Beirut 1968: The Airport Raid That Triggered a War

In December 1968, Israeli commandos landed at Beirut's international airport and destroyed 13 civilian airliners in a two-hour operation. The raid was retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an El Al flight in Athens, but its true target was Lebanon's fragile sovereignty. This episode traces the escalation: how the Palestine Liberation Organization established a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon, how the Lebanese army was too weak to stop them, and how the Cairo Agreement of 1969 formalized Palestinian armed presence. We explore the role of Yasser Arafat, the Lebanese government's impossible balancing act between Arab solidarity and national security, and the raid that shattered Beirut's reputation as the Switzerland of the Middle East. The airport attack didn't just destroy planes—it exposed Lebanon's collapse as a neutral state and set the stage for the civil war. Drawing on eyewitness accounts and declassified documents, Lucas and Luna uncover how a single night of fire on the tarmac changed Lebanon forever.

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