Lebanon - History
	Lebanon, the homeland of the ancient Phoenicians, became part of Turkey´s Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. When, in 1918, the Ottoman Empire was dissolved (at the end of the First World War) a Greater Lebanese state was created by the Allied powers. The new state was a response to the nationalist aspirations of the predominant Christian population in the area, but it included territories traditionally considered to be part of Syria, with largely Muslim populations. Lebanon was administered by France, under a League of Nations mandate, from 1920 until independence was declared on 26 Nov. 1941. A republic was established in 1943, and full autonomy was granted in January 1944. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, and during the Arab-Israeli wars, thousands of Palestinians fled to Lebanon, where most of them were housed in refugee camps in the south of the country. Following the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, military training centres for Palestinian guerrilla fighters were established in the camps. From 1968 the fedayin ("martyrs"), as the guerrillas were known, began making raids into Israel, provoking retaliatory attacks by Israeli forces against targets in southern Lebanon. In March 1978 a raid by forces of the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Al-Fatah), the main guerrilla group within the PLO, provoked retaliatory action by Israel, whose forces advanced into southern Lebanon. The UN Security Council demanded an Israeli withdrawal, and, by means of Resolution 425, established a UN Interim Force in Lebanon, initially of 4,000 troops. Israeli forces withdrew in June, but transferred control of a border strip to the pro-Israeli Christian militias of Maj. Saad Haddad. In October, following renewed fighting (which had erupted in July) in Beirut between Syrian troops of the ADF and right-wing Christian militias, the ADF states agreed on a peace plan (the Beiteddin Declaration), which aimed to restore the authority of the Lebanese Government and army. Attempts to implement the plan were unsuccessful, however, and the fragmentation of the country continued. In mid-1983 a struggle became evident for control of al-Fatah, involving the PLO Chairman, Yasser Arafat, and Syrian-backed rebels. Fighting between rival factions intensified in September, and persisted until a truce agreement, brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria, provided for the evacuation of Arafat and some 4,000 of his troops, under UN protection, variously to Algeria, Tunisia and the Yemen Arab Republic.