Then, immigration became the straw that broke the fragile Lebanese camel's back. David Lamb, the Los Angeles Times correspondent in the Middle East, wrote in his 1988 book The Arabs:
"Lebanon worked, however artificially, then because one group, the Christians, were clearly in control, lesser minorities were given freedom to maneuver as long as they didn't get too uppity and everyone who mattered was making money. Tensions and hostilities festered only beneath the surface. But in 1970 Lebanon's delicate balance was upset."
Palestinian refugees had started arriving in 1948 and sped up after the 1967 Six Day War. Then, in the "Black September" of 1970, King Hussein of Jordan turned on Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization and booted them out of his country. They relocated to Lebanon.
By 1973, Palestinians made up one tenth of Lebanon’s population, and were radicalizing. They forged alliances with the other outsiders, the Druze. And PLO attacks on Israel brought retribution raining down on Lebanon as a whole, outraging the ruling Maronites.
On April 13, 1975, four Christians were killed in a drive-by shooting of a church. Later that day, a Maronite Phalangist militia massacred 27 Palestinians on a bus. The country descended into civil war, polarizing along Christian-Muslim lines, but with many strange alliances and rapid betrayals.
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