Few people know that Lebanon was once part of Syria. It was detached from Syria by Imperial France and made into a nominally Maronite Christian nation. Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Druzes were also encompassed in this newly engineered country of 6 million. Then came 100,000 Palestinian refugees driven from their ancestral home in what is today Northern Israel. The admixture of these Palestinian refugees enflamed Lebanon’s traditional ferocious tribal rivalries. In 1975 they burst into major...
