ABSTRACT
Lebanon had experienced the same waves of political tension that swept over the rest of the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, but because of its relative stability, Beirut had been called the 'Paris of the Middle East.' Although the arrival of the Palestinian leadership in the early 1970s was a brutal shock to the fragile Lebanese political system, the actual seeds of the problem were planted just after the Six-Day War. A gradual increase in Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) activities launched from Lebanon against Israel, coupled with ever-growing PLO involvement in domestic Lebanese politics, brought the situation to a turning point in February 1975. The paramount Syrian interest was to go after any Islamist sympathizers and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon. To police Lebanese border, Israel used as its proxy the South Lebanon Army (SLA): a militia composed mostly of Christian soldiers.
