A Victory for Whom? Lessons from the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars | Small Wars Journal

Lessons learned from the Israeli Defense Forces wars in Lebanon.
"Lebanon’s Civil War began in 1975[ii] and for 15 years the nation was caught in a cycle of conflict and unstable political settlements.[iii] Internally, the Lebanese government’s consociational democracy – a system of power sharing between diverse ethno-religious groups – had collapsed after becoming imbalanced with migration shifts.[iv] Externally, Farid El Khazen cites competing strategic interests, for ‘throughout the war, external actors, particularly the regional actors that took an active part in the war, [Israel, Syria, Iran and the PLO], had as much at stake as the Lebanese parties themselves.’[v] His observation that conflict exists in internal and external dimensions deftly captures the spirit of the Lebanon Wars."