Lebanon

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LEBANON

Lebanon, like most of the Arab East, was under Ottoman rule until World War I. It was a semiautonomous province, much smaller than the present state, consisting of two districts, one populated mainly by Maronites and the other by Druze. It was governed by a sectarian power-sharing arrangement that had been negotiated in 1861 by the European Great Powers to settle a civil war between the two communities. After World War I, in accordance with the Sykes-Picot Agreement and in breach of the promises made by the Allies to the Arabs during the war, Greater Syria, including Lebanon, was occupied by France.

In 1920 the League of Nations formally gave the French a mandate over Syria, and the French expelled Emir Faysal, an al-Hashim prince who had been chosen by Syrian notables to be their king. (Faysal was the son of King Husayn of Hijaz, Sharif of Mecca, who had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans with the encouragement of the British, who promised to support an independent pan-Arab state.) The presence of the French, who, since the mid-seventeenth century, had acted as protectors of the Ottoman Empire's Catholics, allowed the Maronite political elite to reinforce its hold over state institutions. After the Ottoman Empire fell, the Maronites agitated for a Greater Lebanon, and the French annexed to the original Ottoman province of Mount Lebanon the surrounding, predominantly Muslim, districts from Syria. This annex expanded the country to its present borders, giving it relative autonomy under the Mandate. In 1926 a new constitution was promulgated that reformed the administration but preserved the sectarian basis of government (the highest posts were reserved for Maronites), and the country was renamed the Republic of Lebanon, although the French maintained ultimate control through their High Commissioner, the Mandate's chief executive.

In June 1941, during World War II, British and Free French forces captured Lebanon and Syria from the Vichy government, and the Free French, under political pressure, proclaimed the independence of both in November. The independence was only nominal, since the French had no intention of respecting it. In March 1943, Bishara al-Khuri and Riyad as-Sulh, the leading politicians of the Maronite and Sunni Muslim communities, respectively, established the unwritten National Pact. The Pact fixed a ratio for allotting parliamentary seats (six Christian to five Muslim), and assigned the three highest state offices to representatives of three communities: the president would be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni, and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies a Shi?a. No one from the Shi?a, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Melkites or other community was consulted. In September 1943 a new parliament was elected; Khuri became president and Sulh prime minister. That November, parliament amended the constitution to eliminate the position of High Commissioner, and the French arrested the president, the prime minister, and the cabinet. Under pressure from the Lebanese and the Arab world, as well as from Britain and the United States, the French released them on 22 November, tacitly putting an end to the Mandate. The last French troops were finally withdrawn 31 December 1946.

Lebanon expressed its opposition to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and sent its small army to join the Arab forces that attacked the Israelis. By the time of the 1949 truce agreement, approximately 100,000 Palestinian refugees had fled into Lebanon, mostly in the south, from which they expected to return. They were welcomed by the Lebanese authorities—partly for domestic political reasons—but not a great deal was done for them. Many Palestinians are still living in camps established at that time. The presence of so many Palestinians, and more, the embedding of the Palestinian issue in Lebanese politics, helped to destabilize the country later on. Meanwhile, Lebanon was ruled by the sectarian elites, for their own benefit and enrichment; Lebanese government was (and still is) legendarily corrupt. In 1952, however, Khuri was forced to resign when the failure to address serious social and economic issues, combined with blatant corruption—including the rigging of the 1947 election to allow him a second term—aroused social unrest and political opposition throughout Lebanese society, culminating in a general strike. Khuri was replaced by Camille Chamoun, who had been expected to be more accommodating toward the Muslim and Druze communities. Instead, Chamoun continued the favoritism toward Christians built into the National Agreement, and aligned Lebanon with the West, adopting its anti-Nasser/anti-Arab nationalist policy. Muslims resented the social and political inequities that underlay National Agreement, which was based on a highly questionable census conducted in 1932. They demanded a new census, but the Christian parties would agree only on condition that Lebanese emigrants in other countries, who were primarily Christians, be counted. Lebanese society, and particularly Muslims, were meanwhile affected by developments relating to the larger world, especially Nasserist pan-Arabism, increasingly strong in the 1950s. Political rivalry between sectarian leaders became intense.

In 1957 Chamoun, needing a constitutional amendment to run for a second term, gained a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections by what most considered questionable means that eliminated many Muslim representatives from parliament. The result was the civil war of 1958, in which sectarian, social, economic and political grievances all exploded at once. It was set off by the assassination of a journalist. The government blamed outside agitators from the newly constituted United Arab Republic (UAR) and took the matter to the League of Arab States and the United Nations. The simultaneous revolt that overthrew the Iraqi monarchy caused United States president Dwight Eisenhower, at Chamoun's request, to send American forces to Lebanon in July to protect the government. The Americans stayed long enough to oversee the election of a new president, Fu?ad Shehab, former commander of the Lebanese army, who had remained nonpartisan during the 1952 and 1958 disturbances. Shehab, whose first act was to ask the United States to withdraw, made a serious effort to reform government administration, appointing Muslims to his cabinet and increasing the size of the Chamber of Deputies in order to represent Muslim communities more equitably. He also devoted state resources to improving the infrastructure of the country, such as roads, electricity and water distribution systems and rural health facilities. Although he did not directly address the structural issues that had generated the unrest of 1958 and attempted to keep within the terms of the National Agreement, he aroused the opposition of the Maronite leaders. An autocrat rather than a politician, he ruled through the use of the military intelligence apparatus. His successor in 1964, Charles Hilu, a founder of the Phalange who had left that party and who also had not taken sides in 1958, was less able to force through reforms and also ruled with military help. Lebanon did not take part in the 1967 War (the prime minister, Rashid Karame, a Sunni Nasserist, wanted to do so but did not have the support of the president), but the aftermath affected the country deeply. It had become clear that Palestinian refugees would not be allowed to return home, and increasingly politicized Palestinians in the camps turned to armed resistance through guerrilla groups based in Lebanon. Their activities in turn tended to polarize the Lebanese, undermining the National Agreement and government authority, particularly in the south.

On 28 December 1968, in reprisal for an attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was based in Lebanon, an Israeli helicopter raid destroyed thirteen Lebanese planes at the Beirut airport, prompting a break between Lebanese supporters and opponents of the Palestinian resistance. In January 1969, a new coalition cabinet was formed that excluded right-wing Maronite parties. This government proclaimed its support for the Palestinian resistance, while allowing the army and police organizations to take measures to repress political activity in the camps and reduce the activity of Palestinian guerrillas on Lebanese territory. Fighting broke out between the army and the fida?yyun. Pressure brought by supporters of the Palestinians both inside Lebanon and in other Arab governments prompted negotiations, and in November, accords were signed in Cairo between the government and representatives of the Palestinians, establishing new legal relations between them. Palestinians now had the right to reside, work and travel in Lebanon; the right to govern the camps themselves; the right to police the camps; and the right to maintain military organizations in Lebanon and to use them in the struggle against Israel. In effect, government ceded the Palestinians a kind of autonomous state within the state. Moreover, between the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971, large numbers of Palestinians arrived in Lebanon, including many Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters who had been expelled from Jordan in the wake of Black September 1970. Polarization between Lebanese supporters and opponents of the Palestinians increased greatly. Opponents, a coalition of Christians, nationalists and conservatives, objected to the violation of Lebanese sovereignty represented by the Cairo agreement, and particularly feared the consequences of Palestinian guerrilla activity against Israel; as supporters of the National Pact, they also opposed increased access to power for Muslims. Hilu's weakness and attempts to please every faction led to the election of Sulayman Franjiyya as his successor in 1970. Although he had supported the Nasserists in 1958, Franjiyya was a nationalist and an enemy of the PLO, which set up its headquarters in Beirut in 1972. His government also did almost nothing to provide security against Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory in the south, which were indiscriminately hitting Lebanese—predominantly poor Shi?a in that area—as well as Palestinian targets. Tens of thousands of South Lebanese Shiites migrated to Beirut to escape Israeli shelling, and little provision was made for them.

Lebanon remained neutral in the October 1973 War. Franjiyya tried to use the army against the PLO, but when it proved ineffective (many units were Muslim or Druze), he encouraged it to arm and train the Maronite militias, which could be less restrained. On 13 April 1975, unknown persons attempted to assassinate the Phalange leader, Pierre Jumayyil; in retaliation, Phalangists attacked a bus carrying Palestinian civilians through a Christian area of East Beirut, killing twenty-six. Fighting then broke out between armed factional groups and violence spread around the country. Consisting at first of street fighting and random killings, it gradually involved battles between militias, and the country was engulfed in a sectarian civil war. The main antagonists at first were the Phalange and its milita, and the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), which loosely united fifteen organizations of the left around the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) of the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt and advocated reform of the Lebanese system. The PLO was aligned with the LNM and established a joint command with its militia. The Phalange was joined by other right-wing Maronite groups (soon to form an alliance, the Lebanese Front [LF], and later a joint militia command, the Lebanese Forces [also LF]). In January 1976 the LF besieged and overran a Palestinian refugee camp at Tal al-Za?atar and destroyed a Muslim neighborhood in East Beirut. Later the PLO and LNM captured a Maronite town south of Beirut. By early 1976 the Lebanese army was disintegrating. In March Muslim troops mutinied and formed the Lebanese Arab Army, which joined with the LNM. It attacked Christian areas of Beirut and forced President Franjiyya to flee. In May Ilyas Sarkis, with Syrian support, was elected to become president in September at the end of Franjiyya's term. At the end of May, when the LF was about to be defeated, Syria, after having for months attempted to mediate a settlement, intervened militarily against the LNM and the Palestinians. This move was supported by Jordan, Israel, France and the United States. By mid-August the Syrian forces had gained control and agreed to a cease-fire. A peace conference in Riyadh and an League of Arab States meeting in Cairo, both in October, resulted in a truce and the creation of an Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) (consisting almost entirely of Syrian troops already in place) to be deployed to keep the peace, under the nominal command of the Lebanese president.

The ADF and Lebanese government authority did not extend to South Lebanon, largely controlled by the PLO (parts of it were known as "Fatahland"), where Israel and Christian militias backed by Israel continued to attack. The diplomatic peace offensive by Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat toward Israel—Sadat made his dramatic trip to Jerusalem in 1977—drove the Syrians closer to the PLO and away from the Sarkis government. By 1978 the Lebanese Forces (essentially the Phalange militia, the Lebanese Front alliance having deteriorated) were firmly allied with Israel and operating independently of the government, and Syria switched its support to their opponents, the LNM. After a PLO attack within Israel, the IDF invaded South Lebanon in March 1978, intending to destroy PLO bases and drive PLO fighters away from the border by creating a "security zone" on the Lebanese side. The Israelis organized, trained and armed a Christian militia called the South Lebanon Army (SLA) as their proxy to patrol the border area after they withdrew in October. In 1980 and 1981 there was fighting between the LF and the ADF, in which Israel at least once intervened significantly in support of the LF. In June 1982 the Israelis invaded Lebanon again, this time going as far north as Beirut and besieging the city for weeks, using artillery shelling and aerial saturation bombing, including phosphorus bombs. A cease-fire was arranged by the United States, and a withdrawal of the PLO leadership along with about 13,000 PLO and Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) fighters to Tunis was arranged under the supervision of a Multinational (American, British, French and Italian) Force (MF).

Israel's other goal was to ensure that Bashir Jumayyil, the Phalange leader and an asset of both the CIA and the Mossad, became president. Jumayyil was duly elected on 23 August. The MF left Beirut on 10 September. On 14 September Jumayyil was assassinated by Syrian nationalists. Israel then moved in to help the Phalange secure the city. Two days later the IDF helped the Phalange militia enter the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, where from 16–18 September they slaughtered approximately 1,500–3,000 civilians, ostensibly in reprisal for Jumayyil's assassination. On 20 September the Multinational Force was redeployed to Beirut. On 21 September Amin Jumayyil, Bashir's brother, was elected president, and at the end of September the Israelis left the city. In May 1983, under pressure from the United States, Jumayyil agreed to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which was actually ratified by parliament. Opposition to this treaty among Lebanese—and by the Syrians—was so great, however, that Jumayyil felt obliged to refuse to sign it. The Syrians would not negotiate, and the Israelis, who had been protecting Jumayyil's government from its factional enemies, withdrew their forces from the Shuf district southeast of Beirut, a largely Druze area held by the Phalange. Fighting broke out between the Phalange and the Druze militia directed by Walid Jumblatt, which had Palestinian and Syrian support.

These were some of the biggest battles of the war. The "peacekeepers" became involved in the fighting on the Christian side; American warships shelled Syrian positions in the mountains (hitting many civilians). After several months the Phalange were expelled from the area. The MF involvement also provoked retaliation. In October, suicide bombings in Beirut, probably carried out by Hizbullah, killed 241 American and 56 French soldiers. The MF was henceforth kept in its barracks and eventually left Lebanon in the spring of 1984. Jumayyil, with support from Syria, repudiated the agreement with Israel in March 1984. That month a national reconciliation government was formed. In June 1985, Israel withdrew most of its forces from Lebanon, but it maintained the "security zone" manned by the SLA and a battalion of IDF troops. In December an agreement for peace and political reform was signed by the leaders of the LF, the Shi?ite AMAL and the Druze militia, but it never took effect because there was no support for it within the LF leadership. In early 1987 there was fighting between AMAL and the Druze in Beirut. Syria, which had withdrawn its troops from the city as part of the cease-fire in 1982, sent a force in to separate them. In the spring of 1988 there was fighting between AMAL and Hizbullan in the south. In September 1988, just before leaving office and with no successor chosen by parliament, Jumayyil appointed General Michel Aoun, commander of the army, as "interim president." Aoun, a Maronite, turned the army against the Phalange, and in early 1989, the Syrians. In May the League of Arab States sponsored a commission composed of the heads of state of Morocco, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia to resolve the Lebanese civil war. In August a broad coalition of Lebanese political groups opposed to Aoun was formed.

In October the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies (last elected was in 1972) met in Ta?if, Saudi Arabia, and debated the Arab League's proposals, adopting a compromise version called the National Reconciliation Charter, known as the Ta?if Accords. This contained a number of political reforms, chief of which, was an agreement that Muslims and Christians should have an equal number of parliamentary seats; these had previously been apportioned based on the fiction of a Christian majority. (There has still been no census since 1932; it has been estimated that Lebanon is approximately 70–75 percent Muslim.) The president would remain a Christian, but the prime minister would be the executive head of government; the sectarian basis of Lebanese politics was basically unchanged. The presence of Syrian troops was ratified (the League of Arab States mandate had expired in 1982, after several extensions). The Ta?if Accords were accepted by all parties except for General Aoun. On 4 November 1989 parliament elected Rene Muawad president; he was assassinated on 22 November. On 24 November Ilyas al-Hrawi was elected. A new national unity government was installed in December 1989. From January 1990 on there was fighting between the forces of Aoun and the LF, which was now loyal to the government. In August parliament amended the constitution according to the provisions of the Ta?if Accords. Aoun's forces were isolated, and in October, during the crisis leading to the Gulf War (1991), Syrian forces defeated them. Aoun himself fled to France, where he remains, as of 2004, leading an organization called the Free Patriotic Movement, devoted to opposing Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. An arrest warrAn arrest warrant was issued for him in 2003.

The total number of fatalities in the 1975–1990 civil war are estimated to be over 150,000. The Lebanese economy was crippled, and much of Beirut was destroyed, as were many towns in the southern half of the country. No political initiative can be undertaken without the support of the Syrian government. Emile Lahhud was elected president in 1998. Parliamentary elections were held in 1992 for the first time since before the civil war. Rafiq Baha?uddin al-Hariri has been prime minister for all but two years since 1992. Through the 1990s Hizbullah consolidated its influence in South Lebanon and its armed wing launched frequent attacks against Israeli forces there. In 2000 the Israelis at last withdrew from its "security zone," leaving it in occupation only of the disputed Shebaa Farms area. The SLA was disbanded, and its commander, Antoine Lahad, is living in Israel as of 2004.