondly, economic change favoured certain groups, particularly the Christians, at the expense of groups such as the Shiʿite Muslims who became second-class citizens. Thirdly, the rise of pan-Arabism in the form of ‘Nasserism’ spread to Lebanon. Fourthly, the Arab-Israeli wars spilled over into Lebanon as Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli and Syrian troops fought out a series of small wars in Lebanon. In 1958, the uneasy peace was shattered when Lebanon erupted into civil war following the call of Egypt's president, Gamal Abd al Nasser, for revolutionary Arab unity. Camille Chamoun, the Christian president of Lebanon, fearing a Nasserite takeover, appealed for help. In response, in July 1958, the Americans sent in 14, 300 troops to defend Chamoun's pro-Western administration.
The Americans left in October 1958 but Lebanon's basic problems remained unresolved. Intermittent clashes continued through the 1960s and early 1970s as Palestinian fighters from the PLO arrived in Lebanon to continue their war against Israel. As Palestinians launched raids across Israel's northern border, Israel launched retaliatory strikes into Lebanon. Both Israel and Syria were dragged into supporting different sides in Lebanon: Israel backed the Maronite Phalanges militia, while Syria supported different Muslim militias and, on occasion, the Palestinians. In April 1975, a trivial incident was the excuse for a full-scale civil war between Christian, Palestinian, and Muslim militias that was only brought to a temporary end in 1976 by the intervention of the Syrian army. In 1978, Israel attacked as far as the Litani river in a raid to push the Palestinians away from its border.
Like the Syrians, once involved in Lebanon, the Israelis found it difficult to extricate themselves. On 6 June 1982, following the wounding of an Israeli diplomat in London the Israelis launched an all-out invasion of Lebanon with three division-sized formations (PEACE FOR GALILEE) with the objective of driving the Palestinian fighters from Lebanon. This invasion took the Israelis up to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and brought the Israelis face-to-face with Syrian forces in the Bekaa valley. Following a prolonged bombardment of the city by Israeli artillery, the PLO fighters left Beirut in August-September 1982 under the supervision of a multinational peacekeeping force of 1, 200 troops apiece from America, France, and Italy. However, from 16-18 September, as the last PLO fighters were departing, Christian Phalangist militia under the supervision of Israeli forces massacred some 400 Palestinian civilians at the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla (some estimates put the number killed at 1, 000). This action forced Israel to reconsider its role in Lebanon and by 1985 it had withdrawn its forces to a security zone in southern Lebanon. The international peacekeeping force in Beirut then became a target in the civil war, and in October 1983 suicide car bombers killed 241 US marines and 56 French paratroopers. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the civil war continued as Islamic fundamentalist groups such as Hezbollah (‘Party of God’), which rejected the disadvantaged position of groups such as the Shiʿites, took up the struggle. Lebanon fragmented further as rival factions turned on one another. Finally, exhaustion after fifteen years of civil war allowed the Syrians to move into the vacuum and restore a semblance of peace in 1989-90 following accords signed by the different Lebanese factions at meetings held in Taif in Saudi Arabia.
Bibliography
- Cobban, Helena, The Making of Modern Lebanon (London, 1985).
- Deeb, Marius, The Lebanese Civil War (New York, 1980).
- Fisk, Robert, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (London, 1990)
— Matthew Hughes
