
50 years on, Lebanon still grapples with a civil war's legacy
What happened next on April 13, 1975, would change the course of Lebanon, plunging it into 15 years of civil war.
It would kill about 150,000 people, leave 17,000 missing and lead to foreign intervention. Beirut became synonymous with snipers, kidnappings and car bombs.
Lebanon has never fully grappled with the war's legacy, and in many ways it has never fully recovered, 50 years later. The government on Sunday will mark the anniversary with a minute of silence.
Unrest had been brewing. Palestinian fighters had begun launching attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory. Leftist groups and many Muslims in Lebanon sympathised with the Palestinian cause. Christians and some other groups saw the Palestinian fighters as a threat.
At the time, Mohammad Othman was 16, a Palestinian refugee in the Tel al-Zaatar camp east of Beirut.
A man walks past a building full of bullet holes from previous fighting during Lebanon's civil war on a former Beirut frontline. AP
Three buses had left camp that morning, carrying students like him as well as fighters from a coalition of hardline factions that had broken away from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They passed through the Ein Rummaneh neighbourhood without incident and joined the military parade.
The buses were supposed to return together, but some participants were tired after marching and wanted to go back early. They hired a small bus from the street, Othman said. Thirty-three people packed in.
Sudden gunfire
They were unaware that earlier that day, small clashes had broken out between Palestinians and Phalange Party members guarding the church in Ein Rummaneh. A bodyguard for party leader Pierre Gemayel had been killed.
Suddenly the road was blocked, and gunmen began shooting at the bus "from all sides," Othman recalled.
Some passengers had guns they had carried in the parade, Othman said, but they were unable to draw them quickly in the crowded bus.
A camp neighbour fell dead on top of him. The man's 9-year-old son was also killed. Othman was shot in the shoulder.
Mohammed Othman prays over the graves of those killed on April 13, 1975, at the Palestine Martyrs Cemetery in Beirut.
Associated Press
"The shooting didn't stop for about 45 minutes until they thought everyone was dead," he said. Othman said paramedics who eventually arrived had a confrontation with armed men who tried to stop them from evacuating him.
Twenty-two people were killed.
Some Lebanese say the men who attacked the bus were responding to an assassination attempt against Gemayel by Palestinian fighters.
Others say the Phalangists had set up an ambush intended to spark a wider conflict.
Wrong versions of news
Marwan Chahine, a Lebanese-French journalist who wrote a book about the events of April 13, 1975, said he believes both narratives are wrong.
Chahine said he found no evidence of an attempt to kill Gemayel, who had left the church by the time his bodyguard was shot. And he said the attack on the bus appeared to be more a matter of trigger-happy young men than a "planned operation."
There had been past confrontations, "but I think this one took this proportion because it arrived after many others and at a point when the authority of the state was very weak," Chahine said.
A woman walks past a poster bearing the portrait of Joseph Abou Assi, a Christian Phalangist party member, placed at the site where he was killed 50 years ago in the Christian neihbourhood of Ain al-Remmaneh district in Beirut.
Agence France-Presse
The Lebanese army had largely ceded control to militias, and it did not respond to the events in Ein Rummaneh that day.
The armed Palestinian factions had been increasingly prominent after the PLO was driven out of Jordan in 1970, and Lebanese Christians had also increasingly armed themselves.
"The Kataeb would say that the Palestinians were a state within a state," Chahine said, using the Phalange Party's Arabic name. "But the reality was, you had two states in a state. Nobody was following any rules."
War was 'inevitable'
Selim Sayegh, a member of parliament with the Kataeb Party who was 14 and living in Ein Rummaneh when the fighting started, said he believes war had been inevitable since the Lebanese army backed down from an attempt to take control of Palestinian camps two years earlier.
Sayegh said men at the checkpoint that day saw a bus full of Palestinians "and thought that is the second wave of the operation" that started with the killing of Gemayel's bodyguard.
The war unfolded quickly from there. Alliances shifted. New factions formed. Israel and Syria occupied parts of the country. The United States intervened, and the US embassy and Marine barracks were targeted by bombings. Beirut was divided between Christian and Muslim sectors.
A Palestinian Fatah fighter fires a machine gun at Syrian troops, near the resort town of Bhamdoun, mount Lebanon.
File/Associated Press
In response to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, a Shiite group was formed in the early 1980s with Iranian backing: Hezbollah. It would grow to be arguably the most powerful armed non-state group in the region.
Hezbollah was the only group allowed to keep its weapons after Lebanon's civil war, given special status as a "resistance force" because Israel was still in southern Lebanon. After the group was badly weakened last year in a war with Israel that ended with a ceasefire, there has been increasing pressure for it to disarm.
Othman said he became a fighter because "there were no longer schools or anything else to do." Later he would disarm and became a pharmacist.
He remembers being bewildered when a peace accord in 1989 ushered in the end of civil war: "All this war and bombing, and in the end they make some deals and it's all over."
Of the 10 others who survived the bus attack, he said, three were killed a year later when Christian militias attacked the Tel al-Zaatar camp. Another was killed in a 1981 bombing at the Iraqi embassy. A couple died of natural causes, one lives in Germany, and he has lost track of the others.
Bus a reminder of the shooting
The bus has also survived, as a reminder.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the attack, it was towed from storage on a farm to the private Nabu Museum in Heri, north of Beirut. Visitors took photos with it and peered into bullet holes in its rusted sides.
Ghida Margie Fakih, a museum spokesperson, said the bus will remain on display indefinitely as a "wake-up call" to remind Lebanese not to go down the path of conflict again.
The bus "changed the whole history in Lebanon and took us somewhere that nobody wanted to go," she said.
Associated Press
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Middle East Eye
an hour ago
- Middle East Eye
Israeli settlers torch cars, vandalise property in Taybeh attack
Israeli settlers torched two vehicles and spray-painted racist graffiti in the majority Christian-Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank early on Monday morning. According to Anadolu Agency, one of the homes belonged to a Christian-Palestinian journalist and the other to a village council member. There are no reports of settler arrests, which are rare occurrences amid near-daily settler attacks occurring across the West Bank. Settler attacks in Taybeh have increased in recent weeks, attracting concern from Western leaders and religious figures. A visit to Taybeh from a delegation of Christian leaders and European diplomats on 14 July was followed by a visit from US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on 19 July. He condemned the attacks as "unacceptable". "To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship, it is an act of terror, and it is a crime," said Hukabee in a statement.


Gulf Today
3 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Israel says Gaza got 120 trucks of aid on day one of pause
Israel said on Monday that more than 120 truckloads of food aid were distributed by the UN and aid agencies in the Gaza Strip on the first day of a promised limited break in fighting. On Sunday, Israel declared a "tactical pause" in military operations in part of Gaza and promised to open secure routes for aid, urging humanitarian groups to step up food distribution. "Over 120 trucks were collected and distributed yesterday by the UN and international organisations," said COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry body overseeing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories. "An additional 180 trucks entered Gaza and are now awaiting collection and distribution, along with hundreds of others still queued for UN pickup," COGAT said in a post on X. Separately, Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have conducted parachute air drops of smaller quantities of aid. A boy receives treatment for an injury following Israeli bombardment on an area where people displaced by conflict were sheltering in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, at Nasser Medical Complex on Monday. Agence France-Presse More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza and, before the eruption of the latest 21-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas, it took roughly 500 trucks per day of commercial trade and humanitarian aid to supply the territory. In recent weeks UN agencies have been warning of a life-threatening famine as aid supplies dry up, and international pressure has been building for a ceasefire to allow a massive relief operation. Hunger 'not a weapon of war' Israel's government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, furiously denies that it is using hunger as a weapon of war, and instead accuses the aid agencies of failing to pick up and distribute aid delivered to Gaza's border crossing points. "More consistent collection and distribution by UN agencies and international organisations equals more aid reaching those who need it most in Gaza," COGAT said. Agence France-Presse

Zawya
3 hours ago
- Zawya
49 Qatari Aid Trucks Arrive in Egypt, Jordan on Way to Gaza Strip
As part of the State of Qatar's ongoing humanitarian support for the brotherly Palestinian people, 49 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid arrived in the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The aid was provided by the State of Qatar through the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), in cooperation with Qatar Charity and the Qatar Red Crescent Society. It will be delivered to the World Food Programme (WFP) for distribution to those in need in the Gaza Strip via the Rafah and Zikim crossings. The aid included 4,704 food parcels for 4,704 families for more than 28,224 beneficiaries, 200 tons of food baskets targeting approximately 50,000 beneficiaries, 174 tons of flour for 43,000 beneficiaries, and 5,000 units of baby formula for the most vulnerable children. This aid comes amid the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip resulting from the ongoing blockade. It embodies Qatar's unwavering commitment to supporting the Palestinian people and its commitment to alleviating their deepening suffering and providing urgent relief to the most affected groups. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The State of Qatar.