The Lebanese war is very complex and has many dimensions so it is not considered, as some have claimed, to be a 'civil war' as many non Lebanese nationals were very heavily involved, indeed armies of neighbouring countries took part in much of the fighting. It is unfortunate that there is reference to 'Christians' and 'Muslims' in the following account as this may cause those unfamiliar with the events to think that the war was one of religion. This would be unfair and simplistic as religion was just used as a convenient umbrella to stereotype and group the many factions and thus divide them between two opposing sides. There were many 'Muslims' on the 'Christian side' and vice versa. The opposing sides were not fighting each other simply because of their religion but as a result of major differences of opinion on matters such as who should run the country and how the country should be run. It was a war about ideology, identity, nationality, insanity, and stupidity.

The dimensions of the war comprised of a Lebanese-Palestinian war, a Lebanese-Lebanese, a Palestinian-Syrian, a Palestinian-Israeli, a Lebanese-Syrian, a Syrian-Israeli, and a Lebanese-Israeli war. Add to these dimensions Libyans, Iraqis, Americans and Russians, and the resulting chaotic soup of well over seventy groups fighting in Lebanon would confuse the most ordered of minds.

The War of 1958

After the National Front coalition of Kamal Jumblatt and Saeb Salam received major setbacks in the parliamentary elections of 1958 the coalition and its Druze and Sunni supporters decided to take to the streets and turned to violence through open rebellion against the government. With the aid of some Arab powers, these left wing forces which were inspired and encouraged by the February 1958 unification of Egypt and Syria, agitated to make Lebanon a member of the new United Arab Republic. The pro western government of Lebanon was disliked by the Syrians who plotted to destabilize the country and so encouraged and greatly assisted the rebels through mainly covert operations. Syrian covert action became so obvious and widespread that the Lebanese government lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council in June 1958. ("Speech of Dr Malik before the UN Security Council," 6 June 1958, S/823, 823rd Meeting, Security Council Official Records, 1958, p. 4) Press reports and government documents alike confirm a massive covert Syrian intervention that included supplying arms to the opposition, training paramilitary forces and using Syrian soldiers to carry out terrorist attacks.

Further confirmation came from a seemingly unusual source, the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP). The SSNP believed that the leftist rebels wanted to liquidate them as part of a communist inspired plot because the SSNP opposed the plans of President Nasser of Egypt for union with Syria. In a press conference on May 19, 1958 Assad El Ashkar, the head of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party stated:

"As for the actual intervention of the United Arab Republic, our comrades at Idbil could clearly hear dialects of Syrians and Egyptians when they fought with the attackers face to face. The Syrian Army sent to Irsal (a Lebanese village on the borders near Nabi Osman) several mortars. Major Hassan Hiddaa of the Syrian Army entered the Lebanese town of Irsal in an armored car and stayed there for a couple of hours, where he inspected the forces of rebellion. The source of arms of all rebels in the Baalbeck-Hermel district is the Sarraj Deuxieme Bureau. Abdo Hakim, another Syrian officer at Homs is in charge of supplying the rebels with arms and amunitions. He himself lead some of the caravans which carried arms to Al-Kassr (another Lebanese village in the Hermel District)."

In a memorandum to Mr. Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations Organization the SSNP said:

"The arming of the rebel tribes in the Hermel district started on the 27th of March 1958, in the Syrian village of “al Hamam” on the Syrian frontier bordering the Hermel district in Northern Beqaa.....The Syrian Lieutenant Abdu Hakeem was personally in charge of arming the rebel tribes. He himself used to distribute arms and lead convoys into the Lebanese territory......The attack on Halba, Akkar, was launched from Al-Kasser in Hermel. Abdu Hakeem harangued the rebels, then before the attack was started many Syrian conscripts took part in the attack.....Another main centre of rebels and infiltration is Orsal (a Lebanese frontier village). It is the headquarters of the Syrian Major Hasssan Hiddah, In charge of the Orsal-Baalbeck area. Recent information point out that ex-Colonel Ali Hayyari, expelled from the Jordanian Army in 1957, is in charge with Major Hiddah, of military rebel operations in Beqaa. On June 1st, 1958, Major Hiddah held in Orsal, a general meeting for all Syrian conscripts participating in the rebellion. The meeting took place near the house of the Mukhtar Hujjeiry......Syrian arms were distributed to the village of Rassem Al Haddath, Shath, Younin, Makheh, Brital, Hour Takla, Al Ein, Al Labweh, Dar el Wassia.On May 31st, Tawfic Halo Haidar, received from Major Hiddah, through the Nabec - Orsal road, 300 machine guns and on June 8th, 1958, the rebel tribesmen, Tahan Dandash, Salih Nasser-el Deen, Khudur Saadoun, went to Damascus and came back with 900 guns. The number of guns smuggled through the Beqaa borders up till that date, reached approximately 3500 guns including machine guns, Bazooka guns and other varieties. Big sums of money were also paid by the Syrian authorities to rebel tribes."

The memorandum continues:

"Deir El Ashayer (a Lebanese village on the Syrian frontier) is the main center for arming and training of the rebels. Syrian officers are in charge of their military training. Major Tawfic Janial of the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau is in charge of arming the rebels of the Rashaya district. Naassan Zakkar, officer in the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau is in charge of the military operations. All of the above-mentioned officers work under the direct command of Captain Burhan Adham who is in charge of the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau. Syrian army squadrons are camping in Mankaa al Tuffah on the Syrian border where rebels are being trained. Route of infiltration in this area starts at Mankaa al Tuffah and continues through Deir el Ashayer, Khirbit Rouha (now a meeting center of infiltration and rebels), Baalool, Lala, Ain Zebdi and then to the rebel Shouf district; Jumblat forces mainly come from Houran (in the Syrian region)."

Although the war took a toll of some 2,000 to 4,000 lives, it was regarded by many as a comic opera, especially when 5,000 United States Marines were landed on the beaches near Beirut and waded ashore among sunbathers and swimmers. The Marines' role, in a situation described by the Department of Defence as "like war but not war" was to support the legal Lebanese government against any foreign invasion, specifically against Syria. The Marines were summoned because General Shihab, commander of the Lebanese Army, believing that units of the small Lebanese army would mutiny and disintegrate if ordered into action, had disobeyed President Chamoun's orders to send in the army against leftist rebels.

Although the crisis passed quickly, it was a sign of things that were soon to come.

(On the crisis in general, see F.I. Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1961), pp. 71-168. For specific Syrian covert operations, see for instance, "Verhaftung eines Syrischen Terroristen," Neue Züricher Zeitung, 27 June 1958; "Le Deuxième Bureau Syrien aurait équipé et énvoye des sommes à Mouktara pour soutenir les insurgés de M. Joumblatt," L'Orient, 13 July 1958; PRO, FO 371/134133/VL1015/602, Scott to FO, 2 September 1958.)

The 1975 - 1990 War

The Prelude to the 1975 War and the Cairo Agreement

Fouad Shihab became president after Camille Chamoun and although he built up the Lebanese intelligence service, called the Deuxième Bureau, the army was almost ignored and remained powerless, small, and was becoming weaker and weaker as time went on. The army's inactivity continued under Shihab's successor, Charles Helou, who became president in 1964. Helou and his army commander refused to commit Lebanese troops to the June 1967 war as an armitice agreement had been signed between the two countries in 1949 and the Lebanese Army was far too small and weak to get involved. This enraged many Lebanese Muslims as well as Syria, the mortal enemy of Israel. Immediately after the Arab defeat of 1967 Syria started sending Palestinian guerrillas into Lebanon to attack Israel. As soon as the PLO came to Lebanon, the violence that was to destroy the country began.

On October 20, 1969 large numbers of Palestinain guerrillas began gathering on the western slopes of Mount Hermon in the Arqub region of Lebanon a few days later on the 29th these Palestinians fired on a Lebanese army patrol which resulted in the deaths of three Lebanese soldiers and the death one guerrilla with two injured. Imediatley Voice of Palestine broadcasts from cairo started to warn the Lebanese not to interfere with Palestinain raids into Israel. Following the calsh a meering was held on 16 November to discuss the matter. The meeting included the Lebanese Army commader Emile Boustany, Cheif of Staff Yusif Shmayet, Intelligence Chief Gaby Lahoud and representatives of Palestinian organisations. Palestinian officials stated that their intention was to attack targets in Israel and that to achieve this they needed to pass through Lebanese territory. To that Boustany replied that Lebanon would not allow such infiltrations. He then stated the Lebanese position on such military activities and stressed the following:

• Lebanon signed an armistice agreement with Israel in 1949; it was still in effect and Lebanon could not violate it.
• Military operations between Israel and the Arab countries are part of military strategy under the United Arab Command. Lebanon cannot allow turmoil on the Lebanese-Israeli border without co-ordination with that military body.
• Attacks carried out by the Fedaeyin (guerrillas) from Lebanon would lead to violent Israeli retaliations against civilians in Lebanese villages.

The army and its Deuxième Bureau was not able to control the flow Palestinian guerrillas infiltrating Lebanon from Syria, an attitude that angered Christians who saw the Palestinian armed presence as a mortal threat to Lebanon. In December 1968, the Lebanese government was humiliated when Israeli commandos landed at Beirut International Airport and destroyed thirteen Middle East Airlines and TMA aircraft with impunity. The Israeli strike was in retaliation for a series of Palestinian hijackings. The Lebanese army did not interfere with Israeli attacks into Lebanon in retaliation against Palestinian terror forces, the army and the Deuxiéme Bureau, and the government were charged with collusion with Israel by the Lebanese left. Kamal Jumblatt led the anti government chorus and demanded that Lebanon supports the guerrillas.

A few months later, on 15 April 1969, fighting broke out again between the Lebanese Army and infiltrating guerrillas in the southern village of Deir Mimas. Disturbances were also recorded in several Palestinian camps. Four days later, another clash took place between army troops and armed Palestinians in the villages of Odeiseh and Khiyam, resulting in several casualties. Demonstrations also took place in Beirut and in other major cities. On 22 April 1968 clashes were renewed in the south in which several guerrillas were injured and others detained. Clashes became recurrent as the number of guerrillas operating in Lebanon increased. According to Lebanese security sources, the number of guerrillas based in the south by mid-1969 was approximately 4000. The majority belonged to Saeqa and Fateh.

Confrontations with government authorities were part of a Fateh strategy to establish a permanent military presence in Lebanon. According to George Hawi the head of the Communist Party, Arafat was uncertain about the precarious state of affairs that prevailed in Jordan in 1969 as well as about the PLO’s ability to take over Jordan, as advocated by some Palestinian leaders. New alternatives had to be explored. One such alternative was to strengthen Fateh’s presence in Lebanon and create 'new realities on the ground' especially since the situation seemed favourable both inside the camps and in the growing popular support for the PLO within the ranks of the Lebanese left wing parties.

The more serious clash, however, took place not in remote areas near the Lebanese-Israeli border but in Sidon and Beirut. No sooner had the country recovered from the Israeli raid than it found itself engulfed, in April 1969, in a crisis over the Palestinian problem in its Arab and Lebanese dimensions as opposed to the more predictable Israeli dimension. The occasion for turmoil was a demonstration called for by several Lebanese Leftist and Arab nationalist parties led by Kamal Jumblatt to protest against 'the reactionary policies of the Lebanese government towards Fedaeyin action' and to call for 'the opening of southern borders for guerrilla operations against Israel'. On the surface, the demonstration looked like yet another episode of arm twisting between government authorities and pro-Palestinian groups. In reality, however, what happened was a Fateh-instigated confrontation with the Lebanese government. Such a confrontation would provoke a crisis which, in turn, would bring the issue of PLO armed presence into the open.

On the 23rd of April in Sidon, armed demonstrators coming from Ain al-Helweh camp stormed the municipality building in the city and clashed with security forces. In Beirut, the clash started in the Barbir area as demonstrators tried to force their way through internal security forces deployed on the scene. According to a Leftist activist who took part in the demonstration, shooting started when a man in his early twenties in sportswear walked towards the front row of the demonstration, about fifteen minutes after it started, and opened fire at the security forces. He then ran away as the security forces started shooting. In the process, two people were killed and many others were injured. While the identity of the agent provocateur was not known, it was clear that the intention was to provoke turmoil. Clearly, the demonstration and the bloody confrontations that followed in Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli and the Beqaa were not an accidental show of force. Clashes resulted in 11 people dead, including five Lebanese security forces and more than 80 injured.

What made the demonstration qualitatively different was its political significance. It signalled, in the words of Mohsin Ibrahim head of the Organisation of Communist Action, 'the decision to open the battle' with the Lebanese government. Equally important was that it was viewed by the Left in Lebanon as a revolutionary event of unprecedented importance. For Lebanese Communist Party ideologue Mahdi Amil, the 'April 23rd uprising' (Intifada) was a political and ideological achievement of 'historic significance', with it, 'Lebanon's class struggle began' and a new political force was born 'to break the hold of the bourgeoisie-controlled' political system and 'to protect the Palestinian Resistance'.

Reacting to these events, the government imposed a four day nation-wide curfew. Several demonstrators were detained, including pro-Iraq Baath Party leader Abdul-Majid al-Rafi. On 24 April, the Sunni prime minister, Rashid Karame resigned in a show of support for the Palestinians and the search for ways to end the crisis began. It was to continue for the next seven months until a formula of 'coexistence' between the Lebanese state and the Palestinian revolution was found. The Lebanon was paralized as the President found it impossible to form a new government as the Sunni leadership refused to do so unless Lebanon started a policy of coordination with the PLO. That formula was the Cairo Agreement. The situation forced army commander General Emile Bustani to sign the an agreement in Cairo in November 1969 with Palestinian representatives. The Cairo Agreement granted to the Palestinians the right to keep weapons in their camps and to attack Israel across Lebanon's border and for their part the Plaestinians had to respect Lebanese laws and Lebanon's sovereignty. By sanctioning the armed Palestinian presence, however, Lebanon surrendered full sovereignty over military operations conducted within and across its borders and became a party to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Given the prevailing internal and regional considerations, the Cairo Agreement provided relief for all parties who regarded it as a face-saving arrangement and an expedient truce short of better alternatives. For most Christian leaders, the Cairo Agreement was the 'lesser of two evils'. For Camille Chamoun, what counted were Palestinian intentions and their willingness to abide by the agreement when put to the test. Another Christian response was that of Pierre Gemayel who saw the Cairo Agreement as 'a middle ground solution' between two divergent views on the PLO in Lebanon. While acknowledging that military operations would eventually lead to Israeli raids, Gemayel explained that it 'would still be easier to cope with such raids than with a civil war between the Lebanese'.

Raymond Eddé was the only Lebanese leader who had consistently opposed the notion of supporting the Palestinians and, subsequently, the Cairo Agreement. He never missed the opportunity to reiterate his position and to argue that such an arrangement hurt the interests of both Lebanon and the PLO. But Eddé’s views, and his call for the deployment of United Nations troops along the Lebanese-Israeli borders, went unheeded. Another strong reaction to the Cairo Agreement came from Maronite Patriarch Méouchy, who submitted a memorandum to the president in which he voiced concern over the military provisions of the agreement.

Those who stood to benefit most from the outcome of the events that marked the stormy year of 1969 were Kamal Jumblatt, Leftist parties and, in a different way, the Sunni political establishment. Indeed, the Cairo Agreement met the demands voiced by the Sunni political and religious leadership. On the eve of the Cairo talks, Sunni Mufti Hassan Khalid convened two meetings attended by Lebanon’s leading political and religious figures and issued a statement calling for the freedom of guerrilla action. An attempt tp convene a meeting by Shiite cleric Mousa al-Sadr in support of the guerrillas was not successful as the meeting was boycotted by leading Shiite figures.

For his role in forcing through the Cairo Agreement Jumblatt was rewarded with the post of interior minister by Rashid Karami. Jumblatt proceeded by replacing the army presence in the camps with internal security forces who were under his command and was therefore able to assist them in their arms build-up.

Nearly three weeks after the signing of the agreement clashes between the guerrillas and the Lebanese Army were renewed this time in the Nabatiyeh camp in the south. The Cairo Agreement was violated from the start and it became irrelevant.

The Troubled Years, 1970 - 1974

Despite Arab support for the PLO and the international attention it was able to generate, the PLO would not have been able to operate as an autonomous movement in the absence of the sanctuary it found in Lebanon. The autonomy it enjoyed in Lebanon could not be found in any other Arab country. In the years following the loss of its Jordan base, the PLO came to view its Lebanon base in strategic terms. As a result, Lebanon was no longer a place where the PLO would be content with limited political and military presence. In the early 1970s, Palestinian organisations displayed little willingness to abide by agreements, which in reality were no more than hasty deals mirroring the balance of power of the late 1960s.

Beginning in 1970, Palestinian-Israeli raids in the south intensified, as did the clashes between the Lebanese Army and the guerrillas. One of the early clashes after the Cairo Agreement occurred in March 1970 in the south, resulting in several casualties. Violence began to drive local inhabitants to seek shelter outside their villages, particularly in the suburbs of Beirut.

Demonstrations were held in Beirut to protest the policies of the Lebanese government towards Arab causes and the Palestinian revolution. The confusing setting of Arab politics was clearly apparent in the slogans the demonstrators raised, comparing President Helou to Nun al-Said, Iraq’s strong man under the Hashernite monarchy, and calling for his overthrow.

A serious confrontation involving PLO guerrillas occurred in March 1970. Clashes began in the Maronite town of Kahhaleh and spread immediately to the outskirts of Beirut. While disturbances lasted only three days, they had unprecedented confessional overtones.

The incident began on 25 March, following an exchange of gunfire between Palestinians escorting a convoy of cars passing through the Christian town of Kahhaleh (located on the major Beirut-Damascus road) on their way to Damascus to bury a Palestinian commando officer. On their way back, the Palestinian convoy, which was larger and more heavily armed than the previous one, came under heavy fire as it passed through the main road in the town. Gunfire went on for forty-five minutes and resulted in several casualties.

Immediately after the incident, attempts at reconciliation began. Jumblatt, in his capacity as minister of the interior, conferred with delegations representing the Palestinians and representatives of the inhabitants of Kahhaleh. Despite these efforts, fighting spread to other areas around Palestinian camps in the areas of Dikwaneh and Haret Hreik. In these two localities, largely populated by Christians of lower and middle class backgrounds the guerrillas had already begun to expand their military presence outside the camps where they would set up roadblocks and harass passers-by. In Dikwaneh, where the Tal al Zaatar camp was located, Palestinian guerrillas raided a local office of the Kataeb Party. But more importantly they kidnapped Pierre Gemayel’s younger son, Bashir, who, at the time, was not yet directly involved in party politics. Although Gemayel, along with his two companions, were released the same day from a Fateh office on Hamra street, the symbolic significance of the episode was clear. From that day Bashir Gemayel would get involved in politics.

In the summer of 1970 Sulayman Franjieh (also Frangieh) was elected president. Believing that the Deuxième Bureau was staffed with Shihab loyalists, Franjieh purged it and stripped it of its powers. But the Deuxième Bureau had been the only governmental entity capable of monitoring and controlling the Palestinians, and Franjieh's action unintentionally gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), commanded by Yasser Arafat, more freedom of action in Lebanon. Franjieh, who came from Zgharta in northern Lebanon, was accused of promoting his own power and catering to the interests of his clansmen instead of confronting Lebanon's growing security problems. Meanwhile, the PLO made a bid to topple Jordan's King Hussein, but it was crushed and evicted from the country after fierce fighting, an event known in the Palestinian lexicon as "Black September." Therefore, the PLO leadership and guerrillas moved their main base of operations from Jordan to Lebanon, where the Cairo Agreement endorsed their presence. The influx of several hundred thousand Palestinians including many tens of thousands of guerrillas upset Lebanon's delicate confessional balance, and polarized the nation into two groups, those who supported and those who opposed the PLO presence.

Public order deteriorated with daily acts of violence between Christians and Palestinians. To counter Christian political resistance the PLO set about isolating the Christian community and distorting Christian image and goals. The Christians were branded as isolationists, traitors, rightists, fascists, anti Arab, and Israeli collaborators. The PLO media machine which controlled most of the press activity of Beirut did such a fine job distorting the truth about their Lebanese opponents that to this day the Lebanese Christians are having difficulty in shaking off the isolationist label given to them by the PLO.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force launched raids against the Palestinian refugee camps in retaliation for PLO terrorist attacks in Western Europe. On April 10, 1973, Israeli commandos infiltrated Beirut in a daring raid and attacked Palestinian command centres in the heart of the capital, killing three prominent PLO leaders: Kamal Nasir, poet and the PLO's official spokesman; Muhammad al-Najjar, head of the Higher Political Committee for Palestinian Affairs in Lebanon, member of the PLO Executive Committee and Fateh Central Committee; and Kamal Udwan, also a member of the Fateh Central Committee. The absence of the Lebanese Army during the Israeli attack angered Lebanese Muslims. Prime Minister Saib Salam claimed that Army commander General Alexander Ghanim--a Maronite--had disobeyed orders by not resisting the Israeli raid, and he threatened to resign unless Ghanim were stripped of his rank. Because Ghanim was allowed to remain as army commander (until he was replaced by Hanna Said in September 1975), Salam did resign and was succeeded by a series of weak prime ministers.

Friction between the guerrillas and the security forces increased rapidly thereafter. On April 14 1973 the US-owned oil terminus at Zahrani was bombed, allegedly by the PFLP-GC; on April 27 three men were arrested with explosives at Beirut airport, where a bomb was found the next day; on April 30 several armed DFLP members were arrested as they drove past the US Embassy. In response, two Lebanese soldiers were kidnapped on May 1st which finally forced the Lebanese Army into action against the PLO. The refugee camps were then surrounded and attacked by the army. In response to Palestinian shelling of the airport, the Lebanese Air Force was ordered into action against the Burj al-Barajina camp in Beirut. A state of emergency was declared throughout the country.

As the fighting intensified, the PLO appealed to external allies for support. Algeria, Libya, and Syria promptly condemned the Lebanese government's actions. All three, together with Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and the Arab League offered to mediate. Egypt and Syria-now planning what would become the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War-were particularly anxious to contain the conflict, and exerted considerable pressure to that end. This included the closure of the Syrian-Lebanese border on May 8, and the movement of Fateh and Saiqa forces from Syria to a few kilometers inside Lebanon. Fearing a Syrian invasion, the Lebanese looked for a way to end the fighting.

On May 17, after some seventeen hours of negotiation, the two sides announced that they had reached agreement, the "Melkart Protocol". This Melkart Agreement, on the one hand obligated the PLO to respect the "independence, stability, and sovereignty" of Lebanon but on the other hard gave the PLO virtual autonomy, including the right to maintain its own militia forces in certain areas of Lebanon. These provisions of the Melkart Agreement differed greatly from the Cairo Agreement, which preserved the "exercise of full powers in all regions and in all circumstances by Lebanese civilian and military authorities."

Lebanese Muslims believed that under the Melkart Agreement Palestinian refugees in Lebanon had been accorded a greater degree of self-determination than some Lebanese citizens. Inspired by this, they organized themselves politically and militarily and encouraged by the Palestinians tried to wrest similar concessions from the central government. In 1974 Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt established the Lebanese National Movement (formerly the Front for Progressive Parties and National Forces), an umbrella group comprising antigovernment forces.

A military build-up was underway. Following the 1969 events, Kataeb Party members were involved in occasional military training. The turning point, however, occurred after the 1973 confrontations between the Lebanese army and PLO forces, when Christian-based parties began to acquire heavy weapons and were engaged in organised training. The most organised and disciplined Christian-based party was the Kataeb. With its para-military structure and large following in various parts of the country, the Kataeb Party was, as Frank Stoakes indicated, ‘a valuable auxiliary of the state’ and always ready to come to its defence in times of crisis.’ Other parties began to organise militarily, notably Chamoun’s National Liberal Party and a small elitist group of young professionals called al-Tanzim, headed by physician Fouad Chemali.

Lebanese parties, of all persuasions, Christian and Muslim, Left and Right, lagged behind the PLO. Not only did they lack a similar military and security infrastructure, they had limited financial resources. Leftist and Muslim-based parties operated closely with the PLO and received heavy financial and military support from Arab countries, notably Libya, Syria and Iraq. Christian-based parties, for their part, relied mainly on private financial support. They also received military assistance, beginning in 1973, from the Lebanese army, which consisted of training and light weapons.

On the eve of the war in 1975 the military balance in the country was largely in favour of the PLO. Of the eight PLO organisations, with a total strength of 22,900 troops, Fateh had the largest number of fighters (7,000) and was the best equipped, followed by Saiqa (4,500). The fighting force of other major organisations was of almost equal size, numbering about 2500 each. The distribution of armed men in seven major camps in October 1975 was as follows: al-Rashidiyeh (7,300), Ain al-Helweh (4,500), Tal al-Zaatar (3,225), Shatila (2,500), Nahr al-Band (1,700), al-Burj al-Shemali (1,625) and Borj al-Barajneh (1,300). Therefore, the largest concentration was in the south and the Beirut area.

The Lebanese army was 19,000 strong. Only about half that number was a fighting force. The largest number of militiamen was that of the Kataeb Party (8,000), followed by the Lebanese Communist Party and the Progressive Socialist Party (5,000 each) and by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the National Liberal Party (4,000 each). Leftist, nationalist and Muslim-based parties, which were part of the LNM, had a total number of 18,700 militiamen and with the PLO the anti government forces numbered some 41,600 while Christian-based parties had 12,000. The break up of the army made the ratio worse for the Christian based parties as the result was 46,600 left wing troops against 15,000 right wing troops.

The Opening Rounds, 1975

By the mid 1970s PLO conduct in Lebanon had reached incredible lows. Arafat's realm within Lebanon became known as the Fakhani Republic named after the district of Beirut where he had set up his headquarters, in large areas of Lebanon his authority was supreme. In a flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty the PLO set up road blocks, issued passes and travel documents, took over entire buildings, operated extortion rackets, protected criminals fleeing Lebanese justice, stole cars, expelled residents, and opened unlicensed shops, bars, and nightclubs. They even raped and murdered at will. Despite repeated pleas from his old guard and from Lebanese Christian leaders, Arafat did nothing to control the behaviour of his Palestinians.

In a memorandum submitted to the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies on 7th November 1975 by the Standing Conference of the Superior-Generals of the Monastic Orders of Lebanon, they state:

'The Palestinian resistance interfere in Lebanese politics, in alliance with such groups as it believes can be of advantage to it, and openly try to bring them to power by calling upon them to cause disturbances even such as involve the use of arms, using external pressure on the Lebanese state through certain Arab countries when it seems to be in its interest to extract from the Lebanese authorities such privileges as have not been extracted before. The resistance also believes itself entitled to call openly upon the Lebanese to deny their political system, impeding the normal course of the constitutional and administrative institutions (the army, for example) by openly appealing to one or other of the Arab countries, which then pours in its money to direct the information media (and the press in particular) as it wishes, and, indeed, to mold them and to undermine their national role so as to suppress the expression of any opinion favorable to Lebanon in its own interest, providing a base and a refuge for international terrorism which can only be injurious to Lebanon."

A year later, on 14th October 1976 Edward Ghorra, the Lebanese AmbAssador to the United Nations described the actions of the Palestinians to the UN General Assembly:

"The Palestinians had transformed most, if not all, of the refugee camps into military bastions around our major cities. Moreover, common-law criminals fleeing from Lebanese justice find shelter and protection in the camps. Palestinian elements belonging to various splinter organizations resorted to kidnapping Lebanese and sometimes foreigners, holding them prisoner, questioning them, and even killing them. They committed all sorts of crimes in Lebanon and also escaped Lebanese justice in the protection of the camps. They smuggled goods into Lebanon and openly sold them on our streets. They went so far as to demand protection money from many individuals and owners of buildings and factories situated in the vicinity of the camps."

Even strong supporters of the PLO had been moved to comment on the behavior of the Palestinians. In his book, I Speak for Lebanon, written in 1977 shortly before his death, Kamal Jumblat the main ally of the Palestinians in Lebanon wrote:

"It has to be said that the Palestinians themselves, by violating Lebanese law, bearing arms as they chose and policing certain important points of access to the capital, actually furthered the plot that had been hatched against them. They carelessly exposed themselves to criticism and even to hatred. High officials and administrators were occasionally stopped and asked for their identity papers by Palestinian patrols. From time to time, Lebanese citizens and foreigners were arrested and imprisoned, on the true or false pretext of having posed a threat to the Palestinian revolution. Such actions were, at first, forgiven, but became increasingly difficult to tolerate. Outsiders making the law in Lebanon, armed demonstrations and ceremonies, military funerals for martyrs of the revolution, it all mounted up and began to alienate public opinion, especially conservative opinion, which was particularly concerned about security.... I never saw a less discreet, less cautious revolution."

It is interesting to note that throughout the war, and despite the close alliance between the Druze PSP and the Palestinians, the PSP would not permit the stationing of significant numbers of Palestinian troops in Druze-held areas of the Shuf Mountains.

Trouble began to brew very early in 1975 when a Lebanese Army barracks in Tyre was hit by 8 rockets fired from a nearby Palestinian camp on January 20th. Matters came to a head in February 1975 when the Lebanese Communist Party and other leftists organized violent demonstrations in Sidon on behalf of fishermen who were threatened economically by a state monopoly fishing company. The Lebanese Army was called in to restore order, but, in the volatile atmosphere, armed clashes erupted. Muslim politicians protested that the use of the army was a violation of the demonstrators' democratic liberties and asked why the army was shooting at civilians rather than defending Lebanon's borders against Israeli incursions. Sunni leaders also faulted the channels used for ordering the army into action. General Ghanim had assumed charge of the army's conduct and reported directly to President Franjieh, ignoring Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rashid as Sulh (also seen as Solh). Meanwhile, thousands of students in mainly Christian East Beirut demonstrated in support of the army. These serious splits were exacerbated when Maruf Saad, a pro-Palestinian Sunni populist leader, died in March of wounds suffered during the Sidon clashes. Long-standing concerns that the army would disintegrate if it were called into action were vindicated when intense fighting broke out between Maronite and Muslim army recruits.

The various nationalistic, pro government, mainly Christian parties as they watched the authority of the Lebanese government collapse, organized themselves into militias in an attempt to counter the threat from the Palestinian presence. These various militias such as the Phalange, the Ahrar Tigers, and the Guardians of the Cedars, realizing that they were out numbered and out gunned combined politically under one central command, The Lebanese Front.

On April 13, 1975, unidentified Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a congregation outside a Maronite church in Ayn ar Rummeneh, a Christian suburb of Beirut. Later in the day, members of the Christian Phalange Party ambushed a bus filled with Palestinians that had overrun a check point, claiming 26 dead. According to the Phalange version of events, the bus contained armed Palestinian Arab Liberation Front guerillas, firing weapons. Some PLO accounts describe the passengers as civilians and other reports as guerrilla trainees. However, the Phalangist version was confirmed by Abd al-Rahim Ahmad of the Palestinian ALF who stated in an interview in Amman, 28th December 1986, that those on the bus were indeed armed Palestinian ALF members. That night, at 10 pm, mortar shells slammed into Ayn ar Rummanah catching the people by surprise. The next day saw hit and run raids against the Lebanese Army by Palestinian groups led by the DFLP and also fighting between the Phalangists and the Palestinians which resulted in around 35 deaths and by the April 15 a full artillery duel had started in Beirut. One of Lebanon's many cease fires was announced on April 16 but was not to last. Within the next couple of days heavy fighting resumed between the Palestinian forces and the Lebanese Front. Kamal Jumblatt and hs leftist allies voiced continuous support for the Palestinians. The war soon became an orgy of death.

In the first week of the war some hundreds of motorists, halted in a traffic jam in Beirut at a Palestinian check point, witnessed the execution of a man by the PLO. The captors and their victim stood on a piece of open ground at the side of the Avenue Sami al-Solh. Other captured Lebanese, probably Maronite, were guarded by Fedayeen armed with ‘klashens’ (AK47s). The captives’ hands were tied behind their backs. One was singled out for special attention. Round his neck the PLO militiamen tied sticks of explosives. People in their cars looked and waited uneasily for the arrival of the special police in red berets whose business it was to deal with violent incidents in the streets, but they did not appear. One witness amongst hundreds, Janet Wakin, the respected American wife of businessman George Wakin reported 'the victim stood still, with strange quietness and dignity’, while the fedayeen prepared literally to blow his head off. They set a fuse, and ran back from the man, who continued to stand where he was, quite still, until the explosion came. Not only was he decapitated, but the rest of his body was blown to pieces. The war rapidly took on a sectarian character.

Districts of Beirut became ‘no go’ areas for all but those whose religion let them in. A person’s religion was enough to condemn him or her to abduction, humiliation, rape, mutilation or murder. It was not long before a brisk trade in false identity papers was underway. A person moving through the city, and before long anywhere in the country, might depend for his or her life on correctly identifying which roadblock lay ahead, getting the right papers ready to show the militiamen (many of them boys in their early teens), and remembering whether to give a Christian or a Muslim name. Often those who made mistakes were killed on the spot.

While death and torture were suffered in the streets, the political battle went on, most heatedly between Pierre Gemayel and Kamal Jumblatt. Jumblatt drew up a list of fourteen demands. They included one that Lebanon be declared an Arab state, another that the Christians give an undertaking not to indulge in any ‘confessional provocation’, another that ‘full respect’ be paid to the ‘Palestinian movement’, and a yet another demand was that two Maronite ministers resign and it was to this demand only, Pierre Gemayel agreed. The result was that the government fell. Therefore, on May 23, Franjieh took the unorthodox and unprecedented step of appointing a military cabinet. Muslim Brigadier Nur ad Din Rifai, retired commander of the Internal Security Force, was named prime minister. Rifai selected the controversial Ghanim as his minister of defence; all other cabinet ministers except one were also military officers.

Franjieh's motives were difficult to discern. Some believed his move was part of a plot to cement Maronite dominance of the government. Others believed he was attempting to force the recalcitrant army to intervene in the fighting. Perhaps Franjieh sincerely thought that a strong inter confessional military government with unquestionable authority over the army could avert widespread conflict, although Lebanon's democracy would be sacrificed. Indeed, Syrian foreign minister Abdal Halim Khaddam reportedly warned Lebanese politicians that the Lebanese Army was capable of uniting its ranks, staging a coup d'état, and imposing a military dictatorship.

Nevertheless, Lebanon's first and last military government was short lived, resigning two days after its inception. Rashid Karame, the man who had forced the Cairo Agreement upon Lebanon became prime minister once again. Even when installed in the government, the army proved unwilling or incapable of exerting authority in Lebanon. The resignation of the military government demonstrated the power vacuum in Lebanese politics and served as the catalyst to conflict. From June to September a six-man cabinet ‘ruled’ by emergency powers. Officially a ceasefire prevailed, but there were constant outbreaks of fighting. Hundreds of acts of terrorism were perpetrated against the Christians, kidnappings, murders and mutilations. The Kataeb interpreted the terrorism as part of the plan to keep the hate, the desire for revenge, the sectarian hostilities alive and active. They believed that criminals were hired to do this work: by whom they could only conjecture, but their suspicions fell on Iraq and Libya.

By September fighting resumed and soon clashes erupted in the Christian city of Zahle in the Beqaa and in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city. In both places, clashes were instigated by skirmishes between armed individuals. By then, tension was so high that even the slightest verbal exchange between two armed individuals was sufficient to provoke violence which would quickly spread to various parts of the country. In Zahle, local armed men clashed with heavily armed Palestinian guerrillas who for some bizarre reason were trying to enter Zahle. The fighting continued for several days and resulted in the deaths of twenty-eight people and the injury of many others. The more serious confrontation occurred in Tripoli and spread to surrounding localities.

Tripoli-Zgharta Battles

Heavy fighting was soon to erupt between Tripoli and Zgharta. Clashes here were instigated by a car accident involving a driver from Tripoli and another from the neighbouring Maronite town of Zgharta. This led to the shooting of the Muslim driver from Tripoli. Soon afterwards armed men in Tripoli began kidnapping Christians from Zgharta. In retaliation, armed men from Suleiman Frangieh's Zgharta based militia Marada, commanded by his son Tony, set up roadblocks on the outskirts of Tripoli and did their share of kidnapping. This wave of violence was temporarily contained following the release of the detainees. The next day clashes erupted in Tripoli as Palestinians, seeking an escallation, attacked Lebanese army positions, a Lebanese army barracks in the city was even the target of direct shelling from Palestinian positions. Eighteen soldiers were injured. Three Greek Orthodox priests were also kidnapped that day in Tripoli, but were later released. Shelling and rumours of kidnapping and counter-kidnapping kept many armed individuals alert. Disturbances broke out in the nearby Kura region, where skirmishes took place between Zgharta armed men of Marada and supporters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the Lebanese Communist Party. As local leaders succeeded in containing the Kura feud, another violent incident occurred in Darayya, near Tripoli. A bus carrying kidnapped people back to Tripoli, as part of the exchange agreement made between Zgharta and Tripoli leaders, was fired upon by an armed man from the Frangiyeh family, killing twelve and injuring seven others. The assailant had just learned of the killing of his brother in Tripoli.

Heavy fighting spread to the outskirts of Tripoli as Palestinains tlaunched an assualt against Zgharta. Permanent demarcation lines separating the Palestinians attacking from Tripoli and the Marada defending Zgharta were now in place. Attacks and counterter-attacks in which Palestinians took part alongside leftists Tripoli militiamen continued for several days, as did the sectarian killings. Palestinian guerillas belonging to the factions of George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh entered the village of Beit Mellat (Millat) in north Lebanon and started killing civilians and the moved on to Deir Ayache on 3rd September 1975. Three old monks aged 60, 78, and 93, the only occupants of the monastery of Deir Ayache were ritually murdered, the Christian occupants of the village managed to flee but their village was destroyed. Two days later, the small Maronite village in ‘Akkar, Beit Mellat, was tacked again by Palestinian gunmen who went on the rampage, destroying property, killing several people. Further confrontations took place in the region, notably an attack on the Christian town of Qbayyat in ‘Akkar many of whose inhabitants served in the Lebanese army. The town was besieged. The siege of the town provoked a strong protests and a rebellion by officers and soldiers from Qbayyat based in an army barracks in Jounieh who wanted to deploy and halt the fighting.

Emergency cabinet meetings were held and when Christian ministers insisted on the army to be sent into action to restore order the Muslim ministers objected stating that they did not want the army to get involved in action against Lebanese citizens. Finally it was agreed that army would set up a buffer zone between Tripoli and Zgharta. Unhappy with the use of Lebanese army units, Kamal Jumblatt, who had emerged as the leader of the leftist alliance, called for nation wide Muslim protest strikes.

A few days later, on the night of September 14, 1975, army troops clashed with several armed followers of Faruq Muqaddam, the leader of a Tripoli-based Fateh-backed guerrillas. Fourteen guerrillas were killed. The incident occurred while armed men attempted to force the way through an army checkpoint on their way back to Tripoli after they had tacked a beach resort near Tripoli, owned by a man from the Frangieh family The next day several Christian-owned shops and houses in Tripoli belonging individuals from Zgharta were bombed and looted. At this stage, Karame, while still opposed to army intervention, called upon the Syria controlled Palestine Liberation Army to bring order to the city. Karame’s decision was taken at a meeting of cabinet ministers in the Sérail, without informing the president. Also upon Karame’s request three guerrilla battalions were transferred from the south to Tripoli. Far from restoring order, these units joined the assault against Christian Zgharta and as a result hundreds Kataeb troops were rushed from Beirut to help Marada in the defence of Zgharta. Offensives against Zgharta would be launched many times over the following months but Zgharta refused to fall.

Deeply divided, ineffective and weak, the government by now ruled only on paper. Christian leaders saw one last alternative to halt the process of disintegration: a forceful intervention by the army.

As a consession to Karame, Frangieh replaced army commander General Alexander Ghanim with a low-key officer, and having agreed to restructure the army command, Frangieh and other Maronite leaders hoped that Karame and other Sunni leaders would support a forceful army intervention, particularly in Beirut and Tripoli. But this was not forthcoming. But even if some Sunni leaders were willing to support a limited army intervention in Beirut, Jumblatt and the PLO-supported Left were categorically opposed to any kind of army action. Shiite leaders, for their part, were in favour of army intervention. For Musa al-Sadr, the army intervention in Tripoli was 'a natural and proper measure'.

Faced by a strong Sunni-Leftist opposition even to a limited army intervention, Maronite leaders took matters into their own hands and went on the offensive. Pierre Gemayel who for months had been asking the government to deploy the army to restore order, issued an ultimatum on 16th September. If the army did not immediately go into action, the Phalange would have to take matters into their own hands. The next day the Phalange launched an offensive into central Beirut in an attempt to restore order.

The Sacking of Downtown Beirut

Although over 1,000 people were killed in the early fighting, many Lebanese still viewed the nascent war as a transitory phenomenon that would soon abate, like past security crises. Up until now, the war had mainly been a Palestinian and Lebanese Front affair but events took a sudden turn for the worse when well organized leftist Muslim militias sided with the Palestinians and attacked the downtown Kantari (Qantari) district in late October 1975, causing heavy loss of life and massive property damage, many inhabitants of Beirut realized for the first time that the war was a serious affair. The Palestinians and leftists eventually took Kantari and occupied the forty story Rizk (Murr) Tower, the highest building in Beirut.

Now that the leftist National Movement openly joined Fatah; the carnage was massive. Deaths from the fighting averaged about fifty a day. National Movement fighters and youths from the camps looted and destroyed the stores in the heart of Beirut. Dead and mutilated bodies lay everywhere in public places: corpses of sexually violated women and children, and of men with their genitals cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Shop windows were shattered and their contents looted by a multitude of beggars, many of them small ragged boys out of the camps, who would offer the goods for sale on the streets, wildly setting their own prices on items whose value they could not imagine. Garbage piled up in the streets. Piped water and electric power were cut off more often than not. People were afraid to leave their apartments and seek safety elsewhere, knowing they would lose everything to the looters, who would even tear window frames and plumbing fixtures out of the walls.

To add to the terror and destruction, the Syrian PLO group, Sa’iqa, began its own campaign of bomb explosions in the commercial centre of the city. As this was a mixed area, its targets were indiscriminate. PLO offices and men were hit. It was the covert beginning of a direct Syrian assault on the weakening state. Before the end of 1975, President Assad had started to deploy the Yarmouk and Hittin brigades of the PLA as well as Egyptian based 'Ayn Jalout Bridage' in the Beqaa in support of the Palestinians and the LNM. Syria's role in the fighting was tipping the military balance even more in favour of the PLO. Syrian troops had already been active in fighting alongside PLO units in the north of Lebanon.

The next major event was on December 6, 1975, "Black Saturday". Four Christians were shot dead and one wounded in a car outside the Lebanese Electricity Company headquarters in east Beirut by a Muslim militia raiding party. These murders took place on the eve of Pierre Gemayel's visit to Damascus. For Phalangists fighters this was the least straw, they wanted retaliation for this and numerous other recent acts of terror against the civilians of East Beirut. Phalangists set up a roadblock on the ring road and killed the first 40 Muslims they caught. When news of this action reached west Beirut, Muslim militias along with their Palestinian allies set up road blocks and began killing Christians. In the hours that followed around 350 civilians from each side had been murdered. This was the first major massacre of civilians in the war and started a vicious cycle of kidnapping, revenge and retaliation. From this point on, after combatants of each faction conquered territory from their rivals, they routinely killed civilians.

The fighting in the mainly Muslim western side of the city intensified as the PLO and the LNM battled against the Kataeb. The commander-in-chief of the Kataeb, Pierre Gemayel’s son Bachir, moved his men into the tourists’ hotel quarter of the city near the sea front, to try to defend the harbour and the business centre against the LNM and the PLO. Therefore in late 1975 and early 1976, fierce fighting engulfed Beirut's high rise hotel district, this fighting was a logical consequence of the leftist sacking of the Kantari district.

At the same time fighting was going on between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Front in Dbayeh. The expanded scope and intensity of the combat increased casualties greatly, with over 1,000 killed in the first weeks of the new year, 1976. On January 14 the Dbayeh Palestinian camp falls to the Phalange and the Ahrar after a five day siege.

Cowboy Anarchy in West Beirut

The number of dead and maimed mounted in Beirut. Snipers on roofs or at high windows picked off victims in the streets, in their homes, in shops, and in Offices. A common site was an open truck bearing a Soviet heavy machine-gun known as a ‘Douchka’, the gunman holding its grips with both hands to keep his balance as the vehicle hurtled through the streets and careened round corners. (It reminded onlookers of bronco- riding, or water-skiing, and the gunmen came to be known as ‘water- skiers’.) Everywhere in the city ‘armed elements’ sauntered in public places wearing masks, balaclavas, or squares of cloth covering all their features, or carnival papier-mâché faces, comic or grotesque, under cowboy stetsons, helmets, or any kind of headgear. Feather boas were seen draped round necks and shoulders under masked faces, and bits and pieces of all kinds of uniforms were worn:jungle camouflage fatigues, jeans and T-shirts. Guns were carried as an indispensable necessity, even in restaur-ants and on the beaches, by women as well as men. The masking was done often out of a genuine need for fighters to conceal their identity and so avert possible vengeance. But a certain illicit excitement in the freedom to kill with impunity filled the streets, and the ‘adventure’ attracted adventurers from far beyond the shores of Lebanon.

Many a 'franc tireur' toted his gun in the ranks of the fedayeen and the Marxists. Also bourgeois idealists, youths from Europe, most of them die-hards of the New Left’s militant ‘peace-movements’ of the late 1960s and now playing at revolution, and some of them neo-Nazis, were drawn here from the safe societies of the West to revel in the ‘real thing’. The parasitic PLO state in Lebanon was a subversives’ honeypot. Here they had licence to shoot and kill in an alien world, with no consequence to themselves. Would-be heroes of ‘the Revolution’, playboys and playgirls of terrorism from West Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, came to dress up, strut, blow up, and gun down. It was a masquerade with a cruelty all too real. The adventure required the suffering and dying of multitudes of helpless people. It was a carnival of death.

To add to the theatricality of the scene, convoys of cars with guns protruding from the windows, armoured vehicles and motorcycles would scream through the streets accompanying Arafat or Abu Iyad on their visits to politicians, foreign envoys, allied commanders of the revolution-ary forces. Then, in some office or apartment block or public building, dozens of men armed with ‘klashens’ would push down the corridors ahead of the great man: Arafat wearing his kafliyah pinned back from his face, dark glasses, a three-day growth of beard; or Abu Iyad, another short stout man dwarfed by huge bodyguards.

The Constitutional Document

For some weeks efforts for a negotiated settlement had been underway. The idea for a negotiated political settlement to end conflict through Syrian mediation had been on the mind of the Syrian leadership since November 1975. Damascus was using a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach with the Maronite leadership. Syrian support for Palestinian, Leftist and Muslim forces was intended to keep the Maronite leadership under pressure to reach a settlement that favoured Syrian interests. To pursue that course of action, Damascus called upon an associate of Frangiyeh, Lucien Dahdah, then the Chairman of the Board of the Intra Company. Dahdah, who had family ties with Frangiyeh and old acquaintances in Syria, was contacted in Paris, where he was staying. With Frangiyeh’s approval, Dahdah met with Syrian officials. Talks went on for about four weeks and resulted in a draft, which was the basis for the Constitutional Document. Dahdah held meetings with Syrian officials, including seven with Assad. When negotiations started relations between Assad and Frangieh had been strained for several months, following Syrian army intervention in the war. Frangiyeh had presented evidence to Damascus confirming Syrian troops’ involvement in the war, particularly in the north.

The Constitutional Document was a convenient balancing act. It stipulated a more balanced confessional representation in government office and provided a formula to contain the internal dimension of conflict. It addressed grievances though without undermining the confessional foundations of a political system. One such grievance was Lebanon’s Arabism. The document proclaimed Lebanon’s Arabism but stated that Lebanon is a sovereign, free and independent country.

Of the seventeen points stated in the Constitutional Document, five dealt with Muslim grievances. By and large, they were aimed at curtailing presidential power. They are as follows: (i) Seats in parliament would be distributed on a fifty-fifty etween Muslims and Christians, and proportionately within each sect; (ii) the prime minister would be elected by a 51 per cent majority of the Chamber of then the prime minister should hold parliamentary consultations and the list of ministers in agreement with the president; (iii) All decrees and draft laws should be signed by the president and the prime minister. This did not apply to the decrees appointing the prime minister, accepting his resignation, or dissmissing his government. The prime minister should enjoy all the powers custumarily exercised by him; (iv) The distribution of posts on a confessional basis be abolished, although the principle of confessional equality should be maintained at the level of senior posts; (v) The naturalisation laws should be amended.

By contrast, only one provision addressed Christian demands. It affirmed the distribution of the three presidential posts, which allocated the presidency of the republic to a Maronite, the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies to a Shiite and the premiership to a Sunni.

Kamal Jumblatt and the PLO were heavily opposed to this document as an end to the war did not suit them. Jumblatt saw in this document a re-enactment of the 'no victot, no vanquished' formula of 1958, something which he was not willing to accept. Compromise was not appealing to Jumblatt and the PLO at a time when the military balance was in their favour. Therefore they looked for ways to intensify the fighting.

The Break-up of the Lebanese Army

Syria’s increasing influence in Lebanese politics had now reached the Sunni leadership. To counter this, Arafat sought to promote Sunni and Leftist supporters of his own. One concrete manifestation of his policy was the announcement of the formation in early 1976 of the Beirut-based Sunni militia, al-Murabitun, led by Ibrahim Qoleilat. A former Nasserite activist, Qoleilat was implicated in the assassination of the journalist Kamel Mrouweh in 1966 and was very much a local Beirut thug (qabaday). Trained and armed by Fateh, al-Murabitun, which included Palestinian and Lebanese fighters, received Libyan money.

For Arafat, the formation of al-Murabitun met three objectives: (i) It gave Palestinian military operations in Beirut an internal Lebanese Muslim cover; (ii) It undermined the influence of the Sunni political leadership on the ‘street’, particularly in Beirut; (iii) It underlined Sunni opposition to Syrian policy in Lebanon. Being largely dependent on Fateh, al-Murabitun was a useful instrument of military operations used by Fateh for escalation of warfare in Beirut 1976.

Rather than seeking a direct military confrontation with the Syrian regime, Fateh opted for another move aimed at undermining Syrian influence in Lebanon. On 15th January 1976, the Palestinians entered Kab Elias, a mixed Christian-Muslim village located in Békaa. Ten days later, 16 Christian civilians were killed and 23 others wounded in an unprovoked attack causing a mass exodus of the Christians from the Bekaa towards Zahlé, Beirut and Jounieh. It was at this juncture that the Army Lebanese began to disintegrate completely. Palestinians, mainly of the PLA had for days poured across the border from Syria and attacked in force the Christian villages in the Bekaa, when the Lebanese Army was sent in to stop the fighting, Lieutenant Ahmad Khatib mutinied and with his men he joined the PLA and then surrounded and bombarded Zahlé. The main orchestrator of the rebellion was Fateh leader Abu Jihad. Libya, Iraq and Fateh provided financial support for the Khatib movement.

On January 16, 1976, Minister of Defence Chamoun called in the mostly Christian manned Lebanese Air Force to bomb leftist positions near Damour as the town was under heavy attack. In response, Muslim troops rallied to the side of Lieutenant Ahmad Khatib.'The Movement of Ahmad al-Khatib,' later known as the Arab Army of Lebanon (AAL) or the Lebanese Arab Army (LAA), was announced on 21 January 1976. The rebellion began in the Lebanese army barracks at Hasbayya, and quickly spread to other barracks in various parts of the country, especially in the south and the Beqa. For Syria, the rebellion was directed against its 'stabilising role in Lebanon'.

Two days later the army underwent yet another split. This time it was led by Colonel Antoine Barakat, who declared loyalty to Frangieh. A Maronite from Frangieh’s hometown Zgharta, Barakat controlled a major army barracks near the defence ministry. Another officer, Major Fouad Malik, supported the Barakat-led faction, as did Major Saad Haddad, who took over in Marjeyoun in the south.

The Lebanese Army was ripped into sectarian pieces. Army officers and troops entered into combat alongside the warring factions, while others remained under the nominal command of Army Chief Hanna Said. The latter commanded little authority even before the break-up of the army. Still others went home and did not take part in the fighting. Officers of the LAA commanded units in various parts of the country, particularly in the south and the north (Tripoli and ‘Akkar), where two Sunni officers, Ahmad Butari and Ahmad Mamari, were in command. The LAA was involved in brutal acts of kidnapping and sectarian killing in areas under its control in the north, south and the Beqaa.

The intervention of the Khatib's Lebanese Arab Army on the side of the PLO was a disaster for the Lebanese Front. Ahmad al-Khatib was a cousin of a socialist deputy named Zahir al-Khatib, who was a friend of Kamal Jumblatt. (‘A patriotic young officer with a good sense of politics,’ Jumblatt said of Ahmad Khatib.) As a close ally of the PLO, he moved his units southwards, in pursuit of the Christians who had fled that way to join their co-religionists when the war was raging in Beirut and the north; he intended to hunt them to extinction. His men, most of them professional and well-equipped soldiers, emptied or besieged the Christian towns and villages. It cannot be told how many people they killed, only it is certain they amounted to thousands. And as thousands more fled the country, Lieutenant al-Khatib came near to satisfying his highly publicized ambition of wiping out the entire Christian population in that part of Lebanon.

In desperation, as more officers and troops joined the Khatib movement, on 11 March another army officer, the Beirut garrison Brigadier ‘Aziz al-Ahdab, staged a ‘television coup’ and demanded the resignation of President Frangiyeh and announced that the Lebanese Army was stepping in to take over the government and restore order. A Sunni from Tripoli, Ahdab was the military commander of the Beirut district. Ahdab’s troops numbered fewer than a hundred, and hardly controlled their own command headquarters in Beirut. Whether or not Ahdab had the tacit support of the army command to force the cabinet to resign and help reunite the army, he definitely went too far by demanding the resignation of Frangiyeh. Although initially seeking to halt the breakdown, Ahdab’s action had the opposite effect. His ill-conceived move hastened the disintegration of the army and confirmed Syria’s suspicion of Palestinian involvement in this show of force. Indeed, if Abu Jihad was the man behind Khatib, Abu Hassan Salameh, Arafat’s close associate, was behind Ahdab. According to Abu Iyad, Ahdab was supplied with a Fateh escort to the television building where he announced the ‘coup’. Ahdab's move came too late and with too little support, and he was derisively nicknamed "General Television" by militia leaders, who commanded far more men.

The Camps, Damour, The Great Bank Robbery, The Hotel District, and the Green Line

Karantina, a slum district named after the old immigration quarantine area, was the site of the another major episode in the war. Situated so that it controlled Christian access over the Beirut River bridge to the strategic port area, it became a military target. Karantina was populated primarily by poor Kurds and Armenians but was occupied and controlled by a large PLO detachment. On January 18, 1976, Christian forces took Karantina after battle in which the Palestinians held out for three days and fought to the last man in the Sleep Comfort furniture factory. Many Palestinian civilians were killed in the chaos of the assault and many in cold blood be the attackers who were enraged by the events the occurred four months earlier in the north of the country.

Two days later, January 20, 1976, Palestinians and their leftist allies attacked in force the Christian town of Damour which lay across the Sidon - Beirut highway about 20 km south of Beeirut. The relentless pounding the town received resulted in the deaths of many. In the siege that had been established on 9 January the Palestinians cut off food and water supplies and refused to allow the Red Cross to take out the wounded. Infants and children died of dehydration. A plan was devised to evacuate the civilians and fortunately the majority of the population of Damour was evacuated by sea but about 500 civilians defended by some 20 Phalangists did not make it out in time. Damour was captured, the Phalangists were executed, the civilians were lined up against the walls of their houses and shot, their houses were then dynamited. Many of the young women had been raped and babies had been shot at close range at the back of the head. 149 bodies lay in the streets for days afterwards and 200 other civilians were never seen again. In all about 582 civilians had been murdered. The horror did not end there, the old Christian cemetery was next, coffins were dug up, the dead robbed, vaults opened, and bodies and skeletons thrown across the grave yard. Damour was then transformed into a stronghold of Fatah and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). The massacre and destruction of Damour is best described by Becker in the book "The PLO".

The massacre induced Muslims residing in Christian-dominated areas to flee to Muslim held areas, and vice versa. Whereas most Lebanese towns and neighbourhoods previously had been integrated, for the first time large-scale population transfers began to divide the country into segregated zones, the first step toward de facto partition.

At some point during March or April the Palestinians realized that they had gained effective control of Bank Street and so the stage was set for the biggest bank robbery in modern history. General looting of the banks was followed by disastrous attempts to dynamite the vaults causing serious injuries to the Palestinian thieves, so they decided to bring in professional safecrackers from Europe, possibly supplied by the mafia. Of the eleven banks robbed, the worst hit were those with safe-deposit vaults, the British Bank of the Middle East, Banca di Roma, and Bank Misr-Liban. The Guinness Book of Records claims the BBME alone lost a minimum of $20 million but probably $50 million, that is equivalent to $175 million today. Saiqa, the pro Syrian wing of the PLO were identified with the Banca di Roma thefts and marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was deemed responsible for the theft of the BBME. At one point a fire fight broke out between the two factions as Saiqa tried to steal the DFLP loot.

The fighting that had been raging on in the hotel district was reaching its climax. For months the Phalange had been perched defiantly in the twenty seven storey Holiday Inn hotel repelling attack after attack by Palestinian and leftist forces, giving the 'Battle of the Holiday Inn' legendary status. On 21st March 1976, a major assault by a special Palestinian commando units using armoured vehicles lent by the Khatib's Arab Army and supported by the leftist Muslim militias finally dislodged the Phalange. The leftist militias who had been handed the hotel by the Palestinians for propaganda purposes got so carried away celebrating that the Phalange was able to sneak back in at dawn the next day. The Palestinians therefore had to do the job all over again on the 22nd of March, and over the next few days the Phalange were pushed back to their defensive line at Martyrs Square.

As the weeks went by it was becoming apparent that the Lebanese Front were losing the war as the Palestinian-Muslim-leftist alliance forced them to retreat farther into East Beirut. The Lebanese Front had grossly underestimated the strength of the Palestinian forces in Lebanon and the support the Palestinians would receive from some Arab countries. The Christian militias of the Lebanese Front now began combining their military strength becoming known as the Lebanese Forces, the various component militias however maintained their own identity. The Christians felt it imperative to retain control of Beirut’s port district and constructed an elaborate barricade defence at Allenby Street. As the Christians tried to stave off the Muslim-Leftist-Palestinian assault on the port district, the Lebanese Army finally entered the fray. Christian officers and enlisted men from the Al Fayadiyyah barracks outside Beirut came to the aid of their beleaguered coreligionists, bringing armoured cars and heavy artillery. The left wing Muslim-Palestinian advance was stopped, and the front at Allenby Street evolved into a no man's land, dividing Christian East Beirut from Muslim West Beirut. Vegetation that eventually grew in this abandoned area inspired the name Green Line, and cut the city in two until the end of the war in 1990.

But in East Beirut, right in the Maronite heartland, was the Palestinian ‘camp’ of Tal al-Zaatar. For many months before the outbreak of hostilities, Maronite businessmen driving from their offices in the city to their homes in the mountains had been stopped on the road through the camp by armed Palestinian boys and forced to show their identity papers. And now, from their strongholds in Tal al-Zaatar, the PLO forces were shelling the factories and offices of the eastern Christian suburbs of the city. The Kataeb and their allies marked Tal al-Zaatar for destruction.

The Mountain Offensive

In March 1976, the leftist forces and the Palestinians launched an offensive across Mount Sannine to invade the Christian heartland. The PLO head strategist, Salah Khalaf, announced as Palestinian forces climbed the eastern flank of Mount Sannine to attack Christians in their historic mountain villages, that the road to Palestine lay through 'Uyun Al Siman, Aintoura, and even Jounieh itself'. These Christian areas are to the north of Beirut not towards Israel in the south, the Palestinians had declared war on the very nation that had given them refuge, Lebanon and the Lebanese Christians in particular.

The offensive, coinciding with the assault on the hotel distirct, began on 17 March and led to the capture of several villages in the Upper Metn region. These military operations, particularly the opening of a new front in the Mountain, were alarming developments not only for the Christian forces but also for Syria who started to fear that a Christian defeat and so a Palestinian controlled Lebanon would lead to an Israeli invasion.

According to George Hawi, military escalation in the Mountain was initially suggested by Palestinian leaders. In a meeting held in early March in the village of Souq al-Gharb and attended by Arafat, Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad, in addition to Jumblatt, Hawi and Mohsin Ibrahim, Palestinian leaders advocated the opening of a new front in the Mountain. For them, the Mountain front had a dual purpose: to put military pressure on Christian forces especially in the central part of Mount Lebanon, to prevent an assault on the Tal al Zaatar camp, and to mobilise Arab and international support for PLO-Leftist forces.

As some of Ahmad Khatib’s forces surrounded and besieged the town of Zahlé in the Beqaa, other LAA troops along with the National Movement and the PLO advanced on the Maronites in Beirut, and came right to the Metn, the constituency of Pierre Gemayel’s elder son Amin, the Maronite heartland.

By March 25 the artillery of of the LAA led by Major Hussein Awwad, was scoring direct hits against Frangieh's residential quarters in the Presidential Palace and so the President was forced to leave the palace and seek residency for the rest of his term in Keserwan.

As fighting broadened, attempts were made, once again, to reach a political settlement. Views on the course of the war and its objectives between Arafat and Jumblatt began to diverge. While Jumblatt pressed for a 'military solution' Arafat was more cautious. Jumblatt went to Damascus hoping to get weapons from Syria, On his way to Damascus, Jumblatt made a statement to journalists that he hoped to receive them soon in Bekfaya and Jounieh. Ten days earlier Leftist forces had launched their first major offensive in the Mountain. At the meeting, Assad inquired about the statement and told Jumblatt that it would be better to deny it since the purpose of the meeting was to end the fighting. To this Jumblatt replied that fighting could be ended in a few days only if Syria would provide him with the weapons he needed to finish off the Christians.

Assad’s attempt to persuade Jumblatt to accept a political settlement failed. Jumblatt was determined to score a military victory and alter the political system. On no issue of substance were the two men in agreement. The divide between them could not be bridged. Assad, the head of state, had calculations to make and a strategy to follow. Jumblatt, seeking to rule a state, had a completely different agenda and, by extension, was not careful in weighing the outcome of his deed. Assad’s assessment of that stormy meeting was revealed in a highly publicised speech delivered on 20 July 1976. For Assad, Jumblatt’s socialist and progressive ‘masks’ had fallen; Jumblatt was not interested in political reforms but was rather settling a 140-year old sectarian vendetta. It had become obvious that Jumblatt was going to settle for nothing less than the total and unconditional defeat of the Christians.

As Jumblatt returned to Lebanon, an unsuccessful offensive by PLO-Leftist forces took place against the Christian village of Kahhaleh overlooking Beirut and the presidential palace in Baabda. The PLO advance against the palace had been halted but in other parts of the mountain the battles raged on.

Syrian Intervention

The government of Syria which had been backing the leftists and the Palestinians, although in theory a socialist regime, feared that a leftist victory and the installation of a radical government in Lebanon would undermine Syrian security and provide Israel an excuse to intervene in the area. Repeated diplomatic efforts between the Syrians and the leftist forces failed to quell the war, Syria's threat to ban all further arms shipments to the leftist militias and even the direct intervention of the pro Syrian Saiqa against the LAA in the Matn region did not stop the leftists advance and so on April 12, 1976 a small number of Syrian troops entered Lebanon and gained control over the strategic Dahr al-Baydar pass on the Beirut-Damascus highway. PLO forces in the Beqaa, controlled by Abu Jihad, mounted little resistance. This intervention against the Palestinians and their leftist allies was to prevent the Israelis, who had been massing troops on the border, from doing so themselves. The fighting in the mountain however did not stop and so in June 1976 Syria invaded Lebanon.

Although the Syrians had moved a small force into Lebanon in April 1976 mainly around the border crossing of Masnaa and at Dahr al-Baydar, this time on 1st June 1976 they entered Lebanon with two full divisions and advanced into the Beqaa valley relieving the pressure on the Lebanese towns and villages that had been besieged by the leftists forces. It had been reported that the Syrians had been asked to intervene by the Christian residents of Koubayat and Andakil as they were under LAA attack, other reports claim that Franjieh had requested the intervention, while other reports claimed it was under agreement with the United States and Israel. Reaction to the Syrian invasion was mixed. Camille Chamoun and Pierre Gemayel did not object to the Syrian move and it was rumoured that the Lebanese Front militias were down to their last 72 hours of ammunition and were on the verge of total defeat. Kamal Jumblatt and Raymond Edde accused the Syrians of trying to annex Lebanon. Dany Chamoun and especially Bashir Gemayel opposed the Syrian intervention on the grounds that it would prevent settlement from being reached between the warring factions. Bashir Gemayel was so concerned that he actually met Kamal Jumblatt in Beirut during the advance on June 1st to discuss the issue.

The Lebanese Front decided to adopt a "wait and see" attitude to the Syrian advance into Lebanon as they felt that they had no other choice. Taking on the Syrians in a military confrontation would have been a disaster for the Lebanese Front and so they decided to let the Syrians enter without resistance. Etienne Sakr rejected this decision and so the Guardians of the Cedars blocked the Baabdat border crossing and delayed the entry of the Syrian forces for four days. To avoid armed conflict with the Lebanese Front who exerted enormous pressure on him to order his fighters to retreat, he moved his fighters to the mountains of Aqoura from where he conducted miltary operations against the Syrian forces.

In the following months, the Syrian presence grew to 27,000 troops. By November the Syrians had occupied most Muslim held areas of Lebanon, including West Beirut and Tripoli. Most leftist forces capitulated without firing a shot, overwhelmed by the Syrian show of force. In Sidon, however, Palestinian and leftist forces fought off the Syrians for nearly six months before relinquishing their stronghold.

On the surface, the LAA rebellion seemed spontaneous and reflected Muslim discontent within the army. In reality, however, the rebellion was orchestrated by Fateh and had well-defined objectives. For Fateh leaders, the Lebanese Army had always constituted a military threat to the PLO, not Lebanese militia forces. In early 1976, the situation seemed ripe for a large scale military action within the army. On that objective Palestinian leaders, notably Arafat, Abu Iyad, Abu Jihad, Abu Hassan Salameh, were in agreement. Fateh leaders Abu Jihad and Abu Hassan Salameh were in control of the LAA, and were assisted by military commanders. As the war intensified members of the LAA began to realize that they had been played and used by the PLO and so the LAA shrank from approximately 3,000-4,000 troops in March 1976 to a few hundred by the end of the year by the end of the year and the LAA was completely marginalised, as was the role of Ahmad al-Khatib (Syrian authorities detained Khatib on 18 January 1977).

Tal al-Zaatar

With the joint Muslim-Palestinian advance halted in Beirut and in the mountain, the Lebanese Front could focus more attention on Palestinian camps in the Christian areas. June 29, 1976 saw the camp at Jisr el Basha fall and then efforts were directed against Tal al-Zaatar, one of the largest Palestinian camps in the country and situated on the Christian side of the Green Line. The battle for Tal al-Zaatar was the final showdown between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Front in Beirut. Tal al-Zaatar contained about 2,000 Palestinian guerrillas intermixed with a civilian population of roughly 15,000 facing them were some 4,000 Lebanese Front militiamen. The Lebanese Front were supported and advised in the siege by the Lebanese and Syrian armies; Israeli advisers were also present.

Because Tal al-Zaatar was honeycombed with bunkers and tunnels, the PLO was able to defend the camp from persistent Christian attacks for about six months, despite a nearly constant barrage of artillery fire that took a large toll. Despite numerous calls for the Palestinians to surrender, Arafat felt that a large military defeat would result in a political victory and so he called upon those inside the camp to go on fighting regardless of being hopelessly surrounded. Arafat appealed to them to turn Tal al-Zaatar into 'a Stalingrad'. On August 12 Christian forces finally overran the camp. About 1,600 people died in fighting during the entire siege, and 4,000 were wounded. The surviving civilians were deported to Palestinian held areas and the PLO then settled them in Damour.

Despite the loss of Tal al-Zaatar, the PLO still had however a massive military machine in Lebanon.

The Riyadh Conference and the Arab Deterrent Force

In October 1976 a League of Arab States (Arab League) summit conference was convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to resolve the Lebanese crisis. The conference did not address the underlying political and demographic problems, only the security situation. The resulting multilateral agreement mandated a cease-fire and, at the Lebanese government's behest, authorized the creation of the Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) to impose and supervise the cease-fire. In theory the ADF, funded by the Arab League, was to be a pan-Arab peacekeeping force under the supreme command of the Lebanese president. In reality, only about 5,000 Arab troops from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Libya, and Sudan augmented the existing Syrian forces. Moreover, Syria would not relinquish actual command over its soldiers. Therefore, the agreement in effect legitimized and subsidized the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. In the summer of 1977 Syria, the PLO, and the government of Lebanon signed the Shtawrah Accord, which detailed the planned disposition of the ADF in Lebanon and called for a reconstituted Lebanese Army to take over PLO positions in southern Lebanon.

The Red Line Arrangement

Meanwhile, Israel grew concerned over the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, particularly as the Syrian Army pursued retreating Palestinians and Muslim leftists into southern Lebanon. Israel believed that the Syrian forces, massed in southern Lebanon, might attack Israel across the unfortified Lebanese border and thus avoid the need to penetrate the heavily defended Golan Heights. Therefore, Israel enunciated its "Red Line" policy, threatening to attack Syria if it crossed a line identified geographically with the Litani River. Thus, Syrian forces were generally precluded from moving south of the Litani. The Red Line was a geographic line, but it was also more subjective than a line on a map. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin identified the Red Line as a guideline for gauging Syria's overall military behavior in Lebanon, and he described several criteria Israel would use: the objectives of Syrian forces and against whom they were operating, the geographical area and its proximity to Israel's borders, the strength and composition of Syrian forces, and the duration of their stay in a given area.

Operation Litani

By time the Lebanese war had erupted the PLO had already created a quasi-governmental autonomy in Lebanon, a state-within-a-state which became known as Fatahland where the PLO ruled supreme and took the law into their own hands. In Fatahland, on the foothills of Mount Hermon, up to 15,000 guerrillas were trained to carry out attacks on Israel. Because it was skeptical about the willingness and capability of the Lebanese Army to implement the Shtawrah Accord by displacing the PLO in southern Lebanon and securing the border area, in 1977 Israel started to equip and fund a renegade Christian remnant of the Lebanese Army led by Major Saad Haddad. Haddad's force, which became known as The Free Lebanon Army, and later as the South Lebanon Army (SLA), grew to a strength of about 3,000 men and was allied closely with Israel. Haddad eventually proclaimed the enclave he controlled "Free Lebanon." The insulation provided by this buffer area permitted Israel to open up its border with Lebanon. Under this so-called "Good Fence" policy, Israel provided aid and conducted trade with Lebanese living near the border.

On March 11, 1978, PLO terrorists made a sea landing in Haifa, Israel, commandeered a bus, and then drove toward Tel Aviv, firing from the windows. By the end of the day, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had killed the nine terrorists, who had murdered thirty-seven Israeli civilians. In retaliation, four days later Israel launched Operation Litani, invading Lebanon with a force of 25,000 men. The purpose of the operation was to push PLO positions away from the border and bolster the power of the SLA. The IDF first seized a security belt about ten kilometers deep, but then pushed north and captured all of Lebanon south of the Litani River, inflicting thousands of casualties.

The operation had failed to break the power of the PLO in the south and soon the PLO was able to rearm and fortify its bases in southern Lebanon to the point where Fatahland could boast the equivalent of five infantry brigades.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was established by the United Nations (UN) Security Council with Resolution 425 on March 19, 1978, "for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security, and assisting the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area." Subsequent Resolution 426 defined UNIFIL's rules of engagement and instructed it to "use its best efforts to prevent the recurrence of fighting" and to ensure that its area of operation would not be used for hostile activities of any kind. UNIFIL consisted of approximately 7,000 men from 14 UN member states and between 30 and 90 military observers from the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, headquartered in the town of An Naqourah.

UNIFIL, however, encountered difficulty in performing its mission. Resolution 425 made "full cooperation of all parties concerned" a prerequisite for UNIFIL's deployment. Although Israel had agreed formally to take the necessary steps for compliance with the resolution, it did not believe that UNIFIL could stop PLO incursions across the border. Therefore, when Israel started to withdraw in late March, it refused to relinquish all of the territory it had conquered in southern Lebanon to UNIFIL. Instead, Israel turned over an enclave to its proxy force, the SLA, increasing the area under Major Haddad's control. This area included not only the ten-kilometer-deep security belt adjacent to the Israeli border but also a vertical north-south corridor running from the border to the Litani River and splitting the UNIFIL area into two noncontiguous zones.

Other parties frustrated the UNIFIL peacekeeping efforts. Although the PLO also had promised to cooperate, it argued that the 1969 Cairo Agreement entitled it to operate in southern Lebanon, and it attempted to reoccupy areas after Israel withdrew. Furthermore, on the grounds that the IDF had not occupied Tyre, the PLO refused to allow UNIFIL to police the city, and Palestinian patrols attempted repeatedly to pass through UNIFIL lines. For its part, the SLA did not even make a pretense of cooperating with UNIFIL. Instead, it attacked UNIFIL personnel and encroached on UNIFIL's perimeter. Nevertheless, UNIFIL restored order to the areas under its control and served as an effective buffer force insulating Israel from the Palestinians. It set up roadblocks, checkpoints, and observation posts, interdicting approximately ten guerrilla patrols per month heading toward Israel. When UNIFIL apprehended Palestinian guerrillas, it confiscated their weapons but usually returned them later to PLO leaders. UNIFIL paid a price for performing its mission, however; between 1978 and 1982, thirty-six UNIFIL members were killed in action.

In late 1987 the future of UNIFIL was in doubt. Ironically, Israel, which had long considered it a hindrance to its operations, changed its policy and in 1986 praised the positive role UNIFIL played in stabilizing the region.