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The Strange War "The Missile War" .. The Lebanon War _ Photos _ Documents _ Events

The Strange War "The Missile War"
From April - to December - 1978

One could almost say that it was a strange war, the war that was waged by the alliance of the Kataeb and National Liberal Parties and the rest of the Lebanese Front military and political factions, against the Arab Deterrent Forces, especially the Syrian forces. The strangeness is that this alliance in particular was the most prominent factor in order for Syria in particular to play a security and political role in Lebanon to stop the main Lebanese war.

The Kataeb and National Liberal Parties made efforts to convince Syrian officials to move units of the Syrian army to Lebanon to stop the war. And indeed, those forces moved away from their positions and entered Lebanon and were able to stop the Lebanese war as a whole.

But it later became clear, after a period of time of the presence of Syrian forces within the Arab Deterrent Forces, that the Phalangist-Shamounist alliance wanted those forces to play a repressive role against the progressive nationalist party in Lebanon, but the Syrian leadership, and the leadership of the Deterrent Forces as a whole, refused this, adhering to the mission for which they came in Lebanon: to stop the war in Lebanon and allow all Lebanese, especially the Lebanese state, to rebuild their political lives in a national direction that deals with Arab national political life as a whole. But the alliance found this to be something that contradicted its goals, and even the mission and goals for which it had launched the war. So it began to fabricate incidents against units of the Arab Deterrent Forces, especially the Syrian forces, in isolated and sometimes remote places. The alliance began to escalate its political and military campaign against those forces and their leaders until those campaigns reached an open war.

Gradually, it became clear that this new war against the Syrian deterrent forces in particular was nothing more than a second stage in the war - the conspiracy that was launched in Lebanon by the Lebanese themselves and against each other. The new war seemed really strange for several reasons:

1 - It came as a war from the Phalanges and the Free Patriots against the Arab deterrent forces, especially the Syrian ones, as they are the main ones in it, even though these forces became the forces of Lebanese legitimacy because their entry was by a Lebanese-Arab decision and with the approval of the parliament, the president of the republic and his government.

2 - It came as a war from those who confirm that they are with legitimacy, and they are its protectors, a war against the forces of legitimacy itself.

3 - It came as a war from the Phalanges and Chamounist parties, even though their leaderships confirmed their alliance with Syria and considered Syria the savior of the Lebanese from their destructive war, and especially considering Syria prevented the destruction of the Maronite Christian community in Lebanon.

4_ The strangeness of that war is that it was fierce, so much so that the forces of the Phalange-Shamoun alliance appeared to be heavily and modernly armed and began to use their weapons against the Syrian forces, whether heavy artillery or missiles.

The strange war... The second stage of the Lebanon war constituted the second episode in the conspiracy against Lebanon.

But the deterrence forces, especially the Syrian ones, withstood the strange new attack, and little by little they were able to stop that attack, and the Lebanese legitimate forces continued throughout the period that is still ongoing. That strange war...

Which was also known as the missile war because the weapon that dominated its clashes was the missile, whether it was the Syrian missile launchers, or those SS missiles that the coalition militants used.

The strange war... Here it is, day by day and incident by incident.

Beirut and its southern and eastern suburbs in particular, and its internal neighborhoods, returned to groaning under shelling and tension due to the militias' war against the Arab deterrence forces.

This war was characterized by missiles and shells in every direction, and from the roofs of tall buildings, until its shells and flames formed rare paintings....