Even though it had been preceded by instances of political violence, and armed conflict, Sunday April 13, 1975 is recognized as the beginning of the 15 years long Lebanese civil war.

For two years prior, the state had been gradually weakening and political divisions deepening as armed gangs threatened businesses, factories, and civilians in the North and in the Beqaa, and fighters from Lebanese Army, Lebanese Security Forces, and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fought on larger and more intense scales in Beirut and South Lebanon. Israel was also conducting air and land raids on Lebanese villages, killing civilians, destroying property, and displacing many.

Lebanon was polarized into two groups fighting over ideological, socioeconomic, and political issues, especially regarding the role of the Palestinian armed struggle in Lebanon. Most Christian groups opposed Palestinian armed presence while radical and leftist groups supported and sometimes participated in the Palestinian military actions against Israel.

In February 1975, fishermen in Saida protested the formation of a company headed by Camille Chamoun, former president and head of the Christian National Liberal Party (NLP). They believed it would monopolize the industry to the benefit of the Christian political elite. Maaruf Saad, former mayor of Saida, former MP, and founder of the Popular Nasserist Organization (PNO) led the demonstrations and was killed by injuries sustained in an exchange of fire with the army. Clashes between the army and civilians escalated over several days, resulting in the death and injury of civilians and army men.

On April 13, 1975, Kataeb militia men opened fire on a bus carrying Palestinians in Ain El Remmaneh, killing more than 20 in retaliation to a shoot-out with members of the Palestinian
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in front of a church where Kataeb leader Pierre Gemayel was attending mass earlier that day.

In Beirut, fighting broke out in areas where there was some proximity between Christian-populated areas and Palestinian camps or Muslim-populated areas: Dekwaneh-Tel al-Zaatar, Ain al-Remmaneh, Chiyah, Haret Hreik, Mreijeh, Burj al-Barajneh, Karantina, Maslakh, and Ashrafieh. Clashes also broke out in North Lebanon between Tripoli and Zgharta. In the Shouf, Palestinian commandos from the Barja region attacked two neighboring Christian villages and in Saida a general strike was ongoing, with continuous explosions and gunfire.

On May 23, 1975, clashes and shelling from both sides spread across Beirut. The following day, militias set up checkpoints in West Beirut, marking the divide of the city along a demarcation line. Abductions by all sides, religious-based killings, and mutilations became more frequent. One of the most violent instances was Black Thursday (May 30, 1975).

Fighting stopped to a large extent on June 30, 1975 when the government announced that a cabinet was formed, reached with Syrian mediation. The truce (which still witnessed sporadic attacks) did not last long: fighting and shelling erupted in Zahle, Beqaa, Zgharta, Tripoli, and other Northern towns.

On September 13, 1975, the Dekwaneh-Tel al-Zaatar front in East Beirut flared up, and in the following days, clashes spread to front-line zones, namely Ain el-Remmaneh-Chiyah and—for the first time—downtown Beirut. Snipers shot at children, women, and men on all city entry points and scores of civilians were killed at crossroads, under the bridges, especially around the demarcation line.

October 24 marked the beginning of the Battle of the Hotels around the demarcation line. The next day, on October 25, 1975, 40,000 people took to the streets, namely in West Beirut, the southern and eastern suburbs, in Baabda, Hadath, Antounieh, Choueifat, Sin al-Fil, and Nabaa to protest the violence. Women demonstrated in Bourj Hammoud, Mar Mikhaël, Sed el-Bauchrieh, Jdeideh, Dora, as well as in the North and in the Beqaa.

The event known as “Black Saturday” was triggered by the killing of four young Christian men, whose mutilated bodies were found on December 5. By the end of the next day, hundreds had been murdered or kidnapped on arbitrary roadblocks in retaliation.

Christian militias’ military were trying to forcibly displace civilians in order to homogenize the populations between Christian-dominated and Muslim-Palestinian dominated areas. The first example of this occurred on December 11, 1975 when the Kataeb went into the Muslim-populated neighborhood of Haret al-Ghawarneh-Antelias in Beirut’s northern suburbs after three days of shelling. They forced its residents to flee to Burj al-Barajneh and other areas in West Beirut. On December 16, the PNL did the same and expelled the residents of Sebnay, a Muslim village, in the predominantly Maronite neighborhood of Hadath in southeast of Beirut.

In early January 1976, Christians militias (sometimes escorted by ISF patrols and groups derived from the Lebanese Army) launched sieges of Palestinian camps in Tel Al Zaatar, Jisr El Bacha, and Dbayeh as well as the areas of Maslakh, Karantina, and Nabaa. In parallel, Palestinian militias and their Lebanese allies laid siege to the Christian towns of Damour and Jiyeh. Both sides raided and looted homes, deployed mortar shelling, went door to door killing civilians, and raped women. Sectarian-based killings and confrontations were also taking place in the North and Beqaa in retaliation or to pressure the warring parties to lift their sieges, which led to many killings and the displacement of hundreds of families.

The siege of Tel El Zaatar led to deaths mounting to a range between 2,200 and 4,280 Lebanese and Palestinian, including those killed the day the camp fell. This was the largest massacre in the war that was yet to happen.

After the camp attacks, the Lebanese Forces (LF) came into creation with Bachir Gemayel, representing the Kataeb, as its president and Dany Chamoun, representing the PNL, as its vice president.

On January 25, 1976, a ceasefire was announced as Palestinian Liberation Army units entered Lebanon. However, in March 1976, a new phase of the war began marked by growing tension among Syrians, Lebanese leftist parties, and Palestinians. By the end of January 1976, some 14,000 Syrian soldiers were in Lebanon.

In mid-March 1976, the Lebanese Arab Army (LAA) marched towards the presidential palace to force President Sleiman Frangieh to resign. They heavily shelled the palace forcing Frangieh to flee to Zouk Mikael. In parallel, the Joint Forces launched a massive attack against Christian-populated areas in the North, the Shouf, and Mount Lebanon. Druze militias, with the support of the LAA and allies, were killing Christian civilians, destroying and looting their villages, forcing them to flee. Meanwhile, in downtown Beirut, fighting between the Kataeb and Murabitun was ongoing.

On May 8, 1976, Elias Sarkis, Central Bank governor, was elected president of the country. Kamal Jumblatt, Saeb Salam, and Raymond Edde refused to attend Parliament. Jumblatt opposed this Syrian-mediated presidential election. These tensions translated into armed clashes in Beirut and Tripoli, as well as assassinations (examples include Kamal Jumblatt’s sister Linda, Khalil Salem, director general of the Ministry of Finance, US ambassador and advisor) and assassination attempts (Edde and others). More Syrian soldiers started to enter Lebanon under the pretext of stopping massacres and went into full-blown confrontation with the Joint Forces. The Syrian Marine force was blocking the civilian ports of Tripoli, Saida, and Sour.

In South Lebanon, Israel had been conducting air, land and sea strikes against Palestinian camps in North and South Lebanon, killing scores of civilians. The regions in and around Saida and Sour were also in the grip of the fighting between the Joint Forces and their allies on the one hand, and the Syrian Army and the Lebanese Front militias on the other hand.

On October 21, 1976, an Arab summit (involving Syria, the PLO, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
and Kuwait) announced a new ceasefire and created the Arab Deterrent Force (ADF). In principle, this was to be placed under President Sarkis’s command. This decision, which became known as the Riyadh Accord, was ratified by the Arab League in Cairo. This point marked the end of what is known as ​​The Two Years War, giving most of the country a breather. The ADF, mainly composed of Syrian troops, was deployed heavily in West Beirut, the Beqaa, Tripoli, Saida, and the Shouf, and had a lighter presence in East Beirut. It was everywhere except South Lebanon, where the climate kept deteriorating as PLO fighters gradually returned to the area with sustained fighting between the Christian border militias, supported by Israeli artillery shelling, and Joint Forces.

The truce in the rest of the country did not hold long. A series of mass killings of Christian civilians took place for months in the Shouf and Joint Forces controlled areas of West Beirut after the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt (March 16, 1977), former MP and minister, founder of the PSP, traditional leader of the Druze community, and leader of the NM. Christian villagers were kidnapped, raped, executed, and mutilated; survivors fled their hometowns, moving to East Beirut and its suburbs.

In late March and early April 1981, the battle of Zahle began as the LF was fighting Syrian troops to regain control over the Christian city of Zahle. The fighting also extended to Beirut and its suburbs. The shelling from Syrian partially destroyed hospitals, Red Cross convoys, killed hundreds, and injured thousands. The LF bombed the airport, and Muslim-populated areas. At the same time there was a direct confrontation between the Syrian and Israeli armies. The crises were settled by US-mediated negotiations.

In 1978 the strategic alliance between the Lebanese Front and Syria came to an end. Frangieh had withdrawn from the Lebanese Front in May, which had caused clashes between Marada fighters loyal to him and local Kataeb members. He and Chamoun were calling for Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon as clashes were erupting between the Lebanese Army and Christian militias (PNL, Kataeb), and the ADF, paving the way for the Hundred-Day War, which was was triggered by the assassination of President Frangieh’s son in Ehden in June.

On the first of July, 1978, the Hundred-Day War started with the ADF Syrian units heavily bombarding Christian-populated areas of East Beirut, destroying residential areas, schools, hospitals, and factories. The war ended on October 7 following a ceasefire agreement between President Sarkis and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. ADF’s mandate was renewed and Syrian forces re-positioned mainly in the Beqaa. However, the fighting didn’t stop: the LF were fighting with Marada and/or ADF troops in the North; with the SSNP, which was supported by the Syrian Army, in the Metn; and with the Numur, the armed wing of the NLP.

This period also witnessed inter- Christian power struggles, and fighting between Amal, and Palestinian factions and the pro-Iraqi Baath Arab Liberation Front, as well as between the Armenian Tashnag Party, the Kataeb, and PNL.

In parallel, the conflict between the border militias, supported by Israel, and the PLO and their Lebanese allies was ongoing. On the night of March 14, 1978, Israel carried out a full-fledged military operation “Stone of Wisdom” better known as Operation Litani, mobilizing between 25,000 and 30,000 soldiers and invading Lebanon in retaliation to a Palestinian operation in Tel Aviv. During the invasion, the Christian border militia, allied with Israel, killed hundreds of Shi’a civilians.

On March 19, 1978, the UN Security Council adopted Resolutions 425 and 426, and called on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, and to create the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) a 4,000-strong peacekeeping force. Israel and the PLO continued their attacks after these resolutions until March 28, 1978, when PLO leader Yasser Arafat agreed to a general ceasefire. Despite UNIFIL setting up along the border, Israel maintained control of
a 5- to 10-kilometer strip, known as the “security belt” through its allied militia, the
South Lebanon Army (SLA) —headed by Saad Haddad.

Between May and July 1981, Israel intensified the attacks against the PLO and its Lebanese allies in the South, which led to a heavy civilian toll. The Israelis air raided the Joint Forces in Damour, Nabbatieh, Zahrani, Naameh, and the Fakhani area of Beirut. The Navy went as far as North Lebanon, bombing the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared, close to Tripoli. On April 5, 1982, Israel unleashed seven successive air raids on the Palestinian camps of Sabra, Chatila, and Burj al-Barajneh, as well as the Cité Sportive—where the PLO had its base. After the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador r Shlomo Argov in London, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee, ending the ceasefire with Syria and the PLO.

On June 5, the UN Security Council passed Resolutions 508 and 509, which called on all parties to cease military activities in Lebanon and across the Lebanese-Israeli border, and demanded that Israel withdrew unconditionally from the internationally recognized borders of Lebanon. The fighting didn’t cease. Israel carried out heavy and sustained air, sea, and land attacks, reducing entire villages and refugee camps to rubble, several thousands people were harassed and detained, with many killed or injured. From June to September 1982, Israel held Beirut at siege, cutting off water and electricity supply and indiscriminately bombarding residential areas. Tens of thousands were killed.

The ADF’s mandate came to an end with no renewal in July 1982. 15,000 Palestinian fighters and several thousand Syrian soldier were evacuated under the supervision of a Multinational Force (MNF), composed of French, Italian, and U.S. battalions. The PLO headquarters were to be moved to Tunis, and Yasser Arafat headed to Greece.

On September 14, 1982, a remote-controlled explosive device demolished the headquarters of the Kataeb Party in Ashrafieh, killing the head of LF and recently-elected president Bachir Gemayel along with 23 other people. Habib Chartouni, a Lebanese man affiliated with the SSNP, was arrested by the LF, confessed to having executed the operation. He was
then imprisoned by the judiciary.

In the days following Gemayel’s assassination (between September 16 and 18), more than 300 LF militiamen entered the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila and massacred civilians. The Israeli army had encircled and shelled the camps two days prior. Survivors have recounted horrifying violence during the massacre: gang-raping, violence against children, torture, slitting throats, and mutilation. Many people were kidnapped. Armed men turned up at Akka Hospital, killing patients, staff, and camp residents who had found shelter at the hospital.

With the PLO’s evacuation from the camps, the vast majority of the victims were civilians. There is no official count of the victims but it could vary between 1,400 and 3,500.
In subsequent months, a new wave of sectarian-based violence erupted in the Shouf and Aley between Christian and Druze militias.

In South Lebanon, on November 11, 1982, a teenager who had lost several members of
his family to Israeli attacks drove a car loaded with explosives into Israeli military headquarters at the northern entrance to Sour. Israeli military and intelligence staff, Lebanese and Palestinian detainees and thier visiting relatives were killed. This would mark the first suicide bombing, a new form of resistance against Israel, which Hezbollah would lead in the subsequent years.

After the Sabra and Chatila massacre in 1982, late Bachir Gemayel’s brother, Amine
Gemayel was elected president. On May 17, 1983, he concluded an agreement with Israel and the United States that stipulated the withdrawal of all Israeli, Syrian, and Palestinian forces from Lebanon. The National Salvation Front and Syria opposed this agreement, and the president refused to issue the relevant decree. Israeli forces withdrew from central Lebanon and were redeployed toward South Lebanon

The withdrawal of the Israeli Army from Beirut and Mount Lebanon in September 1983 made space for an intensification of the clashes between the Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP, along with members of two pro-Syrian Palestinian
factions, Fatah al-Intifada and PFLP–GC). The two fronts that had been clashing in Souk al-Gharb-Aley; and the fighting expanded to most of the Aley-Shouf district and northern Mount Lebanon, and later ast Beirut and its suburbs. The conflict was coined as the War of the Mountain. Civilians were kidnapped, and summarily executed, villages were raided, looted and set on fire, and mass killings took place nearly each day between August 31 and September 13, 1983.

As of the beginning of September 1983, 8,000 Christians and several hundred LF fighters started fleeing 60 villages and headed toward the Christian town of Deir al-Qamar in the Shouf; others fled toward Beirut, Jezzine, or the Beqaa. Soon after, the PSP and its allies began a siege of Deir al-Qamar that lasted until December 15, 1983. Several people were killed in bombings and others died due to the lack of access to medical and food supplies.

The War of the Mountain, which lasted till December 1983, resulted in the quasi-total eviction of Christians from the region. The death toll is estimated to be 1,155 Christian and 207 Druze
civilians, the fate of 2,700 civilians remained unknown. 116 villages and 135 churches and monasteries were damaged or burned in the regions of Mount Lebanon, Shouf, Aley, and Baabda.

The conflict also trickled to other regions such as Saida where the LF fought the Lebanese Army which was supported by the PSP and later the PLO.

During this period, French and U.S. military intervened with the latter bombing Druze-Palestinian positions that were clashing with the Lebanese Army, as well as Syrian positions on the hilltops above Beirut, and PSP positions in the Mountain.

In Tripoli during 1983, the fighting raged between the Syrian Army, its Palestinian allies (like Fatah al-Intifada) and its Lebanese allies (ADF, SSNP, and the LCP) against the PLO and its Lebanese allies (including the Islamic Tawhid Party, the Popular Resistance group and the pro-Iraqi Baath). Rocket shells and artillery fire were used in densely populated areas, mainly in the Jabal Mohsen - Bab al Tabbaneh front line and Qobbeh resulting in the death of several hundred people and the injury of several thousands others. On September 16, 1983, Yasser Arafat returned to Tripoli to command the PLO fighters based in the city, triggering a sea blockade of the ports of Tripoli and Chekka by the Syrian Navy.

On December 19, 1983, following two months of particularly heavy bombardments, the PLO
capitulated. Arafat and thousands of his supporters returned to Tunis by sea.
Two years later, in September 1985, Tripoli witnessed a new war between the Islamic Tawheed
and groups that formed al-Liqa’ al-Islami, and the Arab Democratic Party. The Syrian Army, which was positioned around the city, interfered as well. heavy artillery, mortar shells, RPGs and Grad missiles were used, causing much destruction, killing thousands of civilians, combattants, and army men. Tens of thousands fled. On October 7, 1985, around 20,000 Syrian soldiers entered the city.

When the Israeli Army withdrew from Beirut and Mount Lebanon, it re-deployed its troops in the South, establishing a front line at the Awali River.

In 1982 the Lebanese National Resistance Front was formed by the Lebanese Communist Party, the Organization of Communist Action Lebanon, and the Arab Socialist Action to conduct operations against Israel. However, in the following years, the armed Shi’a duo, Amal and increasingly Hezbollah, spearheaded the military action against Israel and the South Lebanon Army (SLA).

The Israeli occupation forces would kidnap or harass people in broad daylight, sometimes arresting them in schoolyards and mosques. They unleashed targeted attacks, as well as air and sea raids of residential areas. The Lebanese Forces were also kidnapping people or forcing them out of their villages. Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians residents were killed or forcibly displaced. The Israeli Army also conducted sporadic military attacks outside their occupation zone, notably in North Lebanon and the Beqaa.

The War of the Camps was a struggle for control over West Beirut. In the South, the Amal militia which was supported by Syria and headed by Nabih Berri fought the Communist Party in Beirut and various Palestinian organizations, including the PLO, which had returned to the camps in Beirut and Saida.

After the Israelis evacuated Sour and Nabatiyeh in 1985, Amal assumed control of the towns and surrounded the Palestinian camps of Rashidiyyeh and al-Buss. On May 19, 1985, Amal—supported by the Lebanese Army Sixth Brigade—laid siege to the Palestinian camps of Sabra which it destroyed, Chatila where it trapped PLO fighters, and Burj al-Barajneh which was put under blockade. In the meantime, the PLO were shelling Beirut’s southern suburbs from their position in Shouf.

In January 20, 1988, Amal and the Sixth Brigade of the Lebanese Army evacuated their positions, and the Syrian Army deployed near Chatila and Burj al-Barajneh as part of a Nabih Berri’s plan to end the War of the Camps.

In September 1988, President Amine Gemayel’s term expired. Because Parliament could not agree on a successor, he appointed Michel Aoun, the Army commander in chief, as prime minister for a provisional military council. Many Lebanese people, especially Christians supported Aoun as they believed he was confronting the Syrian Army and seeking to put an end to the militias’ rule. However, Salim el Hoss was heading a civilian cabinet in West Beirut and he considered this move to be a breach of the constitution and a violation of the National Pact, which stated that the prime minister should be Sunni. Thus two governments were operating at once: a Christian military government in East Beirut and a civilian government in West Beirut.

In 1989 in Ta’if, Saudi Arabia, the Lebanese MPs (voted for in 1972) agreed to and later ratified a national reconciliation plan drafted by the Arab league. The National Reconciliation Accord, better known as the Ta’if Agreement, was largely based on reforms that redrew the sectarian-based political structure. The agreement also called for the dissolution of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias and stated that Syrian forces were to “assist Lebanon to spread [its] sovereignty over the whole country” during a period of no more than two years.”

Aoun refused to acknowledge the agreement, and with Iraqi backing, he announced a War of Liberation against Syria, which lasted from March 14, 1989, to September 23, 1989.

Aoun’s declaration of war, which was followed by an official letter calling for the withdrawal of Syrian troops, resulted in a Syrian siege of East Beirut and the northeastern suburbs of Greater Beirut with daily, massive bombardments. The Lebanese Army, under Aoun’s command, carried out heavy artillery shelling of densely populated residential areas controlled by the Syrian Army in West Beirut. Both sides also shelled the areas of Keserwan, the Beqaa, ‘Aley, Metn, Shouf, and the Beirut airport.

During the war of liberation, 40 percent of the population of West Beirut and its suburbs had fled from the area, while scores had fled from East Beirut toward the mountains. The war left almost a thousand dead, and tens of thousands injured.

Description goes Following the War of the Camps, an inter-sectarian war over a power struggle over West Beirut and South Lebanon broke out between Amal and Hezbollah. This war took place in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in the Beqaa, Iqlim al-Tuffah, and between Jezzine and Nabatieh, and killed around 3,000 civilians and combatants. None of the several ceasefires brokered by Iran and Syria held very long until November 1990, when Syria brokered a final truce that gave Hezbollah control over Beirut and Amal of South Lebanon.

In parallel, Aoun ​​had embarked on a war against the militias, including fighting to stop the illicit sources of trade at the ports controlled by the LF. This brought The Lebanese Army (under Aoun’s command) into an open confrontation with the LF. The conflict was surrounded by economic, political and ideological factors that had been simmering since 1989 and that had been put on hold during the war of liberation.

In January 1990, the Lebanese Army sought to evacuate a school in Furn el-Chebbak where the LF had taken up a position, marking the outbreak of one of the fiercest inter sectarian conflicts since 1975. Around 1,000 people were killed, 3,000 wounded, and 200,000 temporarily displaced. A truce was reached in May 1990. by the end of the war, 4,300 civilians killed and 7,000 wounded; ten hospitals, 120 schools and charity organizations, and 620 factories were destroyed.

In the first few years of the war, hundreds of civilians—mostly Lebanese and Palestinian—were victims of abductions that took place in the context of sectarian-based violence or Lebanese-Palestinian violence.

Responsibility for a vast number of abductions of foreigners and foreign entities were claimed by the Islamic Jihad, a Shi’a pro-Iranian armed group widely seen as the predecessor of Hezbollah, which only came into official existence in 1985.

In 1985, Israel released 113 Lebanese and Palestinians it had been detaining in Haifa, as well as 752 prisoners detained at the Ansar Prison, a detention center set up three years earlier north of the Litani River in South Lebanon. It transported 1,131 other detainees to prisons inside Israel. This release marked the permanent closing of the prison in Lebanon. The Syrian Army also released 31 Lebanese prisoners from among tens of detainees.

Both the Lebanese Army and the LF took hundreds of prisoners, including civilians.

In 1989, hundreds of people were arrested in Tripoli, Beirut, and the Beqaa and brutally interrogated by the Syrian military intelligence at the Madrasat al-Amirkan, al-Mafraza, and Anjar detention centers. Some of the most senior prisoners were taken to Damascus for further interrogation and imprisoned there.

A vast number of the detained ended up being forcibly disappeared. The abductions generally either ended in enforced disappearances, whereby the fate of the victims remained unknown, or ended in the victims’ release through negotiations or exchanges between militias.

Besides the abductions, civilians and captives were also victims of arbitrary detention and torture in detention centers and state prisons, some ending with summary executions, while the fate of others remains unclear.

The ICTJ report documents 91 bomb attacks and 37 targeted assassinations between January 1977 and October 1990. These violent instruments of war spared no region nor sect. Even though targeted, these attacks disrupted the lives of civilians either by property damage, civilians’ deaths and injuries. The attacks targeted party leaders, prominent politicians like presidents and parliament members (and their families), religious figures, foreign diplomats and military, CIA agents, UN members, and journalists.

On October 13, 1990, Syria launched a full-fledged land and air assault that would ultimately defeat Aoun’s army. Aoun was exiled and many of his supporters (both soldiers and civilians) were arrested, detained, and some were summarily executed.

The Second Republic (as of September 21, 1990), came under Syria’s security, political, and economic control. Thirty thousand troops as well as intelligence services were stationed in the country. Israel and its proxy militia, the SLA, continued to control South Lebanon.

A new government was formed under president Elias Hrawi with a cabinet composed of many former militia leaders such as Walid Jumblatt (head of the Progressive Socialist Party), Nabih Berri (head of Amal), and members of the LF, the Marada, and others.

In March 1991 a ministerial declaration called on all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias to disarm, with the exception of Hezbollah (and de facto the SLA since the government had no control over South Lebanon). In August 1991, parliament issued an amnesty law absolving all politically motivated crimes perpetrated before March 28, 1991, with the exception of assassinations of political and religious leaders and diplomats.

In March 1992 the Lebanese government issued a report estimating the total number of war casualties:144,240 killed; 197,506 wounded, including 13,455 with permanent disabilities; 17,415 missing, among whom 13,968 were “kidnapped and presumed dead.”

Despite the end of the war, armed conflict in South Lebanon was an ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel/the SLA. The conflict was punctuated by two Israeli attacks.

In 1993, Israel conducted an artillery and air attack over South Lebanon, known as
Operation Accountability, in retaliation to Hezbollah launching rockets against Israeli and SLA positions in South Lebanon. The Israeli Army carried out what appeared to be calculated direct attacks on purely civilian targets including a vegetable market, ambulances. Israeli forces cut the water and electricity supply, and destroyed civilian infrastructure, including schools, mosques, churches, cemeteries, roads, and bridges and killed at least 118 Lebanese civilians and wounded 500. An unwritten understanding called for Hezbollah to refrain from firing rockets
into Israel, which in turn would not attack civilians or civilian targets in Lebanon, but offenses continued on both sides.
On April 18, 1996, a 14-year-old Lebanese boy was killed by a roadside bomb in the village of Baraachit, north of the occupied zone. This set off Israel’s another full-fledged attack. For two weeks, Israel maintained a steady barrage of artillery, air, and naval fire. Its helicopter and plane attacks reached Beirut, the Beqaa, and South Lebanon. Targets included roads and an electricity station north of Beirut. The operation ended after a new, written, and public understanding was reached between the warring parties, and both violated it in subsequent years.

Israeli forces withdrew in May 2000, and the SLA disintegrated and many of its members fled to Israel.

In parallel, Syrian forces were arresting and abducting scores of Lebanese and Palestinians. The use of torture against political detainees was common in Syrian detention centers in Lebanon as well as in Lebanese prisons. This stage was marked by increasing repression of institutions and people who opposed the status quo.

The demand that Syrian troops leave Lebanon gained momentum after the Israeli withdrawal. In September 2004, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, which called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon. That same month, 29 Lebanese parliamentarians voted against a constitutional amendment that was designed to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud, a staunch ally of Syria.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 sparked a series of mass demonstrations calling for the truth about his assassination and the withdrawal of the Syrian Army. They were met by counter-demonstrations by Syria’s allies in Lebanon.

The government, widely seen as favoring Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon, resigned and on April 26, 2005, the remaining 14,000 Syrian troops and the Syrian intelligence services left the country.