A masterpiece that descruibes the historical context and the motivations of the different groups that participated in the Lebanese civil war. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Lebanon, its 15year civil war, and some of the background behind the conflict in the Middle East.

The author describes the life and culture of lebanese people in a hystorical review. Objective book that explains the political situation in depth.

Books that portray an objective, fair and unbiased assessment of Israel's 'Operation Peace For Galilee' are very difficult to find..

In my experience most books on this subject appear to have a hidden agenda of vilifying Israeli military involvement in Lebanon whilst casting aside the wholesale, indiscriminate cross-border terrorism of Palestinian terrorist entities that caused such an involvement in the first place. Other books appear to be dedicated to the de-humanisation of then Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, for an alleged connection to the horrific massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra/Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese 'Christian' Phalange militia.

This book is refreshing and perhaps unique in that it seeks to provide as balanced an analysis as is possible.

Richard Gabriel, Professor of Politics, only proceeded with this book on the understanding that he was able to avoid any involvement with the Israeli censors and that he was permitted to obtain a neutral publisher. The final results of Professor Gabriel's study only being seen upon publication by any interested parties at the very same time as everyone else.

Professor Gabriel was able to draw upon interviews with many journalists - Lebanese, European, British, American and Israeli. The author was also able to spend unsupervised time with 'PLO suspects' detained in Israeli and Lebanon to gather the personal impressions and opinions of these prisoners in relation to their treatment and the conflict itself.

Access was also provided to numerous Palestinian Doctors and Nurses in Lebanese camps and also to many high officials in the Lebanese Government and combatants/members of the 'Christian' militias, the Druse militia and the Amal Moslem milita, thus providing some 'enlightening' information on the nature of the ethnic and religious hatreds prevalent within Beirut and Lebanon.

Similar access was provided to the Israeli side which also included interviews with the battalion & company commanders in the field together with the 'common' soldiers who bore the brunt of the combat.

The author was provided with his own transport and able to travel throughout the Lebanese battle zones, retracing by car or on foot, all the major routes of advance taken by the major Israeli units. This included the Bekaa Valley, Damour, the outskirts of Beirut itself and the region overlooking Damascus.

The author, having access to the actual terrain of the battle sites and with some eighteen years as a former Army & Intelligence officer, was able to comment in knowledgeable context about the operations at first hand.

One is left in no doubt about the horrors of this conflict and the traumas of having to frequently fight against an enemy hiding in civilian areas, with the harrowing experience which unavoidably ensued, of seeing civilians die as a result of military actions.

The author analyses the Sabra & Shatila massacres in some detail and credits the Israeli Government for not following the path of the debatable US Government reactions in relation to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and instead proceeding to condemn the action outright, whilst also convening an immediate tribunal of investigation.

(Might I respectfully direct those interested in Ariel Sharon & the Sabra/Shatila incident to the excellent work by Uri Dan entitled "Blood Libel". This book covers in depth the trial/court-case against Time Magazine for it's allegations against Sharon in relation to the episode. Oft ignored information is aplenty in this particular work.)

As is the nature of this book by Professor Gabriel, the main features involve the immediate context surrounding Israeli operations in Lebanon. Of necessity therefore, I suppose many aspects of the Lebanese conflict are unable to be included in any detail.

For example, the massacres at Tel az-Zataar and the Lebanese Christian towns of Damour, Aishiye, Beit Mallat and Tall Abbas. Massacres committed at these places by Palestinian militia under the control of Yasser Arafat, where it is estimated that about 100,000 Lebanese civilians were killed. I was disappointed that attention could not have been paid to important issues such as these, and also indeed to the Syrian massacre of civilians at Hama where some estimate that 30,000 or more Lebanese civilians were killed. These innocent victims still needing a voice to speak out for their plight.

All in all this is a splendid book which portrays a human aspect to both sides of the conflict sadly lacking in other books on the Lebanese conflict.

If you are looking for a politically-skewed analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict or an overly biased account of the war, this is not your book. I say overly biased because all author have an opinion that is expressed overtly or covertly in their writing.

Richard A. Gabriel, a well-respected professor of politics at St. Anselm College, former US Army intelligence officer, and consultant to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees as well as the Pentagon, has written what is probable the most objective and well-written account of the 1982 War in Lebanon between Israeli, Syrian, Lebanese, PLO, and other forces. He has written numerous books about military actions including several books that constructively criticized the American actions in Vietnam. Several of his books have since become requred reading for courses at military academies.

Prof. Gabriel went out of his way to write an objective analysis of the combat, going so far as to interview PLO officials, IDF soldiers, and others. He also toured the battefields as they occurred as a guest of the IDF. Even more to his credit, he made a stipulation of his touring the front with the IDF that IDF miltary censors not be able to review his transcripts at all until after publishing. This means that he was able to effectively write whatever he wanted.

The book itself is brilliant. Within its' 242 pages are numerous analyses of various tactical and strategic conflicts of the 1982 War. He lists grievances and events of all sides into the war and yet hesitates to make value judgements about any of them short of miltary stance. While avoidings making the book a massive judgement of the political stance of any of the fighters, he doesn't hesitate to list political factors that the combatants considered at the time of the war.

One of the greatest treasures of having toured Lebanon and the conditions there is that he was able to disprove many of the false accounts that the media of the time forwarded to the public. Being a meticulous researcher also means that he always quotes sources and provides appropriate background. For instance, the PLO (through the Lebanese newspaper "An Nahar")claimed that Israeli forces killed 17,825 civilian noncombatants killed and wounded 30,103 civilians. Mr. Gabriel analyzed all of the data available from various sources (including interviews with village mayors and other on-the-site witnesses) and came up with a more likely figure of 4,000 to 5,000 killed and 12,000 to 14,000 wounded.

If you are looking for an account of the 1982 war that objectively evaluates military actions of the combatants then Prof. Richard A. Gabriel's "Operation Peace for Galilee - The Israeli-PLO War in Lebanon" is unparallelled. I highly recommend reading this book whether you are looking for more background on the Arab-Israeli conflict, are a military historian, a wargamer, or just someone interested in knowing more about the Middle-East.

Living in the Unites States, the war in Lebanon was what I saw on TV. Perhaps because of our bias media, I never felt pity like I did during the Kosovo problem. Reading this book made me realize what the war did to a wonderful people, the Lebanese. The author is brave and does not hesitate nor spare your feelings.

This is an amazing book, outrageous, fun, heartbreaking and poingant. It is very different than the writer's Koolaids. I could not put it down. The title story shook me to the core. Great book.

As a Lebanese, and, more importantly, as an anti-war activist, I found this book to be one of the most powerful testaments against the horrors and inhumanity of war. For Etel Adnan to have expressed the irrationality and insanity of war, and yet equally expressed the strength of human dignity and beauty is a testament to her writing.

I strongly recommend this short yet powerful and deeply poetic book to all Lebanese and to all those fighting for peace and justice.

Contact either the publisher: Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, CA, or SPD (Small Press Distribution, Inc), Berkeley CA 800-869-7553

Despite Amazon's omniscience, this book is not out of print.

This book was vary helpful in a project I was working related whith town devastation and it rebuilt. I liked the way the authors presents the history of Beirut, how the city was developed and destroyed and how was the process of it reconstruction. The book is full illustrated with the correct amount of colorfull pictures and project drawings of the highest quality. Excuse my english, but it isn't my language.

The correspondence between Gibran and Haskell was so well documented that you feel a part of their unique relationship. They exchange so many huge ideas and beautiful thoughts. I found myself taking notes when I'd come across these clear, heart-jolting ideas. I felt at times like I was eating my favorite food or drinking my favorite drink. Enriching reading although Gibran's personal beliefs wander farther and farther from my own as his life progresses.

Michael Dawahare has devoted long years to understanding the dynamics of civil society in this potentially explosive region of the world. Training critical insights and perspectives from some of the Middle East's most subtle students, he has drawn upon Gramscian categories to open up the study of civil society onto a terrain where Western-born concepts must be loosened and nativized if they are to be of value. His sure grasp of Lebanon history, culture, and politics has proved invaluable to this undertaking. His dissertation under my direction showed the promise of this exercise. His book is the fulfillment of that promise. Definitely a valuable and unique contribution to area studies and critical social theory! Kudos, Mike!

Hanf, a German social scientist, has produced a massive and original study of the Lebanese civil war. By thoroughly immersing himself in things Lebanese he has produced the book that finally does justice to the enigma and the tragedy of that war. Relying on an exceptionally wide sources (including survey research), Hanf brings all the pieces together and gives the reader a better feel for the conflict than even its many first-hand accounts. The book's thesis appears in its subtitle: the crucible of war forged the Lebanese into a people. Or, putting the same thought in social science jargon, "surveys have revealed that the majority of Lebanese have little difficulty in reconciling communal identity and national identity." Looking to the future, Hanf has a keen appreciation for the Syrian insistence on "unreserved recognition of Syrian ascendency in a formally independent Lebanon," an objective which Damascus finally attained in 1991-92. Should the death of Hafiz al-Asad lead to a struggle for power, the author expects Syrians may have to cut back on their current predominance, but "it is unlikely that any post-Assad government will voluntarily abandon Assad's Lebanon policy." In other words, Hanf advises the Lebanese to get used to living under the Syrian thumb. How ironic: the war that finally made the Lebanese a nation also ended their independence.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1994

It is high time for Lebanon's true story to be told, not the same old jaded and dubious Arabist apologetics.
I just finished reading Mordechai Nisan's Political Biography of Abu-Arz, and thankfully, the author does just that; he shatters the duplicity and falsehoods that Arabism and Islam have been feeding us for the past 100 years to conceal their vicious plundering of Lebanon (and their intrinsic loathing and rejection to the unmolested presence of non-Muslim minorities in their midst in Middle East.)
Professor Nisan's book is an amazing journey, and a hypnotic page-turner. And as usual with his work on Middle Eastern minorities, his narrative is elegant, his prose pellucid, and his scholarship penetrating and compelling... to say nothing of the verve, commitment and unyielding and unequivocal fondness he has for Lebanon and her people.
We should blush that it wasn't a Lebanese who wrote this book; but we should also be proud and flattered that it was Professor Nisan's undertaking. Nobody could have told this story more compellingly and with such erudition.
As a Muslim Lebanese, I am heartened to see that someone has finally summoned up enough integrity and courage to tell the true story of Lebanon and its struggle against the predatory Arabism of Syria and the thugery of Palestinian refugees and Hezbollahy quislings (to say nothing of the Syrian installed 'Lebanese' puppet regime in Beirut) who never tire from pillaging Lebanon and subverting its sovereignty and Lebanonness.
Every true Lebanese should acquire a copy of this splendid addition to the literature on Lebanonism... and anyone interested in the TRUE story of Lebanon should check out this superb work of historical sociology.

Political histories of a nation usually ignore its literature or, at most, compress it into an ancillary chapter. For Elise Salem, however, the writings of Lebanese authors are inseparable from the origins of their country and the record of its recent turmoil. A Lebanese native now living in the United States, but frequently returning to the land of her origin, Salem possesses a unique perspective to write such an analysis. She knows the country's brief history and its political complexities intimately. A literary scholar, she demonstrates extensive and perceptive reading of a wide range of fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as awareness of musical theater productions. Her achievement in this book lies in her ability to demonstrate interrelationships, the ways in which literature has been a source of national identity and serves as an ongoing commentary on unsettling events.

Although the book's subject is Lebanon, Salem also hopes that it will be considered a representative study, with a methodology and a manner of understanding that can be applied to other nations. She notes that those who govern rarely consult their nation's body of writing, and she considers that a mistake: "Artists and intellectuals, often historically in a dubious relationship with the state, not only continue to imagine and hence extend the discourse of the nation but, in more palpable way, participate in remembering, recording, and transforming it."

Salem's eloquent Afterword reiterates, frames, and adds a rich dimension of commentary. It concludes with this possibility: "[These] provocative narratives suggest a new language, vocabulary, style, approach, and thematics that expand the possibilities for Lebanon. They are, after all, the nation's stories and, through fictions, the most telling." Literature was central to Lebanon's origin. Salem's hope is that it will be equally important in helping it face its present crises.