I really hate when explainers about the political dynamics of a country start with, it’s very complicated, but in the case of Lebanon, it really is. The Lebanon we see now are borders largely drawn by the French between 1920 and 1943 out of the area that includes Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. Now, these borders alone need hours to discuss, but for now, let’s start here.
Power Sharing Deal
The French baked into Lebanon’s constitution a power-sharing deal where the president would always be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister always Sunni, and the speaker of parliament always Shia. Seats in government were divided along these lines as well. It was called the National Pact, and it was based a census from 1932 taken under French rule that was widely disputed and never updated. By the 1970s, that math was already wrong. The Shia population had grown dramatically, and the Palestinian refugee population, which was over 300,000 people at the time, had no place in the formula at all.
Civil War
Then the PLO arrived in Lebanon. Jordan expelled Palestinian armed factions like the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1970 during a brutal armed campaign called Black September. They relocated to Lebanon and set up military infrastructure in the south and around Beirut,and set up military infrastructure in the south and around Beirut, and made it their launch pad for operations against Israel. The pressure… blew the lid off in 1975. Christian militias, Palestinian factions, leftist groups, interventions from Syria. Lebanon collapsed into a civil war that would last 15 years and kill an estimated 150,000 people out of a population of 2.5 million. It was, and still is, a staggering human catastrophe. And through all of it, the Shia in the south, the poorest community in the country living on the front line of Israeli reprisals, sat waiting for rescue.
Hezbollah emerges
At this point, if you’ve seen my other videos, you already know who shows up. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution happens, and for the first time in modern history, a Shia Islamic government is in power somewhere. Tehran looked at the Lebanese Shia, poor, angry, and politically sidelined, and saw opportunity. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Iran sent Revolutionary Guard instructors into the Bekaa Valley, and what emerged from that training was Hezbollah, the Party of God. It was built from the beginning, as three things at once, a resistance force to fight Israeli occupation, which gave it immediate legitimacy on the ground, a social service provider, so schools, hospitals, clinics, filling the vacuum the Lebanese state never filled, and an ideological project committed to Khomeini’s doctrine of Islamic governance loyal to Tehran. That combination of military credibility, social roots, political organization, and Iranian backing is what has made Hezbollah impossible to simply bomb away. and removing Hezbollah is existential for Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. Now it is existential to this ceasefire. where Shia communities were largely located, and made it their launchpad for operations against Israel. The pressure of all of these fractures blew the lid off in 1975. Christian militias, Palestinian factions, leftist groups, interventions from Syria, Lebanon collapsed into a civil war that would last 15 years and kill an estimated 150,000 people out of a population of 2.5 million. It was, and still is, a staggering human catastrophe. And through all of it, the Shia in the south, the poorest community in the country living on the front line of Israeli reprisals, sat waiting for rescue.