Beirut
Capital and port of Lebanon, 90 km/60 mi northwest of Damascus, situated on a promontory into the eastern Mediterranean with the Lebanon Mountains behind it; population (2002 est) 1,147,800, conurbation 1,878,200. The city dates back to at least 1400 BC. It was devastated by civil war in the 1970s and 1980s and by the conflict between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli forces which invaded in 1982 with the intention of securing the northern border territory of Israel.
Recent history
Before the civil war of 1975–90, Beirut was an international financial and educational centre, with four universities (Lebanese, Arab, French, and US); it was also a centre of espionage. Subsequent struggles for power among Christian and Muslim factions caused widespread destruction. From July to September 1982 the city was besieged and sections virtually destroyed by the Israeli army to enforce the withdrawal of PLO forces. After the ceasefire, 500 Palestinians were massacred in the Sabra–Shatila camps on 16–18 September 1982 by dissident
Phalangist and
Maronite troops. Civil disturbances continued, characterized by sporadic street fighting and hostage-taking. In 1987 Syrian troops entered the city and have remained. Intensive fighting broke out between Christian and Syrian troops in Beirut, and by 1990 the strength of Syrian military forces in greater Beirut and east Lebanon was estimated at 42,000. In October 1990 President Elias Hwari formally invited Syrian troops to remove the Maronite Christian leader General Michel
Aoun from his east Beirut stronghold; the troops then went on to dismantle the ‘Green Line’ separating Muslim western and Christian eastern Beirut. The Syrian-backed ‘Greater Beirut Security Plan’ was subsequently implemented by the Lebanese government, enforcing the withdrawal of all militias from greater Beirut. A controversial plan for the complete reconstruction of central Beirut, put forward by the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik al Hariri, is now being implemented.
Before the civil war In World War II Beirut was bombed by British planes, and again in 1941 during the short period of hostilities between the Allied forces and the French troops in Syria under the orders of the Vichy government. After the establishment of Beirut as capital of the Republic of the Lebanon, the city greatly increased in prosperity. Until the civil war it was possible to identify within the city a number of distinct cultural districts which partly reflected the composition of the Lebanese population as a whole. Achrafieh was a prosperous Christian residential district where the lifestyle and culture showed French influence; Basta was a district occupied mainly by poorer Sunni Muslims; and the cosmopolitan district of Hamra was mainly middle-class and Anglo-Saxon in lifestyle. The whole city was girdled by Palestinian refugee camps and the shanty towns of largely Shiite migrants from the countryside. |
