Lebanese Civil War

The Lebanese Civil War began on April 13, 1975, when gunmen attacked a bus carrying Palestinians in a Beirut suburb, after an earlier attack on a Christian church ceremony, and it set off fighting that lasted until 1990. Over fifteen years the country broke into zones held by rival militias organized largely along religious lines: Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze and Palestinian groups. Beirut was split by a front line, the Green Line, and cease-fires repeatedly collapsed. Estimates of the dead run from about 120,000 to 200,000, and about a million were displaced.¹²

Lebanon's political system, set by an unwritten 1943 pact, shared power among its religious communities using a 1932 census that favored Christians. By the 1970s that balance no longer matched reality, since Muslims had become a majority and demanded change. The Palestinian refugees who came after the Nakba of 1948 formed armed groups, and after the Six-Day War and the PLO's expulsion from Jordan in 1970, Lebanon became their main base. Many Lebanese Muslims backed them, and many Christians saw them as a threat to the state.¹³

Outside powers soon took part. Syria sent troops in 1976 and stayed for nearly thirty years. Israel invaded in 1978 and 1982, reaching Beirut, and its occupation of the south later helped create Hezbollah. In 1982 the Phalange militia massacred Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila camps. The war ended with the Taif Agreement of 1989, which adjusted the power-sharing formula to give Muslims equal parliamentary seats, and with Syrian military action against the last holdouts in October 1990. Militias were disarmed, except Hezbollah, and Syria remained dominant until 2005.¹