Beirut

Overview

Beirut is the capital, largest urban center, and chief port of Lebanon. Situated on the Mediterranean coast, it is the seat of the Lebanese government and a center of commerce, education, and political life. Its harbor connects Lebanon to maritime trade, while roads through the surrounding mountains link the city to the country’s interior and to Syria. The city’s importance has also made it a focus of regional rivalries. During the Lebanese Civil War, armed factions divided Beirut and fought for its neighborhoods. In later decades, the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah established a stronghold and command center in its southern suburbs, known collectively as Dahiyeh.

Beirut’s history extends from antiquity through Ottoman rule, the formation of modern Lebanon, civil war, reconstruction, and recurring conflict. Its Jewish community, documented from an early period, grew substantially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before war and emigration brought it close to disappearance. The city was the headquarters of the PLO under Yasser Arafat before the 1982 Lebanon War. It later became a principal arena of Hezbollah’s struggle against the Lebanese state and Israel. In 2020, an explosion of improperly stored ammonium nitrate at its port killed more than 200 people, injured thousands, and forced the resignation of Lebanon’s government. Renewed Israel–Hezbollah fighting after Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, 2023, again placed Beirut’s southern suburbs at the center of military operations.

Geography

Beirut occupies a coastal site facing the Mediterranean Sea. Its port has long shaped the city’s commercial and political importance, serving both the capital and Lebanon’s wider economy. Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport lies south of the city center and is another major point of entry. The distinction between the municipality and the continuous built-up area matters when describing Beirut’s population: the wider urban area extends beyond municipal boundaries, and no single current population figure applies to every definition of the city.

Beirut’s districts reflect its varied history. Wadi Abu Jamil, near the center, was its principal Jewish quarter. Haret Hreik, Ghobeiry, Laylaki, Hadath, Burj al-Barajneh, Tahwitat al-Ghadir, and Shiyyah are among the neighborhoods in and around the southern suburbs called Dahiyeh. That area contains large residential communities as well as Hezbollah’s political and military infrastructure. The coexistence of civilians and armed facilities has made the southern suburbs a central concern during successive rounds of fighting. Burj al-Barajneh also contains a refugee camp whose residents suffered damage and displacement during the civil war. Beirut’s geography therefore cannot be separated from the different communities, institutions, and armed groups that have occupied its neighborhoods.

Ancient and biblical history

Beirut is an ancient settlement of the Levantine coast. Known to the Romans as Berytus, it developed into an important city under Roman rule and became associated with the study of law. Its coastal position connected it to other eastern Mediterranean ports and to inland routes. Beirut itself is not a principal setting of biblical narratives, although its history forms part of the wider history of the Levant, where Jewish, Christian, and later Muslim communities lived under successive rulers.

Evidence of Jewish life in Beirut reaches at least the sixth century, when an early synagogue attests to an established community. That presence preceded the medieval struggles for control of the city by many centuries. Beirut’s ancient and medieval history is therefore broader than the history of any single community: its port brought merchants, rulers, and migrants into contact, while changes in political authority repeatedly altered the conditions under which residents lived.

Jewish history

Beirut’s Jewish community endured through periods of conquest and political change. Crusaders conquered Beirut in 1110, during the expansion of their coastal possessions after 1100. Jewish life continued in the region despite the disruption caused by the Crusades. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, Sephardi resettlement contributed to Jewish communities across the eastern Mediterranean, including Beirut. Later arrivals came from Damascus, Smyrna, Aleppo, Constantinople, and Russia. These migrations helped make Beirut’s Jewish community both a local institution and part of wider commercial and family networks.

In 1824, the community comprised about 15 merchant families and maintained a small synagogue. Ludwig August Frankl reported finding about 500 Sephardi Jews in Beirut in 1856, many working as merchants or porters. The community then grew rapidly: estimates placed it at about 1,000 in 1880, 1,500 in 1889, roughly 3,000 between 1892 and 1906, and 5,000 between 1907 and 1910. The Alliance Israélite Universelle opened a girls’ school in 1878, a boys’ school in 1879, and a crafts school for girls in 1897. By 1901, the boys’ and girls’ schools enrolled 271 and 218 pupils respectively. After the First World War, Beirut’s establishment as Lebanon’s capital accompanied further Jewish population growth.

Growth did not prevent antisemitic violence. Blood libels in 1862 and 1890 prompted attacks by Christian rioters on Beirut’s Jewish quarter. Ottoman authorities restored order and arrested rioters after the 1890 attacks. At that time, the community maintained a synagogue and 12 batei midrash, or houses of study. Wadi Abu Jamil remained the center of Jewish communal life into the twentieth century. Its religious buildings and businesses were part of Beirut’s urban fabric even as the city’s politics became increasingly unstable.

The Lebanese Civil War accelerated the community’s decline. Fighting around the Jewish quarter in 1975–76 damaged homes, businesses, and synagogues. The Maghen Abraham Synagogue was seriously damaged and looted during the 1975–1990 war. Emigration continued afterward. Between 1990 and 2001, Lebanon’s Jewish population, by then concentrated in and around Beirut, fell further; Wadi Abu Jamil lost almost all its Jewish residents by the early 2000s. Remaining Jews lived mainly in eastern Beirut or Mount Lebanon. In Beirut’s 2004 municipal elections, only one registered Jewish voter appeared at the polling station. The near-emptying of Wadi Abu Jamil marked a profound change in a district that had sustained Jewish life for centuries.

Modern history

Beirut became the center of Lebanon’s civil war after violence erupted in April 1975 following a clash between PLO fighters and supporters of the Christian Phalange. The PLO and Fatah, under Yasser Arafat, maintained political and military headquarters in the city. Armed groups divided neighborhoods, damaged civilian property, and displaced residents. In 1976, PLO forces and Lebanese leftists sacked Damour, a Christian village near Beirut, and massacred hundreds of its inhabitants. Fighting also damaged the Burj al-Barajneh camp and displaced nearly one quarter of its population. The war forced the family of future Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to leave Beirut for its ancestral village of Bazouriyeh.

Beirut was a major theater of the 1982 Lebanon War. Israel’s campaign followed years of attacks launched from Lebanon. Although its initial objective was limited to pushing hostile forces forty kilometers from Israel’s border, Ariel Sharon ordered Israeli troops onward to the outskirts of Beirut. A multinational force helped arrange the departure of PLO personnel from the city. On August 31, 1982, Arafat and thousands of PLO members left for Tunis and Syria. Expelling the PLO leadership did not end Israel’s security problem in Lebanon, and Israel’s wider advance did not establish a durable, favorable Lebanese political order. Hezbollah subsequently emerged as a more dangerous terrorist enemy.

During the same war, Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen massacred residents of the Sabra and Shatila camps near Beirut on September 16–17, 1982. Fatality estimates ranged from 460 recorded by Lebanese police to 700–800 estimated by Israeli intelligence. An official Israeli commission found Sharon indirectly responsible, leading to his resignation as defense minister. The massacre remains one of the war’s gravest atrocities. Earlier Israeli operations in Beirut had targeted perpetrators of attacks against Israelis: Sayeret Matkal took part in the 1968 sabotage of Arab airliners at Beirut’s airport and in the 1973 Operation Spring of Youth against Black September members. During Israel’s pursuit of those responsible for the Munich massacre, a coordinator of that attack was killed by a remotely controlled bomb in Beirut.

Syria dominated Beirut’s political order after the civil war until its troops withdrew in 2005. The city’s politics also reflected rivalries within Lebanon. Before the 2000 parliamentary election, Beirut was divided into three electoral districts in a move intended to reduce the number of seats won by Rafic Hariri. Hariri met Nasrallah in Beirut’s Haret Hreik suburb in December 2004; his movements were monitored during and after the meeting despite his security team’s not knowing its location in advance. On February 14, 2005, a truck bomb struck Hariri’s convoy on Beirut’s seafront promenade and killed the former prime minister. At a meeting in Beirut’s Bristol Hotel that month, opposition figures demanded an end to Syria’s military presence. The assassination of Rafic Hariri intensified the political crisis that preceded Syria’s withdrawal.

Security

Hezbollah’s rise changed Beirut’s security landscape. With support from the Iranian regime, its armed units expanded into Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut and into southern Lebanon. Dahiyeh became its stronghold and command center. In 1983, Hezbollah carried out suicide bombings with Iranian support against the United States embassy and American and French military facilities in Beirut. Imad Mughniyeh helped plan the April 18 embassy bombing, which killed 63 people, including 17 Americans. He also coordinated the October truck bombing that killed 241 American servicemen, watching it from a nearby building through binoculars. Fuad Shukr helped plan and launch the October attacks on peacekeepers. The bombing that killed the Americans also formed part of an assault in which 58 French servicemembers and six civilians died. Ruhollah Khomeini approved the operation in advance, and his representative in Lebanon received the order directing operations against Americans.

Hezbollah retained an independent arsenal after the civil war and repeatedly used force in Lebanon’s internal politics. In May 2008, its fighters seized neighborhoods of western Beirut during a campaign against the Lebanese government, killing and wounding dozens. Druze fighters resisted its advance toward the Shouf Mountains. On October 14, 2021, clashes involving Amal and Hezbollah demonstrators in Beirut’s Tayouneh neighborhood killed three Amal members, three Hezbollah members, and a passerby; dozens more, including passersby, were wounded. The fighting followed a Hezbollah official’s threat against the judge investigating the port explosion. Such episodes demonstrated the Lebanese state’s difficulty in exercising exclusive authority over armed force in its capital.

Other attacks also struck Beirut. A car bomb in the southern Bir al-Abd neighborhood on July 9, 2013, killed several people and wounded hundreds. Two suicide bombers attacked the Iranian embassy in the Bir Hassan area on November 19 that year, killing 23 and wounding 146. On November 12, 2015, Islamic State suicide bombers attacked Burj al-Barajneh, killing 43 people and injuring about 240. Most of those killed were passersby. These attacks underline the danger faced by civilians in districts associated with Hezbollah, regardless of the attackers’ stated targets.

Beirut also became a center of coordination among Hezbollah and other armed organizations backed by Iran. Saleh al-Arouri established Hamas’s principal political headquarters there as cooperation with Hezbollah grew, and he attended meetings with Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at a joint war room in the city. An Israeli strike that killed al-Arouri also killed Al-Qassam Brigades commanders Azzam al-Aqra and Samir Fendi. Regional logistics plans described by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and other Popular Mobilization Forces leaders sought an overland route from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. By 2020, Hezbollah physically controlled territory in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, its south, and Dahiyeh.

Present day

On August 4, 2020, nearly 3,000 metric tons of ammonium nitrate that had remained improperly stored at Beirut’s harbor for seven years detonated. The 2020 Beirut explosion killed more than 200 people, injured more than 6,000, displaced hundreds of thousands, and devastated extensive parts of the city. It also injured UNIFIL personnel and damaged the force’s capabilities. Public anger over the disaster deepened Lebanon’s political crisis. Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned on August 10, bringing down the government during Michel Aoun’s presidency. Investigations and legal proceedings remained troubled in subsequent years, leaving accountability for the unsafe storage and its consequences unresolved.

Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, 2023, drawing Lebanon into renewed fighting. Israel intensified strikes in southern Lebanon and Beirut from September 19 through 27, 2024. Its strike on an apartment building in Haret Hreik killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander linked to the 1983 attacks; nearby buildings and shops showed little apparent damage. On September 27, Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah’s central headquarters in Beirut and killed Hassan Nasrallah in the 2024 Hezbollah headquarters strike. Fears of further Israeli attacks drove residents from Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold. Beirut later hosted the joint funeral of Nasrallah and Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine on February 23, 2025.

The November 2024 Israel–Lebanon ceasefire committed Lebanon’s government to confiscate Hezbollah’s weapons and dismantle its military infrastructure nationwide. The commitment went beyond border districts: an independent Hezbollah arsenal anywhere in Lebanon continued to obstruct the state’s control of its own territory and security policy. On June 19, 2025, United States envoy Tom Barrack delivered an ultimatum and roadmap calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and other militias. Hezbollah’s leadership resisted giving up its weapons. Beirut’s airport and other points of entry consequently faced renewed scrutiny over the movement of funds and military supplies. In February 2025, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem met senior Iranian officials in Beirut, illustrating the continuing relationship between the organization and the Iranian regime.

Dahiyeh remained Hezbollah’s command center in 2026. Before Israeli strikes on April 8, the Israel Defense Forces warned residents of seven southern-suburb neighborhoods—Haret Hreik, Ghobeiry, Laylaki, Hadath, Burj al-Barajneh, Tahwitat al-Ghadir, and Shiyyah—to evacuate. Israeli aircraft then struck Hezbollah command centers and military sites across Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon. The renewed campaign again exposed Beirut’s residents to the consequences of Hezbollah’s military presence within a densely populated capital. Beirut remained Lebanon’s political and economic center, while its recovery from the port explosion and successive conflicts depended in part on whether the Lebanese state could exercise effective authority over the city and its armed organizations.