Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Britain, fearing that Nazi Germany would gain full control of Lebanon and Syria by pressure on the weak Vichy government, sent its army into Syria and Lebanon. [59] After the fighting ended in Lebanon, General Charles de Gaulle visited the area. Under various political pressures from both inside and outside Lebanon, de Gaulle decided to ...
Kataeb Regulatory Forces merged with Tigers Militia and several minor groups (Al-Tanzim, Guardians of the Cedars, Lebanese Youth Movement, Tyous Team of Commandos) and formed an umbrella militia known as the Lebanese Forces (LF) which acted in unity, and were politically known as the Lebanese Front coalition. Before 1975, Maronite militias were ...
Israel launches a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The south of Lebanon, all the way to Beirut, is occupied by Israel. Pro-Israeli president-elect Bachir Gemayel is assassinated. With Israeli support, the Phalangist militia kills thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Bachir's elder brother Amine Gemayel is elected president.
The area, including the Holiday Inn, which opened in 1973, was a symbol of Lebanon's affluence in the period preceding the civil war, an icon in Beirut's rapidly growing landscape. By October 1975, the hotel district became strategically important for fighters in the escalating Lebanese Civil War, because of its proximity to the sea. [1]
The Damour massacre took place on 20 January 1976, during the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. Damour, a Maronite Christian town on the main highway south of Beirut, was attacked by left-wing militants of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and as-Sa'iqa.
At the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, the country was home to a large Palestinian population divided along political lines. [8] Tel al-Zaatar was a refugee camp of about 3,000 structures, which housed 20,000 refugees in early 1976, and was populated primarily by supporters of the As-Sa'iqa faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). [8]
[2] [3] [4] The Lebanese army was too weak to prevent the PLO from using Lebanese soil as a base for the insurgency, [7] and eventually the PLO succeeded in creating a "state within a state" in southern Lebanon. The insurgency continued during the 1970s, and served as a major catalyst for the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
The Holiday Inn operated standardly for only a year before the civil war broke out in 1975, and by then, the hotel was in the focal point of a war zone beginning on October 25, 1975 [4] in a months-long conflict known as the Battle of the Hotels, as over 25,000 combatants from pro-Palestinian and Christian militias fought for control of a group ...