The land now held in sovereign title by the country of Lebanon has a tumultuous past, passing from Greek to Muslim to Christina hands over the past three thousand years. This area has long been a crossroads for trade and, most importantly, religion and culture.
The land was initially settled by Phoenicians, a mysterious sea-faring culture that has arguable origins in many ancient cultures, including the Semitic, biblical state of Canaan; the lands of Mycenaean Greece ; or, according to one of the earliest primary sources, the Greek historian Herodotus, who noted that conquered Persians had related the belief that the Phoenicians had come from unknown origins, but had previously sailed the Erythraean Sea, an area encompassing the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and portions of the Indian Ocean. In any event, historians do agree that by 1250 BCE the Phoenician civilization was a highly organized successor to the failed Egyptian and Hittite kingdoms and possibly the main member or at least associated with the Sea Peoples that history has recorded as mysteriously appearing and conquering many of the civilizations that inhabited the Eastern Mediterranean. The chief city in Lebanon, Beirut, is thought to have been founded before the 1500 BCE.
The land was conquered by the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian Empire in approximately 500 BCE. Alexander the Great, while pressing the boundaries of his vast empire, conquered the land in 333 BCE. Following Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his kingdom was forcibly divided into four regions, with Lebanon falling under the control of Ptolemy, who soon ceded control of the region to the Seleucid Empire, which was conquered and re-administered as a province of the Roman Empire by Pompey (the general who was later lost the first Roman power struggle to Julius Caesar) in approximately 63 BCE. Historians suggest that Christianity was introduced to the Lebanese region from the state of Galilee "soon after the time of Jesus." This Christian influence can still be found in Lebanon in the Maronite Catholic Church, the religion of a large minority of current Lebanese citizens, and the religion that, controversially, is required of the country's President.
Following the arrival of the prophet Muhammad, the Muslim faith and, later, its administrative apparatus, the Caliphate, Lebanon was occupied by Muslim forces until the First Crusade was launched in 1025 CE. The land became split between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli, two feudal kingdoms set up as Crusader States in the Levant area. These states were eventually conquered in the thirteenth century CE by the Mamluks, a society of mercenaries who originally had fought for Muslim caliphates. The Mamelukes were later expelled by the Ottoman Empire, the most powerful political force in the Arab world between 1300 and 1900 CE. The Ottomans invaded the Balkan region of Southern Europe as early as 1389, conquering such cities as Constantinople, Belgrade and Baghdad and conquering much of southern Europe into Hungary and Moldova. This would prove to be the apex of Ottoman power.
In the late seventeenth century, the Ottomans were repelled in their effort to siege the Austrian capital of Vienna by a combined force of the Polish and Holy Roman Empire armies and forced to sing the Treaty of Karlowitz, ceding lands in Southern Europe. However, in Lebanon, the Ottomans had entrusted semi-autonomous power in two Druze families. These families ruled Lebanon as proxies for the Ottoman Empire until World War I, when the Ottomans, attracted by potential tie-ins to the German economy, allied with the Central Powers, only to be defeated in the Middle East theatre by the French and British. Following World War I, the land of Lebanon would no longer be subjected to the vagaries of local tribes or even regional strongmen, but instead to the Treaty of Versailles, an agreement signed by powers thousands of miles away that carved up the Middle East.
The French and British, on November 7, 1918, officially guaranteed the independence of Lebanon and all Ottoman possessions in the Anglo-French Declaration, which states that:
The goal envisaged by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the War let loose by German ambition is the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations.
In pursuit of those intentions, France and Great Britain agree to further and assist in the establishment of indigenous Governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia which have already been liberated by the Allies, as well as in those territories which they are engaged in securing and recognising these as soon as they are actually established.
Far from wishing to impose on the populations of those regions any particular institutions they are only concerned to ensure by their support and by adequate assistance the regular working of Governments and administrations freely chosen by the populations themselves; to secure impartial and equal justice for all; to facilitate the economic development of the country by promoting and encouraging local initiative; to foster the spread of education; and to put an end to the dissensions which Turkish policy has for so long exploited. Such is the task which the two Allied Powers wish to undertake in the liberated territories.
The ideals expressed in the declaration never came to pass. Instead, it seems, the Middle East had already been divided in a series of back room negotiations and an exchange of what seems solemn assurances. Beginning in 1915, British High Commissioner of Egypt Sir Henry McMahon began correspondence with Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif, or steward, of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. In that correspondence, McMahon supported Hussein's goal of a single Arab state, stretching from Yemen to Syria, but not the "districts lying to the west of Damascus" because those regions could not be said to be "purely Arab." Indeed, Hussein rallied the Arab world against the Ottomans in the Arab Revolt that resulted in the seizure of Damascus in 1918, which succeeded largely due to the ingenuity and determination of the indigenous Arab forces and their British counterpart, the immortalized T.E Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia.") Unbeknownest to Lawrence, by 1916 the French and British had already secretly agreed to divide control of the Middle East amongst themselves in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, while Britain officially agreed to support the establishment of a Jewish states in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. Oddly, the Germans (of imperial German ilk, not Nazis) had at the same time been negotiating with American Jews on demands for Palestinian statehood, as Germans were until late as 1917 as likely as ally of the U.S. as were France or England.
Following the Arab Revolt and the end of World War I, the state of Palestine was placed under British control and Hussein bin Ali's son, Faisal, was installed as the Muslim King of Syria. However, his kingdom was short-lived. Pursuant to the Treaty of Versailles, the Sanremo Conference and the League of Nations' mandates, the regions of Iraq and Syria (which includes modern-day Lebanon) was given a Class A mandate, which purported to guarantee the provisional recognition of "their existence... subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance... until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration." Greater Syria acknowledged Faisal as King, but the French did not and quickly moved to partition Lebanon as a Christian enclave in the new Middle East. Faisal objected to the annexation of Lebanon and the rejected the League of Nations' mandate that gave France administrative control over Syria. In 1920 at the Battle of Maysalun, the French routed the hastily composed Syrian army, deposed Faisal's regime and capped their victory with the French general kicking the tombstone of the great Muslim commander Saladin, uttering "we're back."
After more than two decades of French rule, Lebanon proclaimed its independence on November 22, 1943, yet French troops did not withdraw until 1946. In 1947, the League of Nations, acting seemingly in accordance with the promises made in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and as argued by Winston Churchill, partitioned the previously sovereign nation Palestine into Arab and Israeli sections. The Arab countries refused to recognize this partition and the state of Israel. The disagreement culminated quickly into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued, with armies from Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Jordan invading British-supported Israel. The Lebanese contingent of the invasion, a mere 1,000 soldiers, was repulsed upon entering Galilee and forced to sing an armistice in March of 1949. Numerous Palestinian refugees (estimated to be 100,000 or more) fled to Lebanon. In his diary, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Guiron, remarked that:
The weak link in the Arab coalition is Lebanon. Muslim rule is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established whose southern border would be the Litani (which would cede much of present day southern Lebanon to Israel).
Despite some internal turmoil, the country of Lebanon actually thrived during the 1950s and 60s, becoming an increasingly-important center of commerce and tourism. However, conflict again engulfed the region in the late 1950s and continuing into the 1960s, beginning with the globally-important Suez Crisis of 1956 and peaking with the the Six Days War of 1967, in which the Israelis occupied the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.
Following the embarrassing defeat of the Six Days War, a coalition of Palestinians and disaffected Arabs changed tactics, employing terrorist tactics and indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli soil from their base in Jordan and Lebanon. The newly formed Palestinian Organization even formalized an agreement with Lebanon, brokered by Egypt, to attack Israeli soil from Lebanon. Succumbing to international diplomatic pressure in 1970, King Hussein of Jordan, aided by Israeli air strikes, evicted the Palestinians from Jordan, pushing them into Southern Lebanon. "Starting in 1968, Palestinian militants of various affiliations began to use southern Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks on Israel. Two of these attacks led to a watershed event in Lebanon's inchoate civil war. In July 1968, a faction of George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine(PFLP) hijacked an Israeli El Al civilian plane en route to Algiers; in December, Habash himself oversaw an attack on an El Al plane in Athens, resulting in two deaths. Later that month, Israeli agents flew into Beirut's international airport and demolished 13 civilian airliners belonging to various Arab carriers. Israel defended its actions by informing the Lebanese government that it was responsible for encouraging the PFLP. The retaliation, which was intended to encourage a Lebanese government crackdown on Palestinian militants, instead polarized Lebanese society on the Palestinian question, deepening the divide between pro- and anti-Palestinian factions, with the Muslims leading the former grouping and Maronites primarily constituting the latter."
This sectarian tension escalated into civil war in 1975, with the minority Maronite Christians facing off against indigenous Arab, Syrian and PLO elements. In June of 1982, the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon under guise of ridding the region of the PLO. A UN force, including American units, was deployed to end the hostilities. However, following numerous attacks against the UN force and the continued occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel, the US removed its troops from the region in 1984. Further conflict ensued as members of the Shiite Muslim Amal movement fought to rid Lebanon of PLO sympathizers.
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