ABSTRACT
As anyone knows who has written about Lebanon, particularly Lebanon since 1975, nomenclature presents a problem. Alignments were based only partially upon class, religion, or ideology. This was not a class war, although class conciousness played a role in it; it was not a war of Christian against Muslim, although in terms of numbers on either side this would seem to be true; and it was not a clash simply between left and right, although “leftist” and Marxist predominated on the one side. Even the term “Civil War” itself, some would argue, is a misnomer biased in favor of the view that the Lebanese system had collapsed because of internal flaws rather than because it had been attacked by extrinsic forces.
