To my understanding the entirety of Lebanon's present-day problems, including its civil war and the fallout thereof, originated with 400,000 Palestinian 'refugees' being expelled at gunpoint from Jordan (for using Jordanian territory as a staging base to attack Israel from, then trying to overthrow the Jordanian government when the King told them to cut it out). This was back in 1970, and was called Black September IIRC.
The Muslim Palestinian migration completely altered the demographic balance in the previously (as you said) Christian majority Lebanon and left them saddled with a huge number of, frankly, parasitic intruders who went right back to acting the exact same way they had in Jordan. The Palestinians contributed squat to Lebanon's society or economy, their refugee camps were squalid hellholes filled with people who had no intent to integrate, and their leaders saw Lebanon as nothing more than the new staging ground for their harassment of Israel.
That in turn invited Israeli ire, leading to the Lebanese Christian leadership trying to get a handle on the Palestinians, who took as kindly to that as they had to Jordan's King trying the same, and cue the civil war. Hezbollah was originally a very minor player (as were the Shiite militias as a whole), but they eventually came out on top thanks to Iranian & Syrian patronage and the Christians, Sunnis and Druze beating each other bloody.
Looks to me like Lebanon could've spared itself a lot of pain, and Beirut remained the Paris of the Orient rather than ground zero for a new quasi-Hiroshima, were it not for the Palestinians coming in and ruining everything in the 60s-early 70s.
I had tea at Walid Jumblatt's estate and it was magnificent. They also had anti-air craft guns in the courtyards and armed militia everywhere. If I had to put money on what sect would survive and become stronger from a Civil War Pt II, it would be the Druze
To my understanding the entirety of Lebanon's present-day problems, including its civil war and the fallout thereof, originated with 400,000 Palestinian 'refugees' being expelled at gunpoint from Jordan (for using Jordanian territory as a staging base to attack Israel from, then trying to overthrow the Jordanian government when the King told them to cut it out). This was back in 1970, and was called Black September IIRC.
The Muslim Palestinian migration completely altered the demographic balance in the previously (as you said) Christian majority Lebanon and left them saddled with a huge number of, frankly, parasitic intruders who went right back to acting the exact same way they had in Jordan. The Palestinians contributed squat to Lebanon's society or economy, their refugee camps were squalid hellholes filled with people who had no intent to integrate, and their leaders saw Lebanon as nothing more than the new staging ground for their harassment of Israel.
That in turn invited Israeli ire, leading to the Lebanese Christian leadership trying to get a handle on the Palestinians, who took as kindly to that as they had to Jordan's King trying the same, and cue the civil war. Hezbollah was originally a very minor player (as were the Shiite militias as a whole), but they eventually came out on top thanks to Iranian & Syrian patronage and the Christians, Sunnis and Druze beating each other bloody.
Looks to me like Lebanon could've spared itself a lot of pain, and Beirut remained the Paris of the Orient rather than ground zero for a new quasi-Hiroshima, were it not for the Palestinians coming in and ruining everything in the 60s-early 70s.
Fucking Palestinians gonna Palestinian.
I had tea at Walid Jumblatt's estate and it was magnificent. They also had anti-air craft guns in the courtyards and armed militia everywhere. If I had to put money on what sect would survive and become stronger from a Civil War Pt II, it would be the Druze