Lebanon is a small country. It covers just 10,000 square kilometres, a little less than the province of Valencia, where fewer than six million people live. Small and fragile. Because of its religious diversity, which includes between 15 and 20 different communities – mostly Muslim and Christian – but, above all, because of its geography. The colonial division of what was the Ottoman Empire left Lebanon in the hands of France, the metropolis that spurred the germ of division between these communities by favouring the Christians. Its proximity to Israel, created in 1948, sealed its fate when Lebanon welcomed the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1970. This presence not only ended up breaking the fragile balance of the Lebanese religious mosaic, but also definitively turned the country into a military target of Israel. The Israeli army has carried out three major invasions of the country: in 1978, 1982 and 2006. These are the keys to a confrontation that now threatens to degenerate into a new Israeli occupation of Lebanon, where at least 558 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday.
How did the confrontation between Israel and Lebanon begin?
In November 1943, Lebanon gained independence from the French Mandate, the result of the colonial division of the Middle East agreed between Paris and London in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreements of 1916. However, this independence was not fully achieved until 1946, when the last French soldiers left the country. Just two years later, the new state faced the creation of Israel along its southern border, which led to the flight or expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians, the Nakba (catastrophe).
More than 100,000 people were crammed into refugee camps in Lebanon. Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan declared war on Israel, but their involvement in this first Arab-Israeli conflict was not only limited, but by then Israel’s military superiority was already undeniable. Lebanon had only about 3,500 professional soldiers, of whom only a thousand participated in the conflict. Israel’s victory in this first war with its Arab neighbours in 1949 confirmed the loss of 78% of historic Palestine for its indigenous population. It also marked the beginning of the turbulent history of independent Lebanon.
The presence of the PLO
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The three main religious groups in Lebanon are Shia Muslims (32%), Sunnis (31%) and Christians, mainly Maronites, who make up another third of the population. They are also home to the Druze (6%) and other smaller communities. Lebanon has adopted a confessional power-sharing system since its foundation, with the post of president reserved for a Maronite Christian, the post of prime minister for a Sunni Muslim and the post of speaker of parliament for a Shia. This system was designed when Christians were in the majority and the Sunnis were in the majority among Muslims, a proportion that has now been reversed by the high birth rate of Shias.
From 1947, when more than 100,000 Palestinian refugees, most of them Muslim, settled in Lebanon, many Christians feared their demographic weight. These misgivings crystallized when the PLO leadership settled in Beirut between 1970 and 1971, after being expelled from Jordan. From then on, Palestinian militiamen clashed with Maronite Christian forces, especially the Lebanese Phalanxes, a group inspired by the Spanish Phalanx. The Lebanese civil war, between these Phalanxes, integrated with other Christians in the Lebanese Front, and the Lebanese National Movement (Muslims, Palestinians and pan-Arabists, among other factions) broke out in 1975. In this conflict, which lasted until 1990, Israel provided arms aid and advice to the Christians.
Operation Litani
Israel has intervened in Lebanon before, with occasional military operations to respond to terrorist attacks by different Palestinian factions on its territory or against its citizens – such as the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics; with bombings against PLO bases or the one that destroyed the Nabatieh refugee camp in 1974. In 1978, Palestinian guerrillas hijacked a bus north of Tel Aviv and killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children. That attack triggered Operation Litani, in which Israeli troops invaded Lebanon to create a security zone in the south of the country. This Israeli military occupation worsened the civil war in the country, although Israel withdrew from Lebanon that same year, after the Security Council demanded it to do so in Resolution 425. It left behind its Christian allies, who continued to fight against the PLO with its support.
The invasion of 1982
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again to expel the PLO after its ambassador in London was assassinated. Its troops occupied half the country and, with its right-wing Christian allies, besieged Beirut neighbourhoods such as Dahiya. Israeli F-16s bombed the PLO headquarters and Palestinian-majority areas and looted the PLO’s information centre, which held maps, photographs and title deeds of Palestinian lands before 1948. In September of that year, the Lebanese Phalanges, with the support or at least the permissiveness of Israeli troops, massacred between 1,200 and 3,000 people in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. The Israeli invasion caused at least 17,000 deaths and forced a new exodus of the PLO to Tunisia. Another consequence was the birth, with the support of Iran, of Hezbollah, a Shiite movement that includes the fight against the Israeli occupation as one of its objectives.
The war of 2006
Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, but the Israeli occupation lasted until 2000, when Israeli troops withdrew from the south of the Arab state. That decision, attributed by many Lebanese to Hezbollah’s attacks and guerrilla actions, increased its political credibility. In 2006, Israeli troops returned to Lebanese territory, after militants from the party-militia killed three soldiers and captured two others on Israeli soil. The response came in the form of bombings, which devastated villages and neighborhoods in Beirut, artillery fire, a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and an air and naval blockade. Some 1,300 Lebanese and 165 Israelis were killed, but Hezbollah was not annihilated. Israeli troops again withdrew from Lebanon, which was interpreted by the organization’s rank and file as a new victory. Hezbollah has since violated UN resolution 1701, which ended the conflict and obliged it to withdraw its men and rocket launchers from the south of the Litani River. The UN mission of blue helmets for Lebanon, UNIFIL, is deployed in that area, in which Spain has a contingent of some 650 soldiers.
Gaza and the risk of escalation
Becoming the key player in the confrontation with Israel in Lebanon, Hezbollah has been engaged in recurring clashes with Israel since 2006, primarily through rocket fire. Israel has responded by assassinating militia leaders and with recurrent air strikes against Lebanon. On October 7, 2023, the start of the Gaza war that followed the attacks by Hamas — like Hezbollah, a member of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance — against Israel, with 1,200 dead, sparked the opening of a new front on Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah then began a low-profile war in solidarity with Gaza with the constant launching of projectiles. The explosion of 5,000 search and rescue vehicles walkie-talkies last week and the Israeli bombings on Monday now threaten to trigger the extension of the war to Lebanon.
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