The Biblical prophet Jonah was said to have landed on its shores when he was spat out of the giant fish described in the Hebrew Bible, and a temple was built which stands until today.

Being a coastal town made it vulnerable to the countless numbers of Palestine Liberation Organization raids on the area, as well as Israeli army invasions during the 1980s, [4], the worst being on January 20, 1976.

In March 1989, General Michel Aoun established a blockade of the port, which resulted in artillery exchanges between his forces and a combination of PSP, Lebanese Resistance Regiments, and the Syrian Army in Beirut and the Chouf.

The town houses some of Lebanon's finest archaeological ruins, some of them buried under modern buildings, others waiting to be dug up by excavators, and others having already been removed and placed in museums.

Jieh has recently been the scene of accidental excavations of a Byzantine-era Christian church and surrounding tombs which had been buried underground for centuries.

Nothing is being done to protect them at the moment due to political hearings on the matters of the people versus the government - landlords' rights to preserve historical artifacts found on said property with viable direct ancestry value and or documentation.

The Shiite Muslims of this area mainly occupy the high rise section of Nabi Younes (Prophet Jonah) located in the central western and southern parts of the town on the coast.

Many Christian families who fled the town of Jieh have sent money back to rebuild Our Lady of the Star, which is now completed and regularly hosts weddings and other religious events.

More now than ever since Hezbollah stepped into the middle of the dispute and erected a Shia mosque without finding a common ground between both Muslim parties and the consent on placement of the facility with the Christian denominations in the area to confirm that the voluminous call to prayers would not be a hindrance upon their religious practices.

Close to Beirut and still clean to swim in, Jieh is a go-to destination for beach lovers who like the sand, the sun, and some waves away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The mission of this project was to provide education to students of different faiths from Jieh and neighboring villages in the Chouf district south of Beirut.

Today both the convent and the school are fully restored and became a center of culture and education for students from the southern suburbs of Beirut to Sidon.

The power station at Jieh was closed for a period after the Israeli invasion in 1982, and so technicians who came to repair the older Toshiba turbines were deterred away from the country due to kidnappings of foreigners and the raging of the civil war.

Recent deals with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have been sought to receive discounted fuel to ensure good supply to the power plants.

[11] The July 2006 war between the Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces resulted in the fuel stores at the power plant being bombed, leading to a catastrophic environmental disaster with crude oil spilling into the sea.

On Friday July 14 at around 3am, the Jieh power plant was struck by missiles from navy destroyers off the Lebanese coast aimed at one of its six fuel tanks.

Ongoing black smoke continued to rise from the plant for weeks after the attack as the nearby tankers exploded one after the other from the heat while the remaining tens of thousands of litres of oil spilled endlessly into the Mediterranean sea.

This canal routinely dumps Barja's human faeces and other liquid waste into Jieh's coastal waters and directly affects tourism and the environment in this town.

[12] This has met some hard opposition by some government ministers and angry locals who don't want their town being turned into a garbage dump, and so at the moment the solution to the problem is not quite clear.