Lebanon

English 174- Blog Project

New Lebanon

Lebanon is famous historical country in the Middle East. It was called in the bible the land of milk and honey. It have three officially recognized languages – Arabic, French and English. It is the only countries in the middle East consist of almost equal number of people are embracing Islam and Christianity. As result of that, people living there are considered us a mixture of backgrounds and religious groups.

Lebanon gained the independence from France in 1943. The Christians then Obtained on the head of the country. After that, political vacuum created there especially when the civil war started between Christians and Muslims. The tension increased between them during the Arab-Israeli war when 100,000 (Sunni) Muslim refugees evicted from Palestine into Lebanon in 1948. That changed the plurality of Lebanese Christians in the population into minority. Because of attacking Members of a radical Christian group on a bus full of Palestinians in downtown Beirut in 1975, the Revenge killings and violence began to spiral out of control. 20,000 Syrian troops sent to quash radical Muslim groups. In one massacre alone, 2,000 Palestinians were killed. There was a complete breakdown in trust between followers of the two religions. The Beirut then divided into two parts by the Green Line. The Christian east and the Muslim west. Finally, the war ended in 1989 and there are about 17 sub-groups with their own religious beliefs. Between 150,000-200,000 people died during the civil war. Moreover, quarter of population left the country.

For the time being, people in Lebanon are trying to recover the damages in the country's economy and forget the old fight between them. As a result of that, you can see many construction works are going in Beirut and there are a lot of foreign investments in the country. Moreover, Muslim and Christian are mixing together and they practicing the social life together. Furthermore, foreign armies left the country. Lebanon is attractive destination for many European and Arabic tourist. Although there were a lot of recoveries in Lebanon, there are still problems facing the normal life. Expensive cost of living and concentration of wealth caused many young people to leave the country.

Bibliography:

"Eye on Lebanon." Global Eye. Royal Geographic Society. 9 Feb. 2009 .