Photo cover: Palestinian woman fighter, 1980’s. The courageous French photojournalist Catherine Leroy who extensively covered the Lebanese Civil War, documented the conflict’s human stories, capturing the harsh realities faced by civilians and soldiers alike. Leroy’s work in Lebanon remains a testament to her dedication to truth and the art of visual storytelling in challenging environments.

The presence of the PLO in Lebanon dates back to the late 1960s, following the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestinian exile communities already existed in significant areas of Lebanon, accounting for 12% of the total population. The umbrella organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was undoubtedly the most powerful force in Lebanon at that time. However, it was more than a loose confederation, as its leader, Yasser Arafat of the Fatah faction, controlled all other groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its splinter group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Unlike the Lebanese, the Palestinians were not sectarian. Palestinian Christians supported Arab nationalism during the Lebanese Civil War and fought against the militias of the Maronite Christians.

Initially, many Lebanese Shiites sympathized with the Palestinians, but after the “Black September” of 1970 in Jordan, where the Palestinians attempted to overthrow the government, there was a sudden influx of armed Palestinians into Shiite areas. The Palestinian movement quickly lost its influence, as radical factions wielded power through force in a significant part of southern Lebanon, where refugee camps were concentrated, and the PLO proved either unwilling or unable to control them.

Furthermore, the Shiites did not want to pay the price for PLO missile attacks from southern Lebanon. The PLO literally created a “state within a state,” similar to what they did in Jordan. The state of Lebanon, always avoiding provoking Israel, simply abandoned southern Lebanon, and the residents became displaced within their own country. Many Shiites migrated to the suburbs of Beirut, which became known as “poverty zones.” The PLO had taken control of the centers of Sidon and Tyre, and in southern Lebanon, the Shiite population had to endure the humiliation of passing through PLO checkpoints “with permission.”

The Palestinian organization did this with the help of the famous volunteers from Libya and Algeria, as well as a group from Sunni Lebanese factions. However, as clarified by Rex Brynen in his publication on the PLO, these militias were nothing more than armed gangs without ideological bases and without an organic reason for their existence, except for the fact that they received salaries from the PLO/Fatah.

Every action brings a reaction, so the Shiites created the Amal movement, whose armed ranks increased rapidly and fought against the PLO in the early stages of the civil war. Later, a more hardline faction within the movement would break away and form the well-known organization Hezbollah.

The two factions fought with particular brutality. In the Karantina district of Beirut on January 18, 1976, the Christians of the Lebanese Front, especially the Phalangists of Kataeb, broke through the PLO lines and engaged in massacres that left 1,500 dead. In retaliation, the Christian town of Naameh, 20 km south of Beirut, came under attack from the Sunni National Movement of Lebanon along with the PLO, resulting in approximately 500 deaths. “It was a revelation,” said Father Mansour Labaki, a Maronite Christian who survived the massacre. “They came, thousands and thousands, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar! (Allah is the Greatest!) Let’s attack them for the Arabs, let’s offer a holocaust to Muhammad!’ and they slaughtered everyone in their path, men, women, and children.”

Until August of the same year, the Palestinians withdrew even from the Tel al-Zaatar camp (southeast of Beirut) with heavy losses in the ranks of Arafat’s Fatah. In October 1976, in the town of Aishiyeh in southern Lebanon, fighters from Fatah and Al-Saiqa slaughtered 70 Christians and left over 100 injured. The state was now effectively divided, with southern Lebanon and the western half of Beirut becoming bases for the PLO militias and other Muslims, while the Christians controlled East Beirut and the Christian part of Lebanon. The main line of confrontation in divided Beirut was known as the Green Line.

In this extremely complex scenario, the Syrian intervention was added. On January 22, 1976, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad intervened to broker a ceasefire between the two sides while secretly moving Syrian troops to the borders with Lebanon, citing the presence of the Palestinian Liberation Army. Assad wanted to bring the PLO back under Syrian influence and prevent the disintegration of Lebanon. Relations between the leadership of the Lebanese Front and Damascus had already cooled due to the increasing reluctance of the Syrian Army to either completely suppress the Sunni forces of the LNM-PLO in western Beirut or allow the Christian militias to do so. This inevitably led to the conflict in 1978, the start of the “War of the 100 Days,” the definitive dissolution of the alliance with Syria, and Syria’s defeat in East Beirut.

The PLO also provoked the invasion of another state into Lebanon, Israel. The terrorist attack on March 11, 1978, on the coastal road in Israel, which left 39 dead and 71 injured, resulted in the invasion of southern Lebanon three days later. During the week-long operations there, the Israeli Defense Forces, along with the South Lebanon Army, a Christian organization, expelled the PLO Palestinians in Operation “Litani,” where 300 to 550 Palestinians were killed. The civil war would continue for another 12 years with increasing tensions, internal conflicts among the factions, changing alliances, and external interventions.

Bibliography

Lebanon’s Legacy of Political Violence, «A Mapping of serious violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lebanon, 1975-2008», ICTJ, 2013.

P.Seale, «Abu Nidal : A Gun for Hire : The Secret Life of the World’s Most Notorious Arab Terrorist Hardcover» ,publ. Random House, 1992/

«The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics», Cambridge University Press, 1984