Lebanon

• 1. Introduction

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  Lebanon takes its name from a Phoenician root, lbn, which means white. The word apparently describes the snow on its mountain peaks. The name is far older than the modern country. It turns up in Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of Ebla and on three of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Egyptian scribes wrote it as rmnn, because their script had no letter for l. The Hebrew Bible uses it nearly 70 times.

  Today the Lebanese Republic covers 10,452 square kilometres of the Levant and holds more than five million people. Beirut is its capital and largest city. The country is a founding member of the United Nations and the Arab League. Its culture is renowned across the Arab world and far beyond, carried largely by a large and influential diaspora.

  Three questions run through what follows. Why did these mountains become a shelter for so many faiths? How did a state built on a careful balance between religious communities hold together, and how did it break? And what pushed a country that had prospered for decades into one of the worst economic collapses the World Bank has seen since the 19th century?

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• 2. Four Landscapes

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  Lebanon lies between latitudes 33 and 35 degrees north, on the northwest corner of the Arabian Plate. Its Mediterranean coastline measures 225 kilometres. The border with Syria wraps the north and east for 375 kilometres, and the southern border with Israel is 79 kilometres long. In a small area called Shebaa Farms, Lebanon disputes where its land meets the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

  Within those lines, geographers recognize four regions. The first is the coastal plain, narrow and broken in places, which runs from the Akkar plain at the Syrian frontier to Ras al-Naqoura at the Israeli one. Marine sediment and river-laid alluvium make it fertile. Sandy bays alternate with rocky beaches.

  Behind the coast, the Lebanon mountains climb steeply in a ridge of limestone and sandstone that follows most of the country's length. The range is between 10 and 56 kilometres wide and is carved by deep, narrow gorges. Its summit, Qurnat as Sawda' in North Lebanon, stands at 3,088 metres above sea level. The ridge slopes toward the south and then rises again to 2,695 metres at Mount Sannine.

  The Beqaa Valley fills the space between the Lebanon range in the west and the Anti-Lebanon range in the east. It is 180 kilometres long, between 10 and 26 kilometres wide, and part of the Great Rift Valley system. Alluvial deposits give its soil its fertility. The Anti-Lebanon range runs parallel to the main ridge and peaks at Mount Hermon, 2,814 metres high.

  The Leontes, at 145 kilometres, is the longest river. It rises in the Beqaa west of Baalbek and reaches the sea north of Tyre. In all, Lebanon has 16 rivers, and none of them can be navigated. Thirteen begin on Mount Lebanon and cut through gorges to the sea. The other three start in the Beqaa.

  The climate is moderate and Mediterranean. Coastal winters are cool and rainy, and summers are hot and humid. In the high country, temperatures often fall below freezing, and heavy snow stays on the highest summits until early summer. In 2025, Storm Adam brought a severe polar system, with snow expected as low as 300 metres above sea level. Rainfall is generous by the standards of the dry lands around it. Yet parts of the north-east receive little, because the high western mountains cast a rain shadow over them.

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• 3. Cedars and Garbage

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  Cedar trees once covered large stretches of Lebanon, and the cedar remains the national emblem. Millennia of deforestation have altered the hydrology of Mount Lebanon and shifted the regional climate for the worse. As of 2012, forests covered 13.4 percent of the land. By 2016 the figure was 13.6 percent, with other wooded land adding another 11 percent. Few old cedars survive, mostly in scattered forest pockets, and the long dry summers keep them under constant threat from wildfire.

  Conservation has taken a particular shape. Lebanese foresters favor natural regeneration over planting, creating the right conditions for seeds to germinate and grow. The state protects cedars in several reserves, including the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, the Jaj Cedar Reserve and the Tannourine Reserve. The Ammouaa and Karm Shbat Reserves lie in the Akkar district, and the Forest of the Cedars of God stands near Bsharri.

  In 2010 the Environment Ministry set a ten-year plan to raise forest coverage by 20 percent, which equals planting two million trees each year. The United States Agency for International Development funded it, and the U.S. Forest Service ran it through the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative. Planting began in 2011 in ten regions, using cedar, pine, wild almond, juniper, fir, oak and other seedlings. Since then more than 600,000 trees have gone into the ground. Even so, the 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index gave Lebanon 3.76 out of 10, ranking it 141st among 172 countries.

  The closure of the Bourj Hammoud dump in 1997 led the government to open the al-Naameh dumpsite in 1998. It was meant to hold two million tons of waste for no more than six years, as a stopgap while officials drew up a lasting plan. Sixteen years later it was still open and had passed its capacity by 13 million tons. In July 2015, residents who had protested for years forced it to close. Piles of garbage then blocked streets in Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Critics blamed government inefficiency and corruption inside Sukleen, the company in charge of collection.

  In December 2015 the government signed a deal with Chinook Industrial Mining to export over 100,000 tons of untreated waste, at a reported cost of $212 per ton. Howa International, with offices in the Netherlands and Germany, co-signed the contract. In February 2016 the government withdrew after documents about shipping the trash to Russia turned out to be forgeries. On the 19th of March 2016, the cabinet reopened al-Naameh for 60 days and planned new landfills at Bourj Hammoud and Costa Brava. Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk said that more than 8,000 tons had been collected in just 24 hours.

  In 2017, Human Rights Watch found that the crisis, and the open burning of waste in particular, posed a health risk and breached international obligations. Parliament passed a law in September 2018 that banned open dumping and burning. In October 2018, the group's researchers still saw dumps burning at al-Qantara and Qabrikha.

  On the night of Sunday the 13th of October 2019, about 100 forest fires, by the count of Lebanese Civil Defense, broke out across large areas of the country. Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri contacted other nations for help, and Cyprus, Jordan, Turkey and Greece joined the firefighting. By Tuesday the 15th, rain had reduced the fires in several places.

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• 4. Phoenician Legacy

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  Archaeologists working at Byblos found the remains of prehistoric huts with crushed limestone floors, along with primitive weapons and burial jars. Neolithic and Chalcolithic fishing communities had lived on that stretch of shore more than 7,000 years ago. The evidence dates to earlier than 5000 BC, and Byblos is counted among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Around 12000 BC, the Natufian culture had already become the first to settle permanently.

  From 3200 to 539 BC, the land belonged to Phoenicia, a seafaring civilization descended from the Canaanites of the northern Levant. Its most prominent cities were Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. According to the Bible, King Hiram of Tyre worked closely with Solomon, sending cedar logs and skilled workers for Solomon's Temple.

  The Phoenicians are credited with inventing the oldest verified alphabet. It inspired the Greek alphabet, and the Latin one followed from that. In the 9th century BC, Phoenician colonies flourished around the Mediterranean, among them Carthage in present-day Tunisia and Cádiz in present-day Spain.

  Power then passed to outsiders. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the first to demand tribute and to attack cities that refused. The Neo-Babylonian Empire took control in the 6th century BC. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great folded the Phoenician cities into the Achaemenid Empire. After the siege of Tyre in 332 BCE, Alexander the Great absorbed the city-states into his own empire.

  In 64 BC, the Roman general Pompey annexed Syria to the Roman Republic. Under the later empire, the area split into two Imperial Provinces, Coele-Syria and Phoenice, and present-day Lebanon belonged to Phoenice. Like the rest of Syria and much of Anatolia, it became a major centre of early Christianity. Rome's long wars with Persia left one more mark. The Sasanian Empire occupied the country from 619 until 629.

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• 5. Mountain Refuge

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  In the late 4th and early 5th centuries, a hermit named Maron founded a monastic tradition near Mount Lebanon that stressed monotheism and asceticism. His monks spread his teachings, and their followers became known as Maronites. They moved up into the mountains to escape persecution by Roman authorities. That retreat set a pattern. The remote ranges became a refuge in later crises, and they sheltered Maronites, Druze, Shiite Muslims, Ismailis, Alawites and Jacobites side by side.

  In the 7th century, Muslims took Syria from the Byzantines. Under Uthman, caliph from 644 to 656, Mu'awiya, a relative serving as governor in Damascus, sent forces to the Lebanese coast. The coastal population began converting to Islam, while the mountains kept their Christian and other practices. Even where Islam and Arabic became officially dominant, the shift away from Christianity and the Syriac language was gradual. The Maronites kept considerable autonomy under every succession of rulers.

  For three centuries after the conquest, Mediterranean trade declined because of conflict with the Byzantines. The ports of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Tripoli struggled to recover and held small populations under Umayyad and Abbasid rule. Christians and Jews were often required to pay the jizya, a poll tax on non-Muslims. In the 980s, the Fatimid Caliphate took control of the Levant, and renewed links with Byzantium and Italy revived commerce. Tripoli and Tyre flourished into the 11th century, exporting textiles, sugar and glassware.

  The 11th century also gave rise to the Druze religion, which grew out of a branch of Shia Islam and won followers in southern Mount Lebanon. Druze feudal families ruled that southern region until the early 14th century. The Maronite population grew gradually in the north, while the Druze stayed in the south into the modern era. Shia feudal families governed Keserwan, Jabal Amel and the Beqaa Valley under the Mamluks and the Ottomans.

  After Roman Anatolia fell to the Muslim Turks, the Byzantines appealed to the Pope in Rome. The answer was the Crusades, launched by Franks from Western Europe. The First Crusade briefly set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli as Roman Catholic states along the coast. Full Muslim control returned after two centuries, with the Mamluk conquest. The most lasting result was the bond between the Franks, meaning the French, and the Maronites. Most Eastern Christians owed loyalty to Constantinople or to local patriarchs, but the Maronites pledged theirs to the Pope. The Franks saw them as fellow Catholics, and France and Italy supported them for centuries afterward.

  In 1516, Lebanon joined the Ottoman Empire, governed indirectly through local emirs. In 1590, the Druze tribal leader Fakhr al-Din II succeeded Korkmaz in southern Mount Lebanon and quickly became paramount emir of the Druze in the Shouf. He was named Sanjak-bey, overseeing several Ottoman sub-provinces and their tax collection, and he even built a fort in Palmyra. The expansion alarmed Sultan Murad IV, who sent a punitive expedition in 1633. Fakhr al-Din II was captured and imprisoned for two years. He was executed in April 1635, together with one of his sons. His surviving family governed a reduced area until the late 17th century. Members of the Shihab clan then ruled Mount Lebanon until 1830.

  Around 10,000 Christians were killed by Druze in the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, a rare break in a history of generally peaceful coexistence. A European-Ottoman treaty, the Règlement Organique, then ended the Emirate of Mount Lebanon, which had lasted about 400 years. In its place came the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, an autonomous unit with a Christian governor. European diplomatic pressure created it as a homeland for the Maronites. It lasted from 1861 to 1918.

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• 6. Mandate to Independence

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  Roughly 100,000 people in Beirut and Mount Lebanon starved to death during the First World War. The Ottoman army had taken direct control, disrupted supplies and confiscated animals, and famine followed. In 1916, Britain and France made the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which marked Lebanon and its surroundings as open to French influence or control. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Patriarch Elias Peter Hoayek spoke for the Maronites at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. He won a larger territory than Mount Lebanon alone, including areas with many Muslims and Druze.

  In 1920, King Faisal I declared the independence of the Arab Kingdom of Syria and claimed Lebanon. The kingdom dissolved after a defeat by the French at the Battle of Maysalun. The San Remo Conference had already assigned Syria and Lebanon to French rule, and the Treaty of Sèvres divided the territories a few months later. On the 1st of September 1920, Greater Lebanon, or Grand Liban, was created as a League of Nations Mandate with Beirut as its capital. It joined Mount Lebanon, North Lebanon, South Lebanon and the Bekaa, and those borders evolved into the country's present shape. The arrangement was ratified in July 1922. A constitution inspired by France's was adopted on the 23rd of May 1926, and the Lebanese Republic was proclaimed on the 1st of September 1926. France nonetheless kept control.

  Independence came out of the Second World War. In 1941, the Vichy authorities under High Commissioner Henri Dentz allowed Germany to move aircraft and supplies through Syria to Iraq. There, they were used against British forces. Britain feared that Nazi Germany would gain full control, so it sent its army into Syria and Lebanon. General Charles de Gaulle visited afterward, and on the 26th of November 1941, General Georges Catroux announced that Lebanon would become independent under the Free French.

  Elections followed in 1943, and on the 8th of November 1943 the new government unilaterally abolished the mandate. The French responded by imprisoning its members. Lebanese nationalists declared a provisional government, and British diplomats intervened on their behalf. On the 22nd of November 1943, the French reluctantly released the officials and accepted independence. In legal terms, the mandate ended on the 24th of October 1945, when the United Nations came into existence with Syria and Lebanon among its founding members. The last French troops withdrew in December 1946.

  An unwritten agreement from 1943, the National Pact, shaped everything that followed. It reserved the presidency for a Maronite Christian, the premiership for a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament for a Shia Muslim. The deputy posts went to Eastern Orthodox officials. The arrangement is meant to deter sectarian conflict and to reflect the demographic spread of the 18 recognized religious groups.

  Parliament's 128 seats are divided equally between Christians and Muslims, proportionally among the 18 denominations and proportionally among 26 regions. Before the Taif Agreement closed the 1975-1990 civil war, Christians held the advantage at a ratio of 6 to 5. Parliament serves a four-year term. It elects the president by a two-thirds majority for a single six-year term, and the cabinet must follow the same sectarian distribution. Each of the 18 groups also has its own family law and religious courts, while the rest of the legal system follows the French civil law model.

  The system has produced long stalemates. Between May 2014 and October 2016, Lebanon had no president at all.

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• 7. War and Occupation

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  About 100,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon during the 1948 war with Israel, and Israel did not allow them to return after the ceasefire. As of 2017, between 174,000 and 450,000 Palestinian refugees lived in Lebanon, about half of them in camps that often resemble neighborhoods. Palestinians are frequently barred by law from owning property or working in certain occupations. Human Rights Watch has described their conditions as "appalling social and economic conditions."

  In 1958, during the last months of President Camille Chamoun's term, Muslims who wanted Lebanon to join the United Arab Republic launched an insurrection. Chamoun asked for help, and 5,000 United States Marines landed in Beirut on the 15th of July. Fouad Chehab, a popular former general, then led a new government. Until the early 1970s, Lebanon was called "the Switzerland of the Middle East," a snow-capped holiday destination and a secure banking hub for Gulf Arabs. Beirut was nicknamed "the Paris of the Middle East."

  The defeat of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jordan sent many Palestinian militants to Lebanon in 1970. They stepped up their armed campaign against Israel, which raised sectarian tensions with the Maronites and other factions. A full civil war broke out in 1975. It pitted a coalition of Christian groups against the PLO, left-wing Druze and Muslim militias. In October 1976, the Arab League agreed to form a predominantly Syrian Arab Deterrent Force to restore calm. Syrian forces would stay as an occupying presence from 1976 to 2005.

  On the 11th of March 1978, Fatah militants hijacked two buses in northern Israel, and 37 Israelis died. Four days later, Israel invaded and occupied most of the land south of the Litani River. UN Security Council Resolution 425 called for withdrawal and created the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon. Israeli forces pulled back later that year but kept a 12-mile security zone along the border. The South Lebanon Army, a Christian militia led by Major Saad Haddad and backed by Israel, held its positions.

  On the 17th of July 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed apartment buildings in Beirut that housed offices of PLO-associated groups. Lebanon's delegate to the Security Council claimed that 300 civilians were killed and 800 wounded. The bombing drew worldwide condemnation and a temporary embargo on U.S. aircraft exports to Israel. In 1982, PLO attacks from Lebanon led to another Israeli invasion and a siege of Beirut. American, French and Italian troops, joined by a British contingent in 1983, arrived to supervise the PLO's evacuation.

  The civil war flared again in September 1982 after the assassination of President Bachir Gemayel, an Israeli ally. Sectarian massacres followed, including at Sabra and Shatila. The multinational force withdrew in the spring of 1984, after a devastating bombing the year before. Israel occupied parts of the country from 1985 to 2000.

  Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s, formed by Shiite clerics who received money and training from Iran. It arose in the aftermath of the 1982 war and drew inspiration from the Islamic Revolution in Iran. It fought Israel, and it also used suicide attacks, car bombings and assassinations. Its stated goals included eliminating Israel, supporting the Shia cause in the civil war, ending Western presence in Lebanon and founding an Islamic state.

  By the end of 1987, one US dollar was worth 500 Lebanese pounds, which made the legal minimum wage worth only $17 a month. Most goods in shops were priced in dollars. A Save the Children director estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children needed help and were living almost entirely on subsidized bread. Hezbollah was receiving about $3-5 million a month from Iran. In September 1988, parliament failed to elect a successor to President Amine Gemayel.

  After the Arab League Summit of May 1989, a Saudi-Moroccan-Algerian committee issued a peace plan on the 16th of September 1989, and all sides accepted it. A ceasefire followed, ports and airports reopened, and refugees began to return. That month, parliament agreed to the Taif Agreement, which set an outline timetable for Syrian withdrawal and a formula for easing religious quotas in politics. The war ended at the close of 1990, after 16 years. About 150,000 people were killed and 200,000 wounded, and nearly a million civilians were displaced, some of them for good. The agreement has still not been fully implemented.

  Israeli forces fully withdrew in May 2000, and the Lebanese now mark the 25th of May as Liberation Day. On the 14th of February 2005, a car bomb killed former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Leaders of the March 14 Alliance accused Syria, while Syria and the March 8 Alliance said Israel was behind it. Demonstrations demanded that Syrian troops leave and that an international commission investigate. Under Western pressure, Syria began withdrawing, and by the 26th of April it was leaving. Preliminary findings of the UN investigation, the Mehlis report, came out on the 20th of October 2005. They cited indications that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services organized the killing.

  On the 12th of July 2006, Hezbollah launched rocket attacks and raids into Israel, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two. Israel responded with airstrikes, artillery fire and a ground invasion of the south. Security Council Resolution 1701 ended the war on the 14th of August 2006. Some 1,191 Lebanese and 160 Israelis died. In 2007, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp became the center of fighting between the army and Fatah al-Islam, which left at least 169 soldiers, 287 insurgents and 47 civilians dead.

  On the 7th of May 2008, Hezbollah and Amal forces seized western Beirut after the government declared Hezbollah's communications network illegal. The government denounced the violence as a coup attempt, and at least 62 people died. The Doha Agreement of the 21st of May 2008 ended the fighting and 18 months of political paralysis. Michel Suleiman became president, and a national unity government took office with a veto for the opposition.

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• 8. Collapse and Endurance

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  In the 1950s, Lebanon's GDP growth was the second highest in the world, even though the country had no oil reserves. Banking and trade carried it. The civil war later cut national output by half. By 2006, Beirut's reconstruction was almost complete, bank assets exceeded 75 billion US dollars, and tourists were arriving in growing numbers. In 2009, The New York Times ranked Beirut the number one travel destination worldwide, and the country counted 1,851,081 tourist visits.

  Emigration gave the economy a second pillar. In 2008, remittances from Lebanese abroad totalled $8.2 billion, about one-fifth of the economy. Lebanese commercial networks stretched around the world.

  On the 17th of October 2019, mass demonstrations began over planned taxes on gasoline, tobacco and online phone calls such as those made through WhatsApp. They quickly grew into a nationwide protest against sectarian rule, unemployment, corruption and failures to supply electricity, water and sanitation. Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned. On the 19th of December 2019, former Education Minister Hassan Diab was designated to succeed him.

  The economic crisis had deep roots. The Central Bank of Lebanon has been described as running a long-term Ponzi scheme, borrowing dollars at high interest rates to cover deficits and defend a currency peg. By 2019, new deposits were no longer enough. Banks closed for weeks, capital controls were applied arbitrarily, and the country defaulted in 2020. According to the economist Steve H. Hanke, Lebanon became the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to see inflation above 50 percent for 30 consecutive days.

  At the port of Beirut on Tuesday the 4th of August 2020, 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, stored unsafely, accidentally caught fire. The explosion destroyed the surrounding areas, killed over 200 people and injured thousands more. Protests resumed within days, and on the 10th of August 2020 Prime Minister Diab and his cabinet resigned, staying on in a caretaker role.

  The lights began to fail. On the 11th of March 2021, caretaker Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar warned of "total darkness" at the end of the month unless money was found for fuel. In August 2021, a large fuel explosion in the north killed 28 people. On the 9th of October 2021, the whole nation lost power for 24 hours after its two main power stations ran out of fuel. Diesel generators filled the gap, and sewage seeped into drinking water. Cases of Hepatitis A rose, while the health service lost staff to emigration.

  In May 2022, Lebanon held its first election since the collapse. Hezbollah and its allies lost their parliamentary majority, and the Lebanese Forces under Samir Geagea became the largest Christian party. The United Nations considered more than 80 percent of the population poor. Many people tried to flee by sea. In April 2022, six people died and about 50 were rescued after an overloaded boat sank at Tripoli. On the 22nd of September, at least 94 people died when a migrant boat capsized off Syria's coast. Nine survived.

  On the 1st of February 2023, the central bank devalued the Lebanese pound by 90 percent, the first official devaluation in 25 years. By then GDP had shrunk by 40 percent since 2018, and the currency had lost 95 percent of its value. Annual inflation exceeded 200 percent, and the minimum wage was equal to roughly $1 a day. The United Nations reported that three out of four Lebanese lived below the poverty line.

  The Gaza war then reignited fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. In September 2024, Israel exploded pagers and walkie-talkies used in Lebanon. Airstrikes on the 23rd of September 2024 killed at least 558 people and set off a mass exodus from the south. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the 27th of September. Israel invaded on the 1st of October to destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure in the south. A ceasefire in November 2024 ended 13 months of conflict, giving Hezbollah 60 days to end its armed presence in the south, with Israeli forces to withdraw in the same period.

  In December 2024, the fall of Assad's government in Syria dealt another blow to Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally. In January 2025, army commander Joseph Aoun became the 14th president after a two-year vacancy. In February 2025, Nawaf Salam, a former president of the International Court of Justice, formed a government of 24 ministers, ending two years of caretaker rule. It won a confidence vote on the 26th of February 2025.

  Since the 2nd of March 2026, intensified Israeli attacks have killed over 1,000 people and displaced nearly 1 million, about 20 percent of the population. On the 24th of March, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced plans for a "defensive buffer zone" in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. A week later he said that residential structures in border villages would be demolished, to stop approximately 600,000 displaced residents from returning.

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