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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
The disruption of Lebanon's modernization by the war has not
been adequately measured. A social data sheet on Lebanon prepared
by the World Bank in 1983, however, illustrated some trends.
Women's share of the labor force progressed very slowly from 3.4
percent in 1960 to 19.9 percent in 1981, probably because of strong
traditionalist resistance within the family. The same data
indicated a sharp decline in the percentage of the labor force
employed in agriculture, from 38 percent in 1960 to only 11 percent
in 1980. There was no corresponding rise in industrial activity,
however; the industrial labor force only increased from 23 percent
to 27 percent. Most of the labor force was still employed in the
service sector. Other indices such as energy consumption, passenger
cars per thousand population, radios and television sets per
thousand population, and newspaper circulation also documented
Lebanon's pace of modernization. What these figures did not
indicate was the disproportionate levels of modernization among
various communities and regions.
As for the impact of the war in general on public life, radical
adjustments had to be made by inhabitants of neighborhoods that
were subjected to intense fighting. The people of Beirut, in
particular, adjusted to shortages of all kinds: water, electricity,
food, and fuel. The wartime living situation started to deteriorate
in the spring of 1975. During lulls in the fighting, remnants of
the central government attempted to resume services to the
population, but the task was impossible because of the harassment
by militia members. The government then resorted to rationing water
and electricity. It was particularly hampered by the sharp decline
in the payment of bills by consumers. According to one employee in
the Beirut electric company, only 10 percent of all customers paid
their bills. The rest either declined to pay or simply hooked up to
utility supply cables.
One of the most difficult periods in the struggle for survival
among Lebanese and Palestinians occurred during the siege of Beirut
by Israel in 1982. To pressure the PLO to surrender the Israeli
army, along with the Christian Lebanese Forces, ensured that no
food or fuel entered the city.
The war scarcely left a house or building in Beirut intact or
free from shrapnel damage. The Lebanese, however, soon adjusted to
the new situation either by living in bombed-out apartments or by
fixing damaged parts of their residence. Some displaced people from
southern Lebanon who could not afford to rent in Beirut or even in
its suburbs, chose to live in deserted apartments and hotels in
areas close to the Green Line, which separated West from East
Beirut. The situation in many Palestinian refugee camps was
particularly oppressive. Some along the coastal road had come under
Israeli fire during the invasion of 1982, and others in the Beirut
area had been destroyed by Christian militias during the war or had
come under Shia attack in the mid-1980s
(see The War of the Camps
, ch. 5).
Data as of December 1987
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