Ramlet al-Baida is a public beach in Beirut, Lebanon. The beach is situated along the southern end of the Corniche Beirut promenade where Avenue General de Gaulle meets Avenue Rafic Hariri and ends at Rue Venezuela. Despite the beach's location in Moussaitbeh, close to the upscale district of Ras Beirut, the beach is popular with a predominantly male clientele from Beirut's low-income southern suburbs. [1] The beach is also a popular cruising area.
The beach was the location of major events during the war in Lebanon. On April 10, 1973, a seaborne Israeli commando unit that landed in Dora, departed from Ramlet al- Bayda after assassinating PLO officials, Muhammad Al Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser. [2] The corpse of Francis Meloy, the incoming U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, was discovered on this beach on 16 June 1976. In 1983, a terrorist group, believed to be Iranian-backed, [3] bombed the barracks of the French peacekeepers that were stationed four miles from the beach area. [4] The attack killed 58 French soldiers. [5]
Hotel Beau Rivage, which overlooked the beach, was the headquarters of the Syrian intelligence in Beirut from 1997 to 2005. The hotel became the center for detaining Lebanese dissidents and synonymous with torture and human rights violations. [6] After the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon in 2005, the hotel was renovated and in 2008, it was reopened as a civilian luxury hotel. [7]
Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus lies to its west across the Mediterranean Sea; its location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland has contributed to its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious diversity. It is part of the Levant region of the Middle East. Lebanon is home to more than five million people and covers an area of 10,452 square kilometres (4,036 sq mi), making it the second-smallest country in continental Asia. The official language of the state is Arabic, while French is also formally recognized; Lebanese Arabic is used alongside Modern Standard Arabic throughout the country.
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. As of 2014, Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast. Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years, and was one of Phoenicia's most prominent city states, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. The first historical mention of Beirut is found in the Amarna letters from the New Kingdom of Egypt, which date to the 14th century BC.
Kamal Fouad Jumblatt was a Lebanese politician who founded the Progressive Socialist Party. He led the National Movement during the civil war against the Lebanese Front. He was a major ally of the Palestine Liberation Organization until his assassination in 1977. He has authored more than 40 books centered on various political, philosophical, literary, religious, medical, social, and economic topics. In September 1972, Kamal Jumblatt received the International Lenin Peace Prize. He is the father of the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and the son in law of the Arab writer and politician Shakib Arslan.
The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities and an exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon.
Early on a Sunday morning, October 23, 1983 two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon, housing American and French servicemen of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF), a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 307 men: 241 U.S. w ith 58 French military personnel, six civilians and two attackers.
The Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) is a communist party in Lebanon. It was founded in 1924 by the Lebanese intellectual, writer and reporter Yusuf Yazbek and Fu'ad al-Shamali, a tobacco worker from Bikfaya.
The Lebanese Forces is a Lebanese Christian-based political party and former militia during the Lebanese Civil War. It currently holds 19 of the 128 seats in Lebanon's parliament and is therefore the largest party in parliament.
Since 2004, a series of bombings and assassinations have struck Lebanon, most of them occurring in and around the capital, Beirut. This wave of bombings began with the assassination attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, then peaked with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on 14 February 2005, which touched off the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. After the massive protests sparked by Hariri's killing, several more bombings hit Lebanon.
The Damour massacre took place on January 20, 1976, during the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. Damour, a Maronite Christian town on the main highway south of Beirut, was attacked by the left-wing militants of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and as-Sa'iqa units. Many of its people died in battle or in the massacre that followed, and the others were forced to flee. According to Robert Fisk, the massacre was part of the first act of ethnic cleansing in the Lebanese Civil War. The massacre was in retaliation to the Karantina massacre of Muslims by the Phalangists.
The Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) was an international peacekeeping force created in August 1982 following a 1981 U.S.-brokered ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel to end their involvement in the conflict between Lebanon's pro-government and pro-Syrian factions. The ceasefire held until June 3, 1982 when the Abu Nidal Organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to London. Israel blamed the PLO and three days later invaded Lebanon. West Beirut was besieged for seven weeks before the PLO acceded to a new agreement for their withdrawal. The agreement provided for the deployment of a Multinational Force to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces in evacuating the PLO, Syrian forces and other foreign combatants involved in Lebanon's civil war.
The Syrian occupation of Lebanon began in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War, and ended on 30 April 2005 after the Cedar Revolution and several demonstrations in which most of the Lebanese people participated, and the withdrawal agreement was signed by President Bashar al-Assad and Saad Hariri, son of Rafic Hariri. All of these changes were a result from the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
The Israeli–Lebanese conflict, or the South Lebanon conflict, was a series of military clashes involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as various militias acting from within Lebanon. The conflict peaked in the 1980s, during the Lebanese Civil War, and has abated since.
The Beau Rivage is a four-star luxury hotel on the Ramlet al-Baida beach in Beirut, Lebanon.
The Battle of the Hotels, was a subconflict within the 1975–77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War that occurred in the Minet-el-Hosn hotel district of downtown Beirut. This area was one of the first major battles of the war that began in April 1975. The battle was fought for the possession of a small hotel complex, the St. Charles City Center, adjacent to the gilded Corniche seafront area on the Mediterranean, in the north-western corner of the downtown district of Beirut, and it quickly spread to other areas of central Beirut. The often fierce battles that ensued were fought with heavy exchanges of rocket and artillery fire from the various hotel rooftops and rooms. Sniper fire was commonly utilized.
The Mountain War, also known as the War of the Mountain and Guerre de la Montagne in French, was a subconflict between the 1982–83 phase of the Lebanese Civil War and the 1984–89 phase of the Lebanese Civil War, which occurred at the mountainous Chouf District located south-east of the Lebanese Capital Beirut. It pitted the Christian Lebanese Forces militia (LF) and the official Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) against a coalition of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and the PNSF's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), Fatah al-Intifada and As-Sa'iqa backed by Syria. Hostilities began when the LF and the LAF entered the predominantly Druze Chouf district to bring back the region under government control, only to be met with fierce resistance from local Druze militias and their allies. The PSP leader Walid Jumblatt's persistence to join the central government and his instigation of a wider opposition faction led to disintegration of the already fragile LAF and the eventual collapse of the government under President Amin Gemayel.
Robert Olaf Waring was a U.S. diplomat assassinated in Beirut, Lebanon in 1976.
The People's Liberation Army – PLA or Armée de Libération Populaire (ALP) in French, also known as the Forces of the Martyr Kamal Jumblatt, was the military wing of the left-wing Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), which fought in the Lebanese Civil War. The PSP and its militia were members of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) from 1975 to 1982.
The earliest settlement of Beirut was on an island in the Beirut River, but the channel that separated it from the banks silted up and the island ceased to be. Excavations in the downtown area have unearthed layers of Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, and Ottoman remains.