The Brutal Lebanese Civil War in Photographs, 1975-1989

This framework, which gave Christians control of the government and parliament, was based on the results of a 1932 census. Over time, however, shifting demographics would undermine the credibility of this arrangement and its acceptability to certain groups who felt increasingly underrepresented. These demographic changes were accelerated dramatically by the fallout from the 1967 Six Day War between Arab states and Israel, during which large numbers of Palestinians took refuge in Jordan and, increasingly, southern Lebanon.

These PLO fighters were welcomed as heroes by many of the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the south of the country whose families had been forced to flee their homes during Israel’s occupation of Palestine in 1948. By the eve of the civil war, many other factors had conspired to push the country to the brink of conflict, including a socioeconomic crisis in which the cost-of-living was soaring even as wealth was becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a privileged few political dynasties.

August 28, 2025 | 10:50 pm