In 1974, founder and leader of the majority-Christian Phalange Party Pierre Gemayel declared “Neither the present government or any other could shut down a single training camp,” in reference to bases created by several parties to train their armed factions. A year later, Gemayal’s Phalange Party was one of several Lebanese militias embroiled in a war where fighting remained confined within Lebanon but the power struggle transcended borders and involved both regional and international combatants. While April 13, 1975, is often cited as the start date that sparked the 15-year conflict, which has been termed a civil war, a host of factors, including international affairs, economic and social inequality and the sectarian make up of the Lebanese government were responsible for the violent outburst and the war’s duration.
The Phalange Party’s April 13 attack on a bus carrying Palestinians, reprisal for a shoot out at a church where Phalange members had been in attendance, was not even mentioned in the relevant chapters on the civil war in Struggle Over Lebanon by Tabitha Petran. Instead, Petran documents the factors that contributed to the setting of the stage for and provoking the civil war. Fear over the increase in sectarian militias had been on the national radar as early as May 1973, when President Suleiman Franjieh convened a special cabinet meeting to discuss possible reforms to curb the militias.
Petran begins by listing the increased demands of the Sunni population of Lebanon, which began clamoring for a larger slice of political power to match what they believed was their majority status. The Lebanese government had been formed in 1943, based on a census in 1932 when Maronite Christian were the largest sect and thus the role of President was reserved for a Maronite. Sunnis had been given the post of the Prime Minister while the Speaker of the Parliament would be a Shiite. Sunni leaders, unhappy with this division of power, adopted the slogan al-Musharakah “participation.” Their key demands, before the war, were:
1. Suppression of political sectarianism
2. Sectarian balance in the state apparatus
3. Reform of the electoral law to eliminate political feudalism
4. Placing the army under the authority of the Defense Minister, while assuring “National balance” in the army
5. Dissolution of the armed militias of the parties
6. Priorities for the development projects in deprived regions
7. General census to settle the problem of naturalization
8. Support for the Palestinian resistance
9. A favorable response to the demands of the Shiite community

In February 1974, the Shiite Council submitted a list of demands, asking for the number of posts in the government to which the sect was entitled under the National Pact, citizenship must be promptly granted to the tens of thousands of mostly Shiite underprivileged who had been denied access to the state and greater state protection for the South against Israel acts of aggressions. Also in 1974, Shiite cleric Musa Sadr coined the establishment of the “movement of the deprived” to represent not only Shiites but the poor farmers and workers who were traditionally ignored by the government.
Fiscally, Lebanon’s “economic miracle” from late 1960s had begun to diminish coupled with a rise in the rural population flocking to the cities. By 1975, 40 percent of the country’s total rural population had been forced out of their homes and off the land, including 65 percent of the rural population of the south and 50 percent of that of the Bekaa Valley. Peasants and working class that remained in the rural areas, mostly the south and the Bekaa Valley, were agitated and demanding better workers rights through a series of revolts.
As early as 1970, Beirut Radio had reported an armed insurrection in the Akkar Region, where most land owners lived in Beirut and Tripoli away from the land. In 1972, a delegation of tobacco growers from the south brought a petition to parliament boasting 16,000 signatures exposing the injustice they suffered. While Shiite, Musa Sadr spoke for all he perceived as deprived or neglected by the establishment, including the rural farmers. Parliament’s failure to take the grievances seriously prompted a demonstration in 1973 in Nabatiyyeh. Clashes between workers and the Internal Security Forces, at the request of the owners, left two workers dead during the Ghandour Strike. While Petran argues that although the “revolution from below” approach seldom achieves demands, the “social ferment” if unleashed “shook the pillars of the sectarian system.”
As established Christian parties worked to strengthen their militias, and Sunni politicians worked to align with the Palestinian Movement as pressure from the Egyptian-Syrian Arab alliance, the underrepresented Shiite sect saw a rise of political empowerment. Imam Musa Sadr claimed to represent not only the Shiites but the under-privileged, calling for “Lebanese resistance.” There was also economic disparity between the various religious sects, with Maronite Christians viewed as better off than the Muslims in the country.
Since the Arab defeat in 1967, the Palestinians felt let down by the Arab governments claiming to guard their rights to a state. The rise of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was felt in Beirut, after Jordanian King Hussein throw the PLO out during Black September 1970 after increasing threatened by his reign.
And again, the combined Egyptian-Syrian attacks to reclaim land occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War failed in 1973. Although initial progress was made, this next regional battle between Israel and its Arab neighbors was used as a proxy during the Cold War. After a week, gains from the Soviet-backed Arab states were reversed when the US came, publicly to the aid of the Jewish nation. This defeat could be felt throughout the Arab world, in different ways, emotionally by the PLO and even economically in Lebanese business. It was one factor of several that contributed to the decline of Lebanon’s miraculous economy of the 1960s. The real growth rate in net national production fell from an annual average of 10.5 percent in1960-65 to 2.5 percent in 1965-70, unprecedented rise in prices.
Months later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s signature on the Sinai Accords “put another nail in the coffin” of UN Security Council Resolution 242, according to an Israeli official. His signature “determined” the role Egypt could play once the war in Lebanon erupted as Sadat’s resolution involved stemming the resistance movement against Israel and not aiding the Syrian President’s attempt to build up an eastern front with Jordan and the Palestinians.
Repercussions from the Arab-Israeli wars were not the only way Israeli policy was affecting Lebanon before 1975. From 1968-1975, there were over 6,200 Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty, mostly in South Lebanon, including air and ground raids and a four-day occupation of the Arqoub. While the Prime Minister spoke out about the right of Lebanon to defend it self, the army was seen, or chose to be, powerless to act whether by lack of will or communication between the office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defense. Prime Minister Takeiddine Solh ordered retaliation for Israeli violations but saw the army respond by “sitting on its hands.”
With so many external factors building up inside and outside Lebanon, it can hardly be viewed as a civil war between two people. Yes, a line— a green line— was drawn between sides, most easily identified between Christians and Muslims but this was not a religious as much as a regional war. It was being influenced by the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli crisis, the Cold War, Syria’s regional interests among others. It remains a civil war, because all these external factors were welcomed and ushered into the country by a Lebanese side or militia.
President Bashir Gemayel looked south for Israeli support after turning away from Syria, who entered initially at the request of a previous president, Suleiman Franjieh and Assad correctly calculated that other Arab states lacked both the will and the means to challenge him. The Lebanese state and the army failed to effectively cooperate to confront Israeli violation in the south as well, part of the problem was the relative weakness of the national government. Lebanese Forces members were being trained in Israel, while Russian and Iranian and American were being shipped in.
If all of this was going on before, and much of the same debates are still discussed in Lebanon, it would seem as if the causes of the civil war were more than sparks to a fire but perhaps historical and structural elements of a national conflagration that is threatening to spread through the region if the Lebanese can’t work out the root problems and move away from a society viewing others as the other and making politicians based on sect.