How did the confrontation between Israel and Lebanon begin? Keys to the historic conflict

Lebanon is a small country. It covers just 10,000 square kilometres (3,861 square miles), a little less than half the size of New Jersey, with a population of fewer than six million. It is a small and fragile nation because of its religious diversity, which incorporates between 15 and 20 different communities — mainly 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, which spurred the germ of division between these communities by favoring the Christians. Its proximity to Israel, created in 1948, sealed its fate when Lebanon welcomed the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (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 for Israel. The Israeli army has carried out three major invasions of Lebanon: in 1978, 1982, and 2006. These are the keys to a confrontation that now threatens to escalate into a new Israeli occupation of Lebanon, where at least 558 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Monday.

How did the confrontation between Israel and Lebanon begin?

In November 1943, Lebanon gained independence from the French Mandate, under whose authority it had been as part of the colonial division of the Middle East agreed between Paris and London in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. However, 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 in what became known as the Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic).

More than 100,000 people were crammed into refugee camps in Lebanon. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon declared war on Israel, but the latter’s involvement in the first Arab-Israeli war was limited; by then Israel’s military superiority was already undeniable and Lebanon had only around 3,500 professional soldiers, of whom just 1,000 participated in the conflict. Israel’s victory against its Arab neighbors in 1949 meant the loss of 78% of historic Palestine for its historical population. It also marked the beginning of the turbulent history of independent Lebanon.

The presence of the PLO

The three main religious groups in Lebanon are Shia Muslims (32%), Sunni Muslims (31%), and Christians, mainly Maronites, who make up another third of the population. The country is also home to the Druze (6%) and other smaller communities. Lebanon has adopted a confessional division of power since its foundation, as such its Constitution reserves the office of president for a Maronite Christian, that of prime minister for a Sunni Muslim, and that of speaker of parliament for a Shia. This system was designed when Christians were in the majority and, among Muslims, Sunnis were prominent, a proportion reversed today by the high birth rate among Shias.

As of 1947, when more than 100,000 Palestinian refugees, most of them Muslim, settled in Lebanon, many Christians feared losing their demographic weight. These misgivings crystallized when the PLO leadership set up shop in Beirut between 1970 and 1971, after being expelled from Jordan. From then on, Palestinian militiamen clashed with Christian Maronite forces, especially the Lebanese Phalanges, a group inspired by the fascist Spanish Falange. The Lebanese civil war between the Phalanxes — integrated with other Christians within the Lebanese Front — and the Lebanese National Movement (comprised of Muslims, Palestinians and pan-Arabists, among other factions) broke out in 1975. During this conflict, which lasted until 1990, Israel provided aid to the Christians in the form of armaments and advisors.

Operation Litani

Israel has intervened in Lebanon before, with occasional military operations in response to terrorist attacks by different Palestinian factions on its territory or against its citizens — such as the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics — with bombings against PLO bases or the destruction of 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 buffer zone on the southern border. The Israeli military occupation aggravated the civil war in the country. Israel withdrew from Lebanon that same year, after the U.N. Security Council demanded it to do so via Resolution 425, but left behind its Christian allies, who continued to fight the PLO with its support.

The invasion of 1982

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again to expel the PLO. Its troops occupied half of the country’s territory and besieged the western suburbs of Beirut, with the aid of their right-wing Christian allies. Its F-16 planes bombed the PLO headquarters and predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods and troops looted the PLO information center, which housed maps, photographs and, most importantly, records of Palestinian land ownership 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. This military operation forced a new exodus of the PLO to Tunisia, but one of its consequences was the creation — with the support of Iran — of Hezbollah, a Shia movement among whose objective is the fight against the Israeli occupation.

The war of 2006

Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, but the fragile peace did not end the Israeli occupation, which lasted until 2000, when Israel withdrew from the south of the Arab state. That decision, attributed by many Lebanese to its bombings and guerrilla actions, increased Hezbollah’s political credibility. Six years later, Israeli troops returned to Lebanese territory after Hezbollah militants killed three soldiers and captured two others on Israeli soil. The Israeli army responded with massive air strikes — which leveled entire 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 wiped out. That month-long war ended in a stalemate. Israeli troops withdrew again from southern Lebanon, which was interpreted by many Lebanese as a new victory for Hezbollah, also because the militia has since failed to comply with U.N. resolution 1701, which put an end to that conflict and obliged it to withdraw its men and rocket launchers from south of the Litani River.

Gaza and the risk of escalation

Having become the key player in the confrontation with Israel, Hezbollah has since 2006 been engaged in a low-intensity confrontation with the Israeli army, mainly by launching rockets against the north of the neighboring country. Israel has responded with selective assassinations of militia leaders and air strikes against Lebanese territory. 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 — in turn unleashed the opening of a new front in northern Israel. Hezbollah then began a low-intensity war against Israel, firing rockets almost daily. The explosion of 5,000 pagers and walkie-talkies last week and the Israeli bombings on Monday threaten to provoke a new escalation of the conflict in Lebanon as well.

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