Hezbollah (1985–1990) Iran (from 1980, mainly IRGC and Army paramilitary units) Lebanese Armed Forces UNIFIL (from 1978)Multinational Force in Lebanon (1982–1984) Arab Deterrent Force (1976–1982)[1] Bachir Gemayel † Amine Gemayel William Hawi † Elie Hobeika Samir Geagea Etienne Saqr Georges Adwan Saad Haddad # Antoine Lahad Menachem Begin Ariel Sharon Rafael Eitan Avigdor Ben-Gal Kamal Jumblatt † Walid Jumblatt Inaam Raad Abdallah Saadeh Assem Qanso George Hawi Elias Atallah Muhsin Ibrahim Ibrahim Kulaylat Ali Eid Yasser Arafat George Habash Hagop Hagopian Monte Melkonian Subhi al-Tufayli Abbas al-Musawi Michel Aoun Second phase: 1977–1982 Third phase: 1982–1984 Fourth phase: 1984–1990 Cantons and puppet states The Lebanese Civil War (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990.

[7][8] The link between politics and religion was reinforced under the French Mandate from 1920 to 1943, and the country's parliamentary structure favoured a leading position for Lebanese Christians, who constituted the majority of the population.

Thus the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), led by George Habash and later to become the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a faction of the PLO, were deployed to Lebanon by Nasser.

By their actions the Phalangists brought down the government of Prime Minister Karami and secured for their leader, Pierre Gemayel, a position in the four-man cabinet that was subsequently formed.

Solidarity with the Palestinians was expressed by the Lebanese Sunni Muslims, with the aim to change the political system from one of consensus amongst different sects, towards one where their power share would increase.

It controlled great swathes of south Lebanon, in which the indigenous Shiite population had to suffer the humiliation of passing through PLO checkpoints and now they had worked their way by force into Beirut.

The PLO did this with the assistance of so-called volunteers from Libya and Algeria shipped in through the ports it controlled, as well as a number of Sunni Lebanese groups who had been trained and armed by PLO/ Fatah and encouraged to declare themselves as separate militias.

That event involved a specific issue: the attempt of former President Camille Chamoun, also the head of the Maronite-oriented National Liberal Party, to monopolize fishing along the coast of Lebanon.

There has been some speculation that Saad's attempts to narrow the differences between the fishermen and the consortium, and his acceptance of a place on the board made him a target of attack by the conspirator, who sought a full conflagration around the small protest.

[citation needed] In the run-up to the war and its early stages, militias tried to be politically orientated non-sectarian forces, but due to the sectarian nature of Lebanese society, they inevitably gained their support from the same community as their leaders came from.

Before 1975, Maronite militias were reportedly supplied by weapons from Bulgaria, and by the onset of the war were receiving support from Iraq, Jordan, Pahlavi Iran, West Germany, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, who temporarily cut off their funding after Black Saturday.

Another notable example was the pan-Syrian Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which promoted the concept of Greater Syria, in contrast to Pan-Arab or Lebanese nationalism.

Closely aligned with the Palestinians, ASALA fought many battles on the side of the Lebanese National Movement and the PLO, most prominently against Israeli forces and their right-wing allies during the 1982 phase of the war.

The PLO mainstream was represented by Arafat's powerful Fatah, which waged guerrilla warfare but did not have a strong core ideology, except the claim to seek the liberation of Palestine.

When the war officially started in 1975, Palestinian armed manpower numbered roughly 21,000, divided into:[35] The small Druze sect, strategically and dangerously seated on the Chouf in central Lebanon, had no natural allies, and so were compelled to put much effort into building alliances.

A few Islamist ones emerged at later stages of the war, such as the Tawhid Movement that took its base in Tripoli, and the Jama'a Islamiyya, which gave a Lebanese expression of the Muslim Brotherhood in terms of political orientations and practice.

On the morning of 13 April 1975, unidentified gunmen in a speeding car fired on a church in the Christian East Beirut suburb of Ain el-Rummaneh, killing four people, including two Maronite Phalangists.

Another effect of the massacres was to bring in Yassir Arafat's well-armed Fatah and thereby the Palestine Liberation Organisation on the side of the LNM, as Palestinian sentiment was by now completely hostile to the Maronite forces.

In the south, however, the climate began to deteriorate as a consequence of the gradual return of PLO combatants, who had been required to vacate central Lebanon under the terms of the Riyadh Accords.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 425 calling for immediate Israeli withdrawal and creating the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), charged with attempting to establish peace.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Likud's Menachem Begin, compared the plight of the Christian minority in southern Lebanon (then about 5% of the population in SLA territory) to that of European Jews during World War II.

[67] Between June and August 1979 the IDF increased its artillery bombardments and air strikes on targets in Southern Lebanon resulting in the killing of around forty people and a mass exodus of civilians.

[73] Across the mountains in Zahleh, the Christian town on the Western edge of the Beqaa Valley, the Phalangist militia had become dominant and were reinforcing outposts with artillery as well as opening a new road to the coast and their heartland.

[89] Amid escalating violence and civilian casualties, Philip Habib was sent to restore order, which he accomplished on 12 August on the heels of IDF's intensive, day-long bombardment of West Beirut.

Soldiers loyal to Phalangist leader Elie Hobeika began slaughtering civilians, while Israeli forces blocked exits from Sabra and Shatila and illuminated the area with flares.

In August 1983, Israel withdrew from the Chouf District in southeast of Beirut, removing the buffer between the Druze and the Maronite militias, and triggering another round of brutal fighting, the Mountain War.

Before stepping down, he appointed another Maronite Christian, Lebanese Armed Forces Commanding General Michel Aoun, as acting Prime Minister, contravening the National Pact.

In January 1989, a committee appointed by the Arab League, chaired by Kuwait and including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Morocco, began to formulate solutions to the conflict.

The Lebanese Forces (LF), led by Samir Geagea, which had grown into a rival power broker in the Christian East Beirut, responded by suspending all its broadcasts.

[116] In August 1990, the Lebanese Parliament, which did not heed Aoun's order to dissolve, and the new president agreed on constitutional amendments embodying some of the political reforms envisioned at Taif.