Lebanon: The Never-Ending Conflict

Formed as an independent state on November 22, 1943, following years under French mandate control (a system of government set up in the 1920s that allowed France to maintain political and economic control over parts of the Middle East), Lebanon has spent more than sixty years struggling to define itself and to form a stable, representative government. That struggle has placed Lebanon at the center of some of the most difficult and violent conflicts in the Middle East. Some of the central issues in the various conflicts have included the division of governing power among the country's numerous religious sects; the divided loyalties Lebanon has to the West (countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and the United States) and to the Arab states; and the influence of Israel and Syria in Lebanon. The 1943 declaration of Lebanese independence was celebrated by many in the Middle East as a long-awaited release from foreign rule, but to others it was considered the beginning of a complex political problem to be solved by the many ethnic groups that were combined and divided within borders established by foreign rulers.

A modern state created from ancient civilizations

Life in Lebanon has ancient roots. Lebanon is the home of the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world, Byblos, and to historical remnants from early Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Roman civilizations, Crusader occupation, and the long rule of the Ottoman Empire (a vast empire of southwest Asia, northeast Africa, and southeast Europe that reigned from the thirteenth century to the early twentieth century). France became the new ruler over Lebanon in 1920, as determined by the authority of the mandate granted by the League of Nations, an organization of countries set up after World War I (1914–18; war in which Great Britain, France, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies) to assist with peace and conflict. The modern borders of Lebanon and neighboring Syria were created to suit the desires of France, and were set in order to secure France's control over strategic areas in the region. Clauses in the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, a secret agreement made during World War I between France and Britain to divide much of the Ottoman Empire between themselves, provided for France to maintain direct authority over Lebanon but only indirect control of Syria. But France's expansion of Lebanon's borders "more than doubled the territory and greatly altered the population ratios according to religious affiliation," according to Charles D. Smith in Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Because of the way France created the borders of Lebanon, Christians were in the majority at the time, making up almost 50 percent of the population. Maronites (a Catholic sect or group that followed the teachings of Saint Maron) dominated the Christian population, followed by members of the Greek Orthodox faith, Christians who had split from the Catholics over issues of who should lead the Christian faith and different forms of worship. The Maronites allied themselves with France, a country ruled by Catholics, but the Greek Orthodox and other Christian groups often looked to Muslim population of Lebanon for support. Due to their large numbers Maronites held many positions of power within the Lebanese government in the 1930s and 1940s.

When the French mandate ended in 1943, French officials used their influence to establish a system of government that favored French interests. The National Pact of 1943 reinforced a division of power based on a 1932 census that showed the Maronites as a majority of the population. The National Pact favored a ratio of six Christians to every five Muslims in government, and divided the government's highest posts between the dominant Christian and Muslim sects. Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims (followers of the Islamic faith who accept elected officials from the tribe of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, as the leader of the faith who were not directly related to Muhammad) received the most power under this agreement, which declared that the Lebanese president must be a Maronite and the prime minister a Sunni. The Speaker of the House was to be a Shiite Muslim (followers of the Islamic faith who only accept direct descendants of Muhammad as possible leaders of the faith) and the Chief of Staff a Druze (a small sect of the Islamic faith who believe that the ninth-century Islamic leader Tariq al-Hakim was God). This agreement allowed for power sharing between the differing interests of the Christian and Muslim communities. The Maronites, who had long identified with the French, were guaranteed against losing power, despite the growth of Muslim communities in Lebanon in the late 1940s. The Muslims, on the other hand, found in the new government their own source of power, free from Western control. It was not a perfect system, but it worked for a time.

While the largest groups were guaranteed a place in government, this agreement did not account for the political needs of the approximately seventeen different religious groups in Lebanon, each with its own distinct perspective on how to create a better life in the country. The differences in power among these ethnic and religious groups, and the actual representation of these groups in the Lebanese population, became a source of internal strife in the country. For example, Maronites guarded their political power by denying attempts to update the 1932 census information for decades, even as relative population growth among Muslim populations made the diminished representation of Maronites in the Lebanese population clear. "By the 1950s, the Muslims were believed to be a majority of the population," according to Smith. Tensions between the growing Muslim population's desires for greater political representation and the Maronites' attempts to retain their political power would be at the root of Lebanon's most enduring conflicts over the coming decades. The struggle for power between these groups resulted in complex and ever-changing alliances with Western and Arab countries, and sometimes with terrorist groups.

Lebanese Main Ethnic and Religious Groups

According to the 2004 CIA World Factbook, the Lebanese population was comprised of seventeen different religious sects, with the main groups divided between Muslims and Christians.

Muslims made up 59.7 percent of the population. These sects included Shiite (followers of the Islamic faith who only accept direct descendents of Muhammad as possible leaders of the faith), Sunni (followers of the Islamic faith who accept elected officials from the tribe of Muhammad as the leader of the faith who were not directly related to Muhammad), Druze (a small sect of the Islamic faith who believe that the ninth century Islamic leader Tariq al-Hakim was God), Isma'ilite (an Islamic sect that believed that Ismail, a direct descendent of Muhammad, and his descendents are the true leaders of the Islamic faith) and Alawite or Nusayri (an Islamic sect that believed that Ali, the son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad [c. 570–632], was the human form of the god Allah).

Christians made up 39 percent of the populations. The largest of these sects included Maronite Catholic (a Christian sect that followed the teachings of Saint Maron), Melkite Catholic (a Christian sect that sided with the Byzantine emperor Marcian in the 450s during a power struggle between Christian leaders), Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Protestant.

The remaining 1.3 percent of the population belonged to other religious groups.

Palestinians flee to Lebanon

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Palestinians (Arabs whose ancestors lived in the region of Palestine and who continued to lay claim to that land) were forced by the Israeli army to leave their land and thousands fled into surrounding Arab states. Southern Lebanon became a place of settlement for some of these Palestinians, who set up refugee camps there even though the Lebanese government did not welcome them in their society. Over the next decade thousands of Palestinians continued to emigrate, or move, to southern Lebanon and even created refugee camps near Lebanon's capital city of Beirut. Caught up in their own political turmoil due to the power struggle between religious groups and a brief civil war in 1958 over whether or not Lebanon should join the United Arab Republic with Egypt and Syria, Lebanese officials did little to regulate or even acknowledge the Palestinians moving inside their borders.

In the late 1960s Palestinians, dissatisfied with assistance from neighboring Arab countries in helping them to regain Palestinian land and rights, began launching attacks against Israel and Israeli targets. These attacks started as small raids on Israeli settlements near the Lebanon border, but over time grew more violent and larger in size. Some Palestinian groups based in Lebanon, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which became the unofficial representative of the Palestinian people in the late 1960s, began to use terroristic tactics, such as the hijacking of planes and the kidnapping of civilians to gain attention to the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. When Israel destroyed thirteen Arab planes at the Beirut airport in December of 1968 in retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an Israeli commercial flight that year, the Lebanese population began to pay much more attention to the Palestinians within their borders. The Israeli attack on the Beirut airport was the first time Israel had targeted a Lebanese run establishment rather than punishing Palestinians directly as it had in the past. Lebanon had to decide how it would react. That decision would prove very difficult, however, because the Lebanese population was deeply divided over whether to support or oppose Palestinian political issues and the growing Palestinian population in Lebanon.

The question of how to deal with the Palestinians would be an issue that continually divided Lebanese political groups until the civil war of 1975. It also increased the tensions building between ethnic and religious groups within Lebanon. For example, the arrival of Sunni Muslim Palestinian refugees into southern Lebanon had forced many Shiite Muslims off their land and into their own refugee camps near the Palestinians' Beirut camps. The Maronite-led government did not offer support for these Shiites nor did it move to deter the further expansion of Palestinian immigration. Shiites had grown increasingly frustrated with the government and their own lack of political power. Their frustrations influenced a growing division in the Lebanese population between those who wanted to maintain the present political structure and those who wanted to change it.

Sectarian struggles divide Lebanon

Tensions only increased in Lebanon during the 1960s and early 1970s, and not only because of the presence of Palestinian groups such as the PLO. Ten years after the failed effort to make Lebanon a part of the short-lived United Arab Republic that united Syria and Egypt from 1958 to 1961, and two-and-a-half decades after the formation of the Arab League (a coalition of Arab states, including Lebanon, formed in 1945 with the intent of furthering Arab goals in the Middle East), there were still many in Lebanon who yearned for a Lebanon ruled by Arab Muslims. In 1969 these people, who considered themselves Arab nationalists, formed the Lebanese National Movement. The National Movement's main goal was to end the National Pact of 1943, which gave Christians a dominant role in the Lebanese government. Supporters of the National Movement sought majority rule. They called for a new census that would restructure power in the government according to the results; they knew that this census would end Christian domination of the Lebanese government and place Muslims in high positions of power. As the dueling Lebanese groups came to realize that change would only come about through force, both Christian and Muslim groups formed militias, or small private armies. These militias would soon lead Lebanon into a long period of sectarian violence, or violence between different sects within a country.

Leaders of Lebanese religious sects

The religious sects within Lebanon were often controlled by families who set both religious and political policies for their communities. The Maronite community was led by several families, each of which controlled their own political parties and militias. In the 1930s Pierre Gemayel (1905–1984) founded the Ketaeb Party, more often known as the Phalangists, to protect Maronite Christian interests. He built the Phalangists into the most formidable Maronite group in Lebanon. Gemayel held important government positions for decades, and both his sons, Bashir and Amin, served terms as president in the 1980s. Camille Chamoun (1900–1987) served as Lebanese president from 1952 to the civil war of 1958. A Maronite Christian, many of Chamoun's policies were influenced by Western countries such as France. These policies upset many Muslims and led to the civil war that ended Chamoun's presidency, but he remained a prominent leader in the Maronite community, and up until his death held several more governmental positions. Suleiman Frangieh (1910–1992), a Maronite clan leader from the northern mountain village of Zghorta, served as Lebanese president from 1970 to 1976. He was a strong supporter of Syria and is thought to be responsible for Syrian troops entering Lebanon to take part in the Lebanese civil war of 1975. He presided over a militia referred to as Marada or the Zghorta Liberation Army, which was commanded by his son Tony. (The Phalangists would assassinate Tony Frangieh in 1992.)

The Druze community was led by the Jumblatt family, although the rival Arslan family periodically vied for power. Kamal Jumblatt (1917–1977), a pro-Palestinian Druze, led the Lebanese National Movement and the Progressive Socialist Party. His followers were often referred to as the Jumblattists. Although he had led a violent attempt to unite Lebanon and Syria in 1958 and continued to promote policies that supported the joining of Syrian and Lebanese politics over the years as a member of the Lebanese government, he was killed by Syrian agents in 1977. His son, Walid Jumblatt (1949–), took over his father's leadership positions upon his death. Walid Jumblatt remained a strong leader in the Druze community, but in the early 2000s he began calling for the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and a separation between the two countries politics.

The Sunni Muslim community in Lebanon was quite large, and generally united in its preference that Lebanon be dominated by Muslims. Saeb Salam (1905–2000), a prominent Sunni from Beirut, and his family had supported a union with Syria and was among the leaders of the Maqasid Association, a network of Sunni organizations that ran schools, hospitals, and orphanages throughout Lebanon. He served in the upper echelons of several Lebanese governments from 1946 to 1973. He helped negotiate the evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon in 1983 and the famous Taif Accord in 1990. Rashid Karami (1921-1987) was a leader of a Sunni family in Tripoli. He held several governmental posts, including that of prime minister, many times between 1955 and 1976. He was a strong supporter of a Lebanese government in which power was shared among Lebanon's many religious and ethnic groups.

Conflict over the PLO

Although the struggle for power in Lebanon is often depicted as simply a battle between religious groups, it was really quite complex. More than just a struggle for political power, conflicts in Lebanon were also based on differing visions of whether Lebanon should have a mainly democratic pro-Western government or a pro-Arab government that favored the laws and cultures of the Islamic faith. Over the years, both Western and Arab states played important roles in the conflict in Lebanon, as they allied themselves with opposing groups of Lebanese.

The role of the PLO exemplified just how complex and unstable the power alliances in Lebanon were. The PLO was granted the authority to control the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in 1969 and it began to create its own laws and policies within these camps, many of which conflicted with the laws and policies of the Lebanese government. When Jordan forced the PLO from its country in 1971, PLO members quickly relocated to southern Lebanon and Beirut where their control grew as Lebanon became the main base for the PLO. Having actively sought to arm Palestinians in Lebanon since 1967, the PLO became the largest militia in Lebanon in the 1970s, with members numbering in the thousands.

Although Palestinians had maintained a neutral position with regard to Lebanese politics, PLO leaders sympathized with the National Movement. Looking for strong, capable support, Lebanese Muslim groups, including the Shiites and Druze, allied themselves with the PLO in their fight against the Maronites in Lebanon. By aiding these Lebanese groups, the PLO gained a certain amount of status among certain political organizations in Lebanon and, unlike in Jordan, was often supported by government officials in implementing its plans of attacking Israel.

But as the PLO escalated its attacks on Israel, Lebanon continued to suffer the penalties of Israeli retaliation. In April 1973, Israeli troops infiltrated Beirut and murdered three PLO leaders, causing damage to parts of the city and wounding Lebanese civilians. Later that year, Lebanon became the focus of Israeli attacks on PLO outposts. As tensions within the Lebanese population grew, Palestinians suffered attacks by Lebanese militias, most notably the Maronite militias, who were unhappy with Palestinian support for the National Movement.

The Lebanese civil war

The tensions among Lebanese religious and political groups eventually resulted in a civil war which began on April 13, 1975, when unidentified gunmen murdered four Phalangists, members of the leading Maronite militia group. Later that same day, the Maronites, assuming that these killings were done by PLO operatives unhappy with Maronite policies, attacked a bus and killed more than twenty Palestinians. The next day fighting between Phalangists and Palestinians began throughout Beirut. Many residents hid in their homes while militias from various groups joined the fighting.

Although the underlying reasons for the civil war were varied and complex, one of the main reasons the fighting in 1975 escalated to a full-scale civil war was due to the Lebanese government's inability to agree on whether or not to dispatch the national army to control the fighting. The influence of the various ethnic and religious groups ultimately caused the Lebanese army to dissolve, as soldiers allied themselves with various militias instead of with the Maronite-controlled government.

Before the civil war broke out in 1975, Beirut was often described as the "Paris of the Middle East." The sprawling city featured a coastline boardwalk called the Mediterranean Corniche, and architecturally diverse buildings featuring Ottoman-era and French colonial styles, as well as modern skyscrapers that spilled up into the surrounding hills. Lebanon had been a transfer point for trade between the West and the Arab countries, and that trade had brought a great deal of money into the country. Beirut was the center of the country's economy, which had grown by leaps and bounds since the early 1960s as an international banking and trading center.

At the outbreak of the civil war, militia members took up positions throughout the country. In Beirut, large-scale battles occurred in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar and the neighboring Maronite Christian community of Dekwaneh. Other fighting broke out in the Beqaa Valley between Greek Catholics in the town of Zahleh and neighboring Shiites and Palestinians. Various Christian and Muslim militias secured positions on rooftops, bridges, and strategic streets throughout Beirut, making nearly every street in the city a potential battlefield.

The fighting in Lebanon destroyed much of the once-thriving cities and countryside. Bombs crumbled some buildings and gunfire left others scarred with pockmarks from bullets. Marketplaces were leveled by artillery shells, communications systems were cut off, roads ruined, and farmlands were dotted with explosive landmines. But the symbol of the war's destruction of Lebanon came when Beirut's hotels became outposts for fighting. When combat broke out, the newly constructed Hilton Hotel in Beirut had not even been open a year. The luxury hotel became the center of some of the most intense fighting in Lebanon's civil war. Militias fought for control of the hotel, sometimes chasing each other from room to room. It was not long before the Lebanese government became desperate and turned to international forces to help them bring an unstable peace to the country, starting with the introduction of Syrian troops into the war in 1976.

Syrian Interest and involvement in Lebanon

Syria's involvement in Lebanon was based in part on its desire to ensure secure borders, especially those that it shared with Lebanon and Israel. More importantly, however, Syria's interventions in Lebanon were based on calculations about how Syria could best maintain a strong leadership position in the Middle East. One of the ways it could do that was to form an international alliance of Arab states, with Syria as leader and Lebanon as follower. Syria's pursuit of Arab leadership led to its complicated involvement in Lebanese politics.

The aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967 (a war in which Israel battled with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria over the right to territories in the Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, and West Bank) created a difficult situation for Syria. During the war, Israel had captured parts of Syria and Egypt. Syria remained hostile toward Israel, but in the early 1970s Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat (1918–1981), started to negotiate and make peace with Israel. Syrian leaders felt that Egypt's compromises with Israel undermined the goals of the Arab nations of the Middle East, so Syria pursued a more active leadership role among Arab nations. Along with Iraq, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, and the PLO, Syria escalated the tensions between the Arab countries and Israel. Within Lebanon, Syria first looked to the PLO and Lebanese Muslims for support. But when the PLO and Lebanese National Movement militias seemed in position to win power in Lebanon, Syria became nervous. Syria feared that Israel would enter the Lebanese struggle on the side of the Maronites to keep the PLO out of power, thereby creating a Lebanese government more friendly to Israel than to Syria. Syria quickly switched its allegiance to the ruling Maronites when the civil war broke out in 1975, supplying troops in order to maintain Christian power in the Lebanese government—and to keep the Christian Maronites from siding with Israel.

Such wild swings of allegiance became increasingly common in Lebanon, where one side often helped a former enemy in order that its former friend would not become too strong. In 1976, for example, both Syria (supported by the Soviet Union) and Israel (supported by the United States, the Soviet Union's great enemy) offered Lebanon aid to fight the Palestinians. Israel also allowed Maronite militias to establish strategic strongholds along its border with Lebanon. Meanwhile, Syria worked to establish a strong Lebanese government that would limit the authority of Israeli-backed militias.

The Arab League negotiated the official end of the civil war in 1976 with the Riyadh Accords, which brought forty thousand Syrian troops into Lebanon to maintain peace and removed the PLO from Beirut and the north, concentrating it in southern Lebanon. However, tensions between various Maronite, Muslim, and Palestinian groups continued and Syrian troops were unable to maintain the negotiated ceasefire. Within the year, Maronite militias were again battling with the PLO and the Lebanese National Movement. Israeli-backed Arab militias fought with the PLO, with Shiites in the south, and with the National Movement militias. Lebanon split in two: Christians controlled the north and Muslims and Palestinians controlled the south; Beirut was divided along a border known as the Green Line, with a Christian sector in the east and a Muslim sector in the west. Moreover, Israel declared that it would not allow Syrian troops in Lebanon to cross what it called the Red Line, a territory south of the Litani River along the southern Lebanese border that Israel claimed as a security zone. Over the coming years, Syria would struggle to gain influence over Lebanese politics and would switch alliances within Lebanon frequently to maintain its advantage in the country.

The role of Lebanon as a battleground for Syria to fight Israel became very clear in the 1980s. Syria tried to maintain a balance of power, supporting the PLO against Israeli attacks. However, it also condoned attacks on certain PLO authorities, supplied Shiite militias with weapons to attack the Palestinians in southern Lebanon, and backed Maronite leader Suleiman Frangieh in his election campaign against Israeli-backed Maronite Phalangist Bashir Gemayel for the Lebanese presidency in 1982.

Syria continued to battle Israel as each side supported their allies in various skirmishes. In an attempt to secure strategic parts of Lebanon in 1981, Phalangists supportive of Gemayel fought with Syrian troops. To support the Phalangists, Israel air force bombers shot down two Syrian helicopters. Syria responded by setting up ground-to-air missiles in the region. Syria continued to fight for power in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, and eventually emerged as the dominant force in the country.

Israel's relations with Lebanon

Lebanon first became a focus of Israel's attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Palestinians began attacking Israeli settlements along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israeli attention was intensified when the PLO increased the availability of weapons and military-style training to the Palestinians along that border.

For years, the PLO attacked Israel, Jordan, and the Occupied Territories (territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip taken by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967), provoking Israeli counterattacks on PLO targets in Lebanon. By 1978 PLO attacks on Israel had grown to such an extent that Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon in an attempt to secure its borders and remove the PLO from the region. The PLO had gained access to long-range artillery, however, that enabled it to blow up targets in northern Israel from more distant locations. When Israeli troops entered southern Lebanon they evicted both Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims from villages along the southern border in order to establish a buffer zone to protect Israel's borders.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon was not approved of by the international community, and the United Nations Security Council (an international organization founded in 1945 to maintain peace and political stability throughout the world) called for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops by issuing Resolution 425 on March 19, 1978. The resolution set up the United Nations Interim Forces In Lebanon (UNIFIL) to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops and to secure a ceasefire in the area. The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon on March 23, 1978; over time the force grew to about six thousand soldiers. Most Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon in 1978, but Israel did not waver from its goal of destroying the PLO.

Unable to maintain a ceasefire with the PLO, Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982. Although the United Nations issued multiple resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to hostilities, Israel pushed troops through southern Lebanon and into Beirut. Israel's military directive known as "Operation Peace for Galilee" had the objective of pushing the PLO far enough away from Israeli borders so that rockets could not reach Israeli settlements. To this end Israel attacked Beirut, where an estimated fifteen thousand PLO troops were assembled in fortified areas.

The United States' unsuccessful intervention

By August 12, 1982, United States ambassador Philip Habib (1920–1992) successfully negotiated a plan to evacuate Israeli, PLO, and Syrian troops from Beirut, with the help of U.S. Marines (aided by French and Italian troops). These international forces arrived on August 20.

Despite the presence of so many peacekeepers, peace still could not be reached in Lebanon. Lebanon revealed its continuing turmoil in its presidential election of 1982. Israeli-backed Maronite Bashir Gemayel was elected president on August 23, 1982, but was killed by an assassin's bomb on September 14. Two days later, Israeli troops entered West Beirut (against rules set by international agreements) to support Phalangist forces as they sought PLO fighters accused of the bombing who were thought to be hiding in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. After three days, some two hundred Phalangist militiamen had massacred approximately eight hundred Palestinians, none of whom were members of the PLO. Israel shared the blame for this shameful massacre and international pressure for Israel to leave Lebanon increased.

The United States negotiated another plan for withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian troops from Lebanon on May 17, 1983. Bashir Gemayel's brother Amin was now president and signed the security agreement willingly in hopes of securing American and Israeli protections for Lebanon. The agreement aimed to remove all Syrian influence in Lebanon and maintain Israeli influence through military protection along the borders.

The plan backfired, however, and instead ignited attacks against Americans. Although Israel withdrew from all but its security zone south of the Red Line by September 1983, Syria refused even to discuss withdrawal of its troops due to the perception that the security agreement signed by Lebanon and created by the United States (a country that claimed to be neutral in the situation) was focused on securing Maronite control in Lebanon instead of creating a stable peace. A growing number of opponents in Lebanon, including Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, came to view United States' policies as hostile toward Arabs and the Islamic religion. Attacks on U.S. Marines in Lebanon escalated: the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in June 1983 killed sixty-three people, and a suicide bomber killed more than 240 service personnel at a U.S. military barracks near Beirut in October 1983. Unable to secure peace in Lebanon, U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89) withdrew marines from Lebanon in February 1984.

The West leaves Lebanon in Syrian hands

With the withdrawal of the United States, Muslims and Syria began to conflict with the Phalangists, and new fighting broke out in Lebanon. Western organizations within the country were bombed and many Americans and other Europeans still working in Lebanon were killed or taken hostage. Without support from the United States, Amin Gemayel turned his back on the Israeli security agreement of 1983 and tried to get help from Syria.

Syria willingly stepped in. Syria proposed a power-sharing strategy that would retain Maronite control of the government and split the parliament between Muslims and Christians. By the end of 1985, Syria had succeeded in persuading the largest religious factions to support this new governmental scheme. Syria sent several thousand troops with tanks and artillery to take control of West Beirut and central Lebanon in the late 1980s. At the same time Israel left all but the security zone it had created along the southern border of Lebanon. However, Israel handed control over its areas in Lebanon to the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a group of soldiers who had broken off from the main government army that Israel supported with funds and equipment. The presence of the SLA signaled that deep divisions remained within Lebanese society.

By 1988 those divisions had again split the country over whether or not Syria should remain in Lebanon. A new group called the Lebanese Liberation Front had organized in 1987 with the intent to use violence to end Syria's control of the country. The group killed Syrian military and diplomatic personnel.

Struggles between supporters and opponents of Syrian intervention in Lebanon were so intense that the 1988 presidential elections could not be held. Without an election, something needed to be done to leave a functioning government in place when Lebanese president Amin Gemayel's term came to an end that year. According to the National Pact of 1943, the division of power in Lebanon called for a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Maronite president. But without an election, the pact was in jeopardy of being broken. If Gemayel left office without an elected successor, the presidential authority would revert to the Sunni prime minister. To retain Maronite control of the government, Gemayel prepared for Lebanon to be ruled by a military-led government until proper elections could be held, and appointed General Michel Aoun (1936–) as prime minister of that interim government just fifteen minutes before his term ended.

This move was tremendously controversial, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, because "The General," as Aoun was called in Lebanon, was a Maronite and the "archenemy of Syria." Once Aoun had power, he ordered aggressive military strikes against Syrian troops and against the various militias resisting his government's authority.

Arab countries step in to save Lebanon

Finally, Arab countries sought to negotiate an end to the seemingly endless conflicts in Lebanon. With support from both the Soviet Union and the United States, Saudi Arabia sponsored a summit of the Lebanese parliament in 1989. In Taif, Saudi Arabia, parliament members debated the future structure of Lebanese government for three weeks. The result was the Taif Accord. The agreement increased the size of the legislative chamber from ninety-nine to 108 members, and called for the seats to be divided equally between Christians and Muslims. Additionally, the agreement authorized Syria to provide military support in Lebanon for two years in order to securely establish the new government. The new Lebanese government would indeed rely heavily on Syrian support in the coming years.

General Aoun completely rejected the Taif agreement. From headquarters he had set up in the presidential palace in Baabda, Aoun did everything he could to block the formation of the new government, called the Second Lebanese Republic. As Aoun held out, threatening and protesting the new government, his support waned and the new government grew stronger and gained new allies, including the United States.

In October 1990, Syria bombed Aoun's stronghold and sent him into exile in France. Without Aoun stirring up resistance, Lebanon settled into a period of relative peace. The Hrawi government, which lasted until 1998, persuaded most Lebanese militias to disband and return to civilian life, with the exception of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah (see sidebar on next page). With the militias gone, Lebanese citizens could move throughout the country freely for the first time in years. Trade and construction started again, as Lebanon began to rebuild itself. Only in the 1990s would the Lebanese government begin an overhaul of much of the country's road and communication networks, especially those in Beirut, where so much of the civil war violence had occurred. By the early years of the twenty-first century, international investment and construction had created a downtown area in Beirut with lush, flowering trees to shade pedestrians along the waterfront Corniche and many restaurants, hotels, and retail outlets to enjoy.

In the 1990s, many Lebanese accepted that the Taif agreement had addressed the underlying reasons for the years of domestic struggle, namely the balance of power in the government, and became resigned to Syrian protection and intervention in Lebanese affairs as a welcome trade-off from the years of violence. In May 1991 the Lebanese government granted Syria control of Lebanon's internal affairs, and soon handed over its

The Power of Hezbollah in Lebanon

Disgruntled by Palestinians intruding on their land, Shiite Muslims in Lebanon united in the 1980s. Shiites were initially encouraged that the Israeli invasion of 1982 would rid their country of Palestinians, whose attacks on Israel had provoked counterattacks that sometimes hit and destroyed parts of Shiite villages. Israel, however, made life difficult for all local people in southern Lebanon. Israeli troops raided villages to remove those suspected of committing attacks on Israeli positions, restricted local Lebanese access to markets in the north by putting up blockades, and brought Israeli merchandise into Lebanon and sold it at such low prices so that local merchants suffered.

When Lebanese Shiites turned against Israel, they were not alone. They were supported by Shiite Muslims in Iran who had achieved control of that country through an Islamist revolution in 1979, thus ruling that country by the religious laws of Islam. Syria, which in the early 1980s considered Iran an ally, encouraged the participation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Lebanese conflict, allowing approximately one thousand Iranian troops to set up recruiting and training programs in Lebanon in the early 1980s. These troops enabled Islamists (those dedicated to sustaining the Islamic religion in all facets of life in the Middle East including government policies and cultural trends) to unite against Western influences.

In 1982 Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim group formed to fight against Israel in Lebanon, organized with support from Iran. At the time, the Shiites had grown to be the largest religious group in Lebanon. Hezbollah struck at Israeli positions and those of its Arab allies throughout southern Lebanon in an attempt to force Israel to withdraw. Hezbollah was generally considered the driving force that rid Lebanon of Israel. By 1985 Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon, except for the security zone it had established along the southern border of Lebanon.

The Israeli security zone and the growing influence of Syria in Lebanon spurred ongoing conflicts that continued into the early years of the twenty-first century. From 1984, with the withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Lebanon, to the end of that decade, some Arab groups turned to the kidnapping of Western hostages in order to influence both international and Lebanese domestic affairs. Hezbollah was especially noted for its kidnappings: it held American journalist Terry Anderson for nearly seven years. By 2000, continued efforts by Hezbollah and its supporters finally prompted a complete Israeli evacuation from the security zone. With this success, Shiites continued to shape Lebanon. Some fought for greater Shiite representation in the Lebanese government, while Hezbollah struggled to establish Lebanon as an Islamic state.

foreign policy and security issues as well. With the strength of Syria backing the Lebanese government, Lebanon achieved several significant goals: the remaining hostages held in the country were released, the PLO agreed to evacuate its weaponry from the country, and the first parliamentary elections since 1972 were held in 1992.

A return to civil war?

In the early 2000s, Lebanese politics threatened once again to bring about violence and turmoil. In 2005 UPI Perspectives reported that there was "constant fear of a return to the 15-year civil war that broke out in 1975," but the population, though weary of the years of violence, remained split over the role Syria should play in its affairs.

Hezbollah, Syria's closest ally in Lebanon, had become "the unknown factor" that would determine whether or not war would erupt in Lebanon over Syria, according to UPI Perspectives. In 2005 Hezbollah and other groups opposed to the continued presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon held demonstrations to generate support for their differing views. In the uproar following the February 14, 2005, assassination of pro-Syrian Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri (1944–2005), pro-Syrian demonstrations led by Hezbollah drew between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand people, while anti-Syrian demonstrations held soon after drew an estimated one million protesters. UPI Perspectives, noted that this was "an amazing fact given the total population of Lebanon is about 3.7 million." Throughout March 2005, life in Lebanon was again disrupted, with massive bombing attacks throughout the country, as supporters and opponents of Syria battled with each other. International pressure finally persuaded Syria on April 3, 2005, to commit itself to a complete withdrawal of troops from Lebanon. On April 26, 2005, the final Syrian troops left Lebanon, making it the first time in close to thirty years that foreign troops did not reside on Lebanese land. While continued changes in the Lebanese government occurred during May and June 2005, the Lebanese government was beginning to stabilize and make plans for further strengthening of the country in the years to come.

For More Information

Books

Cobban, Helena. The Making of Modern Lebanon. London: Hutchinson, 1985.

Cottrell, Robert C. The Green Line: The Division of Palestine. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005.

Diller, Daniel C., ed. The Middle East. 8th ed. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1995.

Foster, Leila Merrell. Lebanon. Chicago: Children's Press, 1992.

Pintak, Larry. Seeds of Hate: How America's Flawed Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad. London: Pluto Press, 2003.

Sheehan, Sean. Lebanon. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1997.

Smith, Charles D., ed. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents. 4th ed. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

Periodicals

"Analysis: New Lebanese Civil War Unlikely." UPI Perspectives (March 23, 2005):

Salhani, Claude. "Analysis: Syria to Redeploy Troops." UPI Perspectives (September 20, 2004):

Web Sites

"Lebanon." CIA World Factbook.http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/le.html#People (accessed on July 8, 2005).

Moubayed, Sami. "Letter from Levant: Amin Gemayel Says His Family's History Runs Parallel To Lebanon's." Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (October 2001). http://www.wrmea.com/archives/october01/0110029.html (accessed on July 8, 2005).

"Q&A: Syria's Involvement in Lebanon." BBC News (March 18, 2005). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4308823.stm (accessed on July 8, 2005).

"Syria Sets Deadline for Lebanon Pullout." CNN (April 3, 2005). http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/04/03/lebanon.syria/index.html (accessed on July 8, 2005).