Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led an insurgency against Israel in 1968 and against Lebanese Christian militias in the mid-1970s. PLO's goals evolved during the insurgency; by 1977, its goal was to pressure Israel into allowing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and expelled the PLO, thereby ending the insurgency.

During the 1948 Palestine war, about 100,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Israel into Lebanon; it is from these Palestinian refugee camps that most insurgents were recruited. In 1968, PLO guerrillas began conducting raids into Israel, and Israel conducted retaliatory raids into Lebanon. At the time, PLO's objective was to establish a single democratic state in all of historical Palestine with equal rights for Jews, Muslims and Christians. By 1977, the objective had evolved to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, alongside Israel. The Lebanese army was too weak to prevent the PLO from using Lebanese soil as a base for the insurgency, and eventually the PLO succeeded in creating a state within a state in southern Lebanon known as Fatahland. Within this state, the PLO and allied Leftist groups established a dictatorship and oppressed the local population, leading the flight of over 300,000 Shia muslims alone and armed resistance by the Lebanese population.

The insurgency continued during the 1970s, and served as a major catalyst for the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. Fighting between the Palestinians and the Christian militias lasted until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which led to the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanese territory. While the PLO relocated to Tunisia in the aftermath of Israel's invasion, other Palestinian militant factions, such as the Syria-based PFLP–GC, continued to carry out low-level operations from Syrian-occupied Lebanon. After 1982, the insurgency is considered to have faded in light of the inter-Lebanese Mountain War and the Israel–Hezbollah conflict, the latter of which took place for the duration of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon.