* 1996 – In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the United Nations compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

Although Hezbollah originally aimed to transform Lebanon into a formal Faqihi Islamic republic, this goal has been abandoned in favor of a more inclusive approach.

As of July 2012, " Hezbollah is ... reported to have up to 50, 000 missiles — more than three times the 13, 000 it reportedly held when it began launching rockets at Israel six years ago, leading to the Second Lebanon War.

, the Israeli government believed Hezbollah had an arsenal of more than 15, 000 long-range rockets stationed on its border with Lebanon.

At first the kingdom was little more than a loose collection of towns and cities captured during the crusade, but at its height in the mid-12th century the kingdom roughly encompassed the territory of modern-day Israel, Lebanon and Palestine.

The earliest evidence of civilization in Lebanon dates back more than 7, 000 years — predating recorded history.

The French expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon, which was mostly populated by Maronites and Druze, to include more Muslims.

The coastal plain of Lebanon is the historic home of a string of coastal trading cities of Semitic culture, which the Greeks termed Phoenicia, whose maritime culture flourished there for more than 1000 years.

The outbreak of hostilities changed this, as Lebanon was to feel the weight of the conflict in the Middle East more heavily than most other areas occupied by the Syrians.

Consequently, the demographics of Lebanon were profoundly altered, as the territory added contained people who were predominantly Muslim or Druze: Lebanese Christians, of which the Maronites were the largest subgrouping, now constituted barely more than 50 % of the population, while Sunni Muslims in Lebanon saw their numbers increase eightfold, Shi ' ite Muslims fourfold.

In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Lebanon became home to more than 110, 000 Palestinian refugees.

The PLO's " vicious terrorist attacks in Israel " dating from this period were countered by Israeli bombing raids in southern Lebanon, where " 150 or more towns and villages ... have been repeatedly savaged by the Israeli armed forces since 1968 ," of which the village of Khiyam is probably the best-known example.

On January 23, 2006 The UN Security Council called on the Government of Lebanon to make more progress in controlling its territory and disbanding militias, while also calling on Syria to cooperate with those efforts.

The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon, leaving more than 1500 dead civilians and still the Israeli army couldn't penetrate the Lebanese land borders and was driven back by Hezbollah suffering heavy casualties and defeated.

Over the centuries, members of the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula sought a more prosperous life in Lebanon.

Anti-Lebanon is more arid, especially in its northern parts, than Mount Lebanon and is consequently less productive and more thinly populated.

In the Lebanon Mountains the gradual increase in altitude produces colder winters with more precipitation and snow.

" Despite the relatively low altitude of the Biqa Valley ( the highest point of which, near Baalbek, is only ) more snow falls there than at comparable altitudes west of the Lebanon Mountains.

According to Nahhas, by the end of 2011 all the areas of Lebanon will have fast internet ranging from 10-15 Mbit / s download, and 20 Mbit / s and more will be available the year after, allowing Lebanon to finally catch up with the rest of the world.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Lebanon never spent more than 4 % of its GNP on the military budget.

Tyre, on the coast of modern-day Lebanon, was the last major Crusader city that was not captured by Muslim forces ( strategically, it would have made more sense for Saladin to capture Tyre before Jerusalem — however, Saladin chose to pursue Jerusalem first because of the importance of the city to Islam ).

Druzes and Christians grouped in political rather than religious parties so the party lines in Lebanon obliterated racial and religious lines and the people grouped themselves regardless of their religious affiliations, into one or the other of these two parties.

It is now one of the freest and most competitive economies in the Middle East scoring higher than the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand ( sometimes tens of thousands ), Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the East Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in Beirut, Lebanon, as well as Hampstead Village in the London conurbation.

Around June 1982, Iran dispatched more than 1000 Revolutionary Guards to the predominately Shi ' ite Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.

And in the event that aspects of crisis management depended on contact with the critical man-on-the-spot, as it did in 1958 when Deputy Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy was dispatched to Lebanon to attempt to defuse the crisis, his instructions came from the Department of State and he reported to the Secretary of State rather than directly to the White House, as became the practice during the height of the Vietnam War.

Tiling patterning has been more highly developed in the Islamic world than anywhere else, and many extraordinary examples of inlay work have come from Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon and Iran.

Many leaders of Palestinian groups lived in luxurious accommodations throughout the Eastern Bloc, Europe, or various Arab states, especially Syria, Iraq, and Libya Jibril uniquely insisted on living in a specially designed security bunker in the Lebanon mountains, a hilly terrain that was more attuned to the image of a guerrilla leader than Arafat's mansions in Tunis.

In Iraq however, triple language programmes are, like in Lebanon and Syria, normal, except rather than using French, Kurdish is taught alongside Arabic and English due to Iraq's considerably sized Kurdish minority in the north, and bilingual official language policy regarding Kurdish.

Ad-Darazi's army was around 200, 000 men, the Unity movement that started in the Choufe Mountain of Lebanon and the Houran Mountain of Syria had only less than 10, 000 men, they fought north of Jerusalem.

Lebanon saw no less than 10 % of its residents leave to fight in the Second World War.

Lebanon < td > 450 </ tr >< tr >< td >

Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee ( Galil Elyon ), Lower Galilee ( Galil Tahton ), and Western Galilee ( Galil Ma ' aravi ), extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the ridges of Mount Carmel and Mount Gilboa north of Jenin and Tulkarm to the south, and from the Jordan Rift Valley to the east across the plains of the Jezreel Valley and Acre to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Coastal Plain in the west.

After completion of this project the Lower Tunguska River will be dammed, flooding about of forest and tundra ( roughly the size of Lebanon or the islands of Hawaii ), some of which contains buried nuclear waste, and displacing the indigenous Evenk population.

File: The fossils from Cretaceous age found in Lebanon. jpg | A plate with Nematonotus sp.

The oldest amber with arthropod inclusions comes from the MLevant, from Lebanon and Jordan.

Even older, Jurassic amber has been found recently in Lebanon as well.

Also, prior to the massive Sephardic emigrations to the Middle East in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Jewish communities of what are today Syria, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Yemen were known by other Jewish communities as Musta ' arabi Jews or " like Arabs ".

Most of them were Dutch, French, British ( English ), Arab and Jewish ( from Lebanon and Morocco ), Chinese ( especially from Macau ), American, and Brazilian ( including people of Portuguese and African descent ).

Druze survivors " were found principally in southern Lebanon and Syria.

With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Ma ' ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern Lebanon.

As early as the days of Saladin, and while the Ma ' ans were still in complete control over southern Lebanon, the Shihab tribe, originally Hijaz Arabs but later settled in Ḥawran, advanced from Ḥawran, in 1172, and settled in Wadi al-Taym at the foot of mount Hermon.

Also, the Druze formed an alliance with Britain and allowed Protestant missionaries to enter Mount Lebanon, creating tension between them and the Catholic Maronites, who were supported by the French.

< Blockquote > The supreme decision-making bodies of the Hezbollah were divided between the Majlis al-Shura ( Consultative Assembly ) which was headed by 12 senior clerical members with responsibility for tactical decisions and supervision of overall Hizballah activity throughout Lebanon, and the Majlis al-Shura al-Karar ( the Deciding Assembly ), headed by Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah and composed of eleven other clerics with responsibility for all strategic matters.

Between 1982 and 1986, there were 36 suicide attacks in Lebanon directed against American, French and Israelis forces by 41 individuals with predominantly leftist political beliefs and of both major religions, killing 659.

Leaked cables from American diplomats suggest that the United States has been trying unsuccessfully to prevent Syria from " supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon ", and that Hezbollah has " amassed a huge stockpile ( of arms ) since its 2006 war with Israel "; the arms were described as " increasingly sophisticated.

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the five provinces that comprise modern Lebanon were mandated to France.

Although Saladin eliminated Christian control of the Holy Land around 1190, the Crusader states in Lebanon and Syria were better defended.

The Druze had grown increasingly resentful of the favoring of the Maronites by Bashir II, and were backed by the Ottoman Empire and the wali of Damascus in an attempt to gain greater control over Lebanon ; the Maronites were backed by the French, out of both economic and political expediency.

The French accepted the Druze as having established control and the Maronites were reduced to a semi-autonomous region around Mt Lebanon, without even direct control over Beirut itself.

Major powers United States and France rejected Syrian reasoning that they were in Lebanon by the consent of the Lebanese government.

Syria's refusal to exit Lebanon following Israel's 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon first raised criticism among the Lebanese Maronite Christians and Druze, who were later joined by many of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims.