ABSTRACT
The Syrian invasion of Lebanon in June 1976 was the culmination of the process of an increasing Syrian political and military involvement in the Lebanese civil war. The Americans provided their good offices for the furtherance of indirect contacts between Syria and Israel, exploiting the interest of both sides in pursuing a dialogue. It would appear that the dispute with the Soviet Union which developed after the Syrian army invaded Lebanon surprised the Syrians, who had supposed that the Soviet Union would support the Syrian action or at least tacitly condone it. At the beginning of the 1970s, a radical change took place in the influence of the different Arab states on Lebanon which left its mark on the Lebanese civil war. In the Arab world, inter-Arab pressures were exerted to force the Syrians to stop the military offensive, remove their forces from Lebanon, and transfer the resolution of the Lebanese crisis to the Arab League.
