Apparently fearing that Israel would invade Lebanon to prevent a takeover of the
country by Muslim groups aligned with the PLO, Syria intervened, at the request of
the Maronites, in May 1976 to prevent the defeat of the Christian militias and restore
order. This intervention marked the beginning of what would turn into four decades
of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon.
A cease-fire negotiated by Arab diplomats in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October
18, 1976, brought the worst of the fighting to a halt, for the time being. The agree-
ment, ratified at an Arab League summit one week later, called for the deployment of
a 30,000-man Arab peacekeeping force—the Arab Deterrent Force—in the end com-
posed primarily of Syrian troops. The Riyadh agreement also affirmed the 1969 Cairo
agreement blessing the presence of the PLO in southern Lebanon. For the next six
years, Lebanon became a patchwork of sectarian enclaves ruled by partisan militias,
with Syrian troops maintaining a semblance of overall peace and a national Lebanese
government lacking any effective role.
In this first phase of Lebanon’s civil war, tens of thousands of people were killed,
with more than 100,000 wounded. Tens of thousands of people—many of them
Christians who had been prominent business leaders—left the country, never to return.
The economy collapsed. The once-vibrant city of Beirut lie in ruins, divided into
Christian and Muslim quarters separated by a virtual barrier known as the Green Line.
Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated in 1977, prompting another spate of sectarian
fighting. Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982 forced the PLO to leave Lebanon but left
the country even more devastated. Another round of sectarian violence in the late
1980s proved to be just as murderous as the first phase. The war came to an end after
Arab leaders, led by Saudi Arabia, negotiated another compromise, the Taif Accord,
in 1989 (Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, p. 334; Taif Accord, p. 344).
Following are excerpts from the resolution adopted by the leaders of Egypt, Kuwait,
Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, on Octo-
ber 18, 1976, following a conference held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on the civil
war in Lebanon.DOCUMENT
Riyadh Conference Statement on
the Lebanese Civil War
OCTOBER18, 1976The limited Arab summit conference which met in Riyadh, October 16–18, 1976, at
the initiative of His Majesty King Khalidi ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, King of Saudi
Arabia, and H. E. Sheikh Sabah al-Salim al Sabah, Ruler of the State of Kuwait, hav-
ing reviewed the resolution of the Arab League Council during the extraordinary ses-
sions it held between June 8–10, June 23, July 1, and September 4, 1976... the
conference resolves the following:
332 LEBANON AND SYRIA