History of the Lebanese-Israeli Conflict
-- A brief history of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict:
Because Israel and Lebanon have never signed a peace accord, the countries remain officially in a state of war that has existed since 1948 when Lebanon joined other Arab nations against the newly formed Jewish state.
The two countries have been bound by an armistice signed in 1949, which regulates the presence of military forces in southern Lebanon.
With a large Christian minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim region, mercantile and Westernized, Lebanon was considered the least hostile Arab neighbor to Israel _ and the weakest. The rare skirmishes that occurred were mostly symbolic.
That began to change as Palestinian guerrillas became active. In 1968, Israeli commandos landed at Beirut airport and blew up 13 Lebanese airliners in retaliation for Arab militants firing on an Israeli airliner in Athens, Greece.
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Because Israel and Lebanon have never signed a peace accord, the countries remain officially in a state of war that has existed since 1948 when Lebanon joined other Arab nations against the newly formed Jewish state.
The two countries have been bound by an armistice signed in 1949, which regulates the presence of military forces in southern Lebanon.
With a large Christian minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim region, mercantile and Westernized, Lebanon was considered the least hostile Arab neighbor to Israel _ and the weakest. The rare skirmishes that occurred were mostly symbolic.
That began to change as Palestinian guerrillas became active. In 1968, Israeli commandos landed at Beirut airport and blew up 13 Lebanese airliners in retaliation for Arab militants firing on an Israeli airliner in Athens, Greece.