ABSTRACT
The Palestinians of Tel al-Zaatar, like those elsewhere in Lebanon, had given an effusive welcome to the Palestinian nationalist movement whose popularity had erupted after the Arabs' 1967 defeat. The Lebanese militias, and most of the Palestinian factions involved in Lebanon, spent the truce period re-arming for the battles to come. Towards the end of October, the security situation in Lebanon took another turn for the worse. The insurrectionary officer was Brigadier Aziz al-Ahdab, a son of Lebanon's first Sunni prime minister. The convening of the Riyadh mini-summit signalled the beginning of the end of the 1975-6 Lebanese civil war. The Lebanese civil war had passed through many phases. In April 1975, it was started by a confrontation between Maronites and Palestinians. For many years prior to the civil war, Syria's Baathist rulers had considered Jumblatt an ally inside Lebanon.
