Risultati di ricerca
The Hundred Days' War was a sub-conflict within the Lebanese Civil War, which occurred in the Lebanese capital Beirut between February and April 1978. The only political person who remained in East Beirut Achrafiyeh all the 100 days was the president Camille Chamoun, and refused to get out of the area.
- Lebanon
- Overview
- Background
- Progression of the war
- Resolution
Lebanese Civil War, civil conflict (1975–90) in Lebanon emanating from the deterioration of the Lebanese state and the coalescence of militias that provided security where the state could not. These militias formed largely along communal lines: the Lebanese Front (LF), led by the Phalangists (or Phalange), represented Maronite Christian clans whose...
The causes of the war were multifaceted and deeply rooted but can be generalized as a growing crisis of insecurity. After he played a key role as commander of the army in resolving the crisis of a 1958 rebellion, the newly elected president Fuad Chehab made a valiant attempt to address the disproportionate development of the country and to centralize the state’s security apparatus. By the late 1960s, however, the development program he initiated proved politically unsatisfactory and had become a destabilizing force. The strengthened security apparatus, meanwhile, gained a reputation for suppression and corruption. The situation grew more precarious as the government negotiated the presence and operation of PLO guerrillas inside Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, which had attracted Israeli raids on Lebanon, most notably on the airport in Beirut in 1968. As the state proved increasingly unable to maintain a monopoly of force, patronage networks, both existing and new, began arming and organizing their own security.
Britannica Quiz
A History of War
On August 17, 1970, Suleiman Franjieh, leader of a powerful Maronite clan from northern Lebanon who sought to undo the reform program initiated by Chehab, was elected president by one vote after three rounds of balloting. His presidency, polarizing and corrupt, alienated Muslims and Christians alike, and his government proved unable to maintain the state’s dominance over the growing and diffuse militias of the PLO. The Phalangist militia of the rival Maronite Gemayel clan began taking matters into its own hands by confronting the Palestinian militias directly.
The beginning of the civil war is typically dated to April 13, 1975, when the Phalangists attacked a bus taking Palestinians to a refugee camp at Tall al-Zaʿtar, Lebanon. The attack escalated an intermittent cycle of violence into a more general battle between the Phalangists and the LNM, whose coalition of Lebanese leftists and Muslims supported the PLO’s cause.
In the months that followed, the general destruction of the central market area of Beirut was marked by the emergence of a “green line” between Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut, which persisted until the end of the civil war in 1990, with each side under the control of its respective militias.
As Franjieh’s term came to an end, and with Lebanon’s army splintered, he asked Syria to intervene to prevent the country from disintegrating into multiple states. Despite its earlier support for the PLO in the south, Syria launched a large-scale intervention to redress the emerging imbalance of power in favour of the Christians in the north. Syria’s intervention sparked a more active Israeli involvement as well, in which Israel armed and financed Christian militias in the south of the country, whom Israelis looked upon as their main ally in their fight against the PLO. With Palestinian forces continuing to conduct cross-border raids into Israel, Israel launched a major reprisal attack in March 1978, sending troops into the south of Lebanon as far as the Līṭānī River. The resulting conflict led to the establishment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—a peacekeeping force meant to secure Israeli withdrawal and support the return of Lebanese authority in the south—as well as to the creation of the South Lebanese Army (SLA)—a militia led by Saʿd Haddad and armed and financed by Israel to function as a proxy militia under Lebanese Christian command.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
Learn More
The most significant Israeli intervention during the course of the Lebanese Civil War, however, was the invasion that began on June 6, 1982. Although the stated goal of Israel was only to secure the territory north of its border with Lebanon so as to stop PLO raids, Israeli forces quickly progressed as far as Beirut’s suburbs and laid siege to the capital, particularly to West Beirut. The invasion resulted in the eventual removal of PLO militia from Lebanon under the supervision of a multinational peacekeeping force, the transfer of the PLO headquarters to Tunis, Tunisia, and the temporary withdrawal of Syrian forces back to al-Biqāʿ. Galvanized by the Israeli invasion, a number of Shiʿi groups subsequently emerged, including Hezbollah.
On October 22, 1989, most members of the Lebanese parliament (elected in 1972) met in Ṭāʾif, Saudi Arabia, and accepted a constitutional reform package that restored consociational government in Lebanon in modified form. The power of the traditionally Maronite president was reduced in relation to those of the Sunni prime minister and the Shiʿi speaker of the National Assembly, and the division of parliamentary seats, cabinet posts, and senior administrative positions was adjusted to represent an equal ratio of Christian and Muslim officials. A commitment was made for the gradual elimination of confessionalism, and Lebanese independence was affirmed with a call for an end to foreign occupation in the south. The terms of the agreement also stipulated that Syrian forces were to remain in Lebanon for a period of up to two years, during which time they would assist the new government in establishing security arrangements. For his part, General Aoun was greatly opposed to the Ṭāʾif Accord, fearing it would provide a recipe for continued Syrian involvement in Lebanon.
Parliament subsequently convened on November 5 in Lebanon, where it ratified the Ṭāʾif Accord and elected René Moawad to the presidency. Moawad was assassinated on November 22, and Elias Hrawi was elected two days later; however, General Aoun denounced both presidential elections as invalid. Several days later it was announced that General Aoun had again been dismissed from his position as head of the armed forces, and Gen. Émile Lahoud was named in his place.
In January 1990 intense strife broke out in East Beirut between Aoun and Samir Geagea, who then headed the LF, which proved very costly for the Maronite community and, over several months, resulted in the deaths of numerous (mostly Christian) Lebanese. The final vestiges of the Lebanese Civil War were at last extinguished on October 13, when Syrian troops launched a ground and air attack against Aoun and forced him into exile.
The newly unified government of President Hrawi then embarked upon the delicate and dangerous process of consolidating and extending the power of the Lebanese government. A new cabinet composed of many former militia leaders was appointed, and considerable effort was devoted to the demobilization of most of the wartime militias. The process of rebuilding the Lebanese Army was begun under the auspices of General Lahoud, its new commander in chief. At tremendous cost, the more-than-15-year Lebanese Civil War was ended, and the framework for Lebanon’s Second Republic had been established. Throughout the war’s duration, more than 100,000 people were killed, nearly 1,000,000 displaced, and several billion dollars’ worth of damage to property and infrastructure sustained.
The Christian suburb of Ain al-Remmaneh on the south-east edge of Beirut was where the civil war began in April 1975, after a series of incidents culminated in the shooting-up by Christian...
Lebanese Civil War, (1975–90) Civil conflict resulting from tensions among Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim populations. The conflict was exacerbated by socioeconomic disparities and the presence in Lebanon in the 1970s of fighters from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
12 ago 2019 · The American Embassy in Beirut is attacked by a suicide bomb, killing 63. By then, the United States is actively engaged in Lebanon’s civil war on the side of the Gemayel government.
16 set 2022 · Israeli forces, led by then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon in June 1982, laid siege to Beirut and heavily bombarded the city, where the PLO headquarters were located.
24 dic 2020 · Civil war erupts after Christian gunmen ambush a bus carrying Palestinians in southern Beirut. A "Green Line" frontline divides Beirut into Christian East and Muslim West.
