The road to war, 1968–1974

Between the Israeli raid on Beirut airport in December 1968 and the end of 1974, Lebanon was drawn step by step into the Arab-Israeli conflict while living through its sharpest social crisis since independence. The Cairo Agreement of November 1969 and the arrival of the PLO leadership after Black September 1970 made the country the main base of the Palestinian armed struggle, and Israeli raids and invasions of the south sent villagers fleeing towards Beirut. Twice, in 1969 and in May 1973, the army fought the Palestinian organisations, and twice Arab pressure imposed a compromise that settled nothing. At the same time workers, tobacco growers, teachers and students struck and marched, and the state answered with gunfire at the Ghandour factory in November 1972 and at Nabatieh in January 1973. By 1974 Musa al-Sadr was addressing armed crowds in Baalbek and Tyre, the Christian parties and the Palestinian groups were arming and training, and the Golan disengagement had left Lebanon as the only open front.

By datesThe whole period in one grid of years and months: point at a date to read the day.TimelineDay after day down one line, each event beside the books' accounts of it, and where they disagree.