by Abigail Adams

Created on: April 16, 2008

The May 2007 battle in the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared in North Lebanon sent a warning to the international community that a civil war was brewing. The battle between the Palestinian militant faction Fatah Al-Islam, and the Lebanese Army was a recent outburst in a decades long struggle between Christian and Muslim militant factions vying for political control. As tensions mount, and a breaking point approaches, the international community is forced to question how it will respond if Lebanon erupts into a full blown civil war.

The international community played a critical role in Lebanon's expulsion of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1983, and the political stabilization process during Lebanon's civil war that stretched from 1975-1990, and cost an estimated 150,000 lives. The lessons learned from this past involvement indicates a need for the international community to divorce itself from Lebanon's internal political process, or risk a political destabilization that will once again transform Lebanon into a staging ground for international conflict.

The National Pact of 1943 established Lebanon as a sovereign nation governed by a Parliamentary system composed of Christians, and Druse, Shia, and Sunni Muslims. At the time, Christians composed 80% of Lebanon's population, and seats in the Parliament were divided in a 6:5 ratio that favored the Christian majority. By the 1970s, Lebanon's demographics had shifted dramatically, and Christians composed only 1/3 of the population. Christian factions formed militia groups to maintain political control. The Druse, the Shias, and the Sunnis, also, formed militias that received support from Syria and Iran. In 1970, in a move that Thomas Friedman wrote, "intertwined Lebanon's internal conflict with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict", Jordan exiled the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from its territory, and the PLO made Beirut its new headquarters. (Beirut to Jerusalem. 1989)

The PLO was established in 1964 by the Pan-Arabist movement led by Egyptian President Nasser to continue the war waged by Arab nations against Israel. Palestinians, under the leadership of the PLO, became a proxy force used by Arab nations to reclaim the land the U.N. partitioned for Israel in 1948. Once headquartered in Lebanon, the PLO became the dominant military force for Muslim factions in the brewing civil war. Israel responded by further aligning itself with the Christian Phalangist militia, led by Bashir Gemayel. The

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