Kim Ghattas

banning all trade in essence, stopping all trade between Lebanon and its neighbors in the Arab world, put an embargo for 23 days to make sure that Lebanon would sign that Cairo agreement.

Because no other Arab country wanted the Palestinians to use them as a launchpad for attacks against Israel.

So they thought they'd give that task to poor Lebanon to be the launchpad.

At the time, he was still Minister of Defence, but he would soon become president.

And I don't know for sure, but I suspect that he already had a say as Minister of Defence into making this happen.

You know, my mother

I came to Lebanon.

She was Dutch from Amsterdam.

She came to Lebanon in the 60s, having met my father in the Netherlands.

And she met this Lebanon that you described of parties, of dinners, of nightclubs, of casinos, of the beach, etc.

It was, you know, a charmed life.

It was everything that the Netherlands wasn't.

I don't think she went skiing, but yes, for sure.

It was everything that the puritanical Netherlands wasn't.

It was everything that Europe wasn't after World War II.

And people didn't want to see the signs of trouble.

They didn't want to see that potentially this refugee population, which was not just in Beirut, but everywhere in camps around the country, could become an issue once that happened.

1969 Cairo Accords had been signed.

And it becomes really the trigger for the war that erupts in 1975, which many describe as the Lebanese Civil War, but which I prefer to describe as the Lebanese War, because there were so many outsider elements from the beginning that despite the fact there were many Lebanese factions killing each other, it was really about a bigger issue.

By 1982, Ariel Sharon is defense minister.