In 1947, the United Nations divided Palestine in two: Part would become the home for the Jews displaced as a result of World War II; the other part would continue as the Palestinian homeland. The Jews accepted the UN decision; the Arabs rejected it.
On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent state of Israel, and the next day neighboring Arab nations invaded it. The invasion failed, and when the fighting ended, Israel held territory beyond the original UN boundaries, while Egypt and Jordan held the rest of Palestine. More than 600,000 Palestinians who had lived within Israel's new borders fled the Jewish state and became refugees in neighboring Arab countries, mainly Syria and Jordan.
The Palestinians, now a people without a homeland, continued their armed resistance from bases in those countries, but their presence and their military activities against Israel became a major political problem, particularly for Jordan. By 1970, the problem had gotten out of control, and the Jordanian government dealt with it violently, by forcibly expelling the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
The approximately 10,000 PLO fighters, the fedayeen, initially settled in the southern part of Lebanon, bringing thousands of Palestinian refugees with them, exacerbating a situation which had already been particularly volatile for over a decade. In 1958, Arab nationalists (mostly Shiites, though some Druze also participated) had rebelled against the pro-Western government of Christian President Camille Chamoun. Chamoun asked the United States for help, and about 10,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers landed on Lebanon's beaches. This show of force helped the government restore order, and the troops were withdrawn.
After the 1958 crisis, the next Lebanese president, Fouad Chehab, made a serious effort to mend fences with the Arabs: He gave Muslims more jobs in the government, established friendly relations with Egypt, and worked to raise living standards.
Although the Lebanese government had always sympathized with the Palestinian cause, their sympathy never translated into strong support; nor did they welcome the new Palestinian presence — they were simply too weak to keep them out. Soon the PLO began launching attacks against the settlements of northern Israel from their base in southern Lebanon. As the Israelis retaliated against PLO strikes, the Shiites in southern Lebanon suffered greatly, aggravating the hatred that already existed.
By 1975, much of the PLO had migrated to West Beirut, where they established their main base of operations, with its own system of law and order and its own taxes. This did not sit well with many Lebanese, but especially with the Christian militia (the Phalange), and soon a full-scale civil war broke out between the Palestinians and the Phalange.
An estimated 40,000 people, mostly civilians both Lebanese and Palestinian, perished during the bitter fighting, and the Lebanese Army fell apart. It virtually ceased being an effective fighting force.
At this point, the Syrians became involved.
The Syrians had had designs on Lebanon as far back as recorded history, and they entered the fray twice, first on the side of the Palestinians and then on the side of the Christian militias. Their switch was all in the interest of their larger aim — the control of Lebanon. Their participation resulted in the Syrian occupation of the Bekaa Valley, a strategic area located between Lebanon's mountain spine and the Syrian border; they have remained there ever since, orchestrating to their advantage the large number of Shiites who migrated to that area as a result of the civil war and subsequent conflicts.
By 1978, Lebanon had become the main base of operations for the PLO. In that year, the Israelis launched a large-scale sweep of southern Lebanon against the Palestinian bases. Approximately 100,000 refugees, mainly Palestinians and Shiites, were sent fleeing to civil-war-ravaged West Beirut. By now, most of Lebanon had become a battleground, but where before it had been primarily Christian militias against the PLO, now it was just about everybody against everybody else. Long-standing hatreds, feuds, memories of atrocities, as well as ethnic and religious differences, were unleashed; each faction had its own militia — well-armed and deadly; and the various factional militias and clans began fighting each other.
The Druze occupied the Chouf Mountain region, which dominated Beirut and the primary land routes leading from Beirut to Damascus. The Druze controlled the Peoples Socialist Party, or PSP, under its leader Walid Jumblatt, and operated the most heavily armed of the Lebanese factional militias (though their numbers were not great). The PSP's primary enemy were Christians, and their support and armament were provided by Syria, but included Soviet advisers at firing battery locations. By mid-1983, their armament consisted of approximately 420 tubes of modern Soviet artillery, including D-30 howitzers, BM-21 rocket launchers, numerous heavy mortars, air defense weapons, and thirty T- 54 Soviet-made tanks given to the PSP by Libya — all within range of Beirut and its suburbs.
The Syrian army controlled both the northeastern part of Lebanon and, more important, the Bekaa Valley and its population of Shiite Muslims.
Israel established a security zone in the south, where Christians, Palestinians, and Shiite Muslims lived together but hated each other.
Terrorism had meanwhile 'advanced' to a stage of 'state sponsorship.' Sponsoring states included Syria, Libya, and Iran. The most dangerous of these, Iran, developed new forms of terrorist warfare — suicide bombings and hostage-taking — aimed at spreading the Islamic revolution through subversion and terrorism. The U.S.- educated Hosein Sheikholislam, a disciple of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a veteran of the U.S. Embassy siege in Tehran and later of the TWA 847 hijacking, was the chief architect of this campaign. The militant arm formed to carry it out was called Hezbollah, 'Party of God,' and consisted of fanatical fundamentalist Shiites drawn from all over the world. They were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in camps, then sent back to their home countries to establish revolutionary cells. These were the most dangerous of all terrorists, willing to martyr themselves for the Islamic revolution. Because Westerners, and particularly Americans, were seen as the 'Great Satan, ' they became their primary targets. The main Lebanese base for Hezbollah operations (and terrorist training) was located at Baalbeckin Syrian-controlled territory in the Bekaa Valley, only an hour's driving time from Beirut. Hezbollah operating cells were established in West Beirut.
The 'Movement of the Disinherited,' known as the Amal, was headed by Nabih Berri, a lawyer, born in West Africa and educated in France, and whose family lived in the United States north of Detroit. Berri's goal was to reduce the power of the Christian minority, and to allow the Shiites, who now outnumbered the Christians, to use their numbers to dominate Lebanese politics. Amal was supported primarily by Syria, while its two primary enemies were the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Question: Were the Syrians and Amal friends?
Answer: When it was convenient.
Question: Were the Druze and Amal friends?
Answer: When it was convenient.
Question: Were the Syrians and Iranians friends?
Answer: When it was convenient.
Within Beirut itself were also several other independent militias, such as the Maurabi Toon, who claimed to represent what was called the Peoples Worker Party, but whose
In June 1982, Israeli armed forces launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon called Operation PEACE FOR GALILEE. Its aim was to clean out the PLO once and for all. In two weeks of fierce fighting, the Israelis drove the PLO from their strongholds near Israel's northern border, destroyed a major part of Syria's forces occupying the Bekaa Valley, including air defense batteries, tanks, and fighter aircraft, and pushed all the way to Beirut, where they linked up with the Christian Phalange militia and surrounded Muslim West Beirut, the center of militant Muslim activities in the capital. The PLO was now training their terrorists in West Beirut, as well as launching attacks against Israel and Jordan from there. It had also become the latest temporary refugee camp home for 175,000 Palestinians who had fled the earlier Israeli sweep in the south. Soon the Israelis were bombing West Beirut daily.
Israel's crushing blow to the Syrian military forces seriously humiliated the Syrian President, Hafez Assad. In the coming months, Assad turned to the Soviets for assistance in rebuilding his weakened forces, with payback against Israel a primary aim.
At this point, the U.S. State Department got involved, with a long-term goal to promote Lebanese stability — an impossibility as long as the PLO was there. The more immediate goal was to stop the fighting and to get the PLO, the Syrians, and eventually the Israeli forces out of the country. To that end, the State Department proposed
