The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) occupied the southern half of Lebanon as far as the capital city Beirut, together with allied Maronite Christian paramilitaries involved in the Lebanese Civil War.

From this point onwards, Israel supported the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the Lebanese Christian paramilitary, against Hezbollah and other Muslim militants.

[7] While the IDF oversaw the region's general security, the SLA managed most of the occupied territory's affairs, including the operation of the Khiam detention centre.

In 1968, Palestinian militants led by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had large-scale control over Southern Lebanon, from where they initiated an insurgency against Israel and Lebanese Christians.

During the evacuation in the first Lebanon war, the command of the SLA was delivered into the hands of Antoine Lahad, who demanded and received Israeli permission to hold the Jezzine zone north of the strip.

On 27 July 1989 the Hizbullah leader in South Lebanon, Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and two of his aides, were abducted from his home in Jibchit, by IDF commandos.

In July 1993 the IDF launched Operation Accountability which caused widespread destruction throughout Southern Lebanon but failed to end Hezbollah’s activities.

On 11 April 1996 the Israeli army, navy and air force launched a seventeen day bombardment of southern Lebanon, Operation Grapes of Wrath, in which 154 Lebanese civilians were killed.

At the time, Israeli soldiers serving in Southern Lebanon received no ribbon for wartime military service, because Israel considered the maintaining of the security belt as a low-intensity conflict rather than a war.

In April 2000, when it was clear the Israeli withdrawal was about to happen within weeks or months, some SLA officials began moving their families to northern Israel.

[14] The South Lebanon Army shortly collapsed, with most officers and administration officials fleeing to Israel with their families, as Hezbollah amounted pressure on the remaining units.

[17] Other groups who fought against Israel and the SLA were the PFLP–GC, a Syria-based Marxist–Leninist and Palestinian nationalist organization, and the Popular Guard of the Lebanese Communist Party.

The launching of the Good Fence by Israel in 1976 coincided with the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 and Israeli support for Christian militias against the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israel states that, before 2000, approximately one-third of the patients in the ophthalmology department of the Western Galilee Hospital were Lebanese citizens who crossed the border through the Good Fence and received treatment free of charge.