The morning of April 13, 1975

Pierre Gemayel — the founder of Lebanon’s largest Christian militia party, the Kataeb — and Camille Chamoun, a former president of Lebanon, attended mass that Sunday morning at a church in Ain el-Rummaneh, a Christian suburb of southeast Beirut. Members of Gemayel’s party militia and Lebanese government police were stationed in the area. It was, in effect, a gathering of the Maronite Christian political establishment.

8:00 AM — First incident

The Embassy’s cable records that a Volkswagen, driven by an individual the cable describes as Palestinian and reportedly affiliated with an armed organization operating in Lebanon, approached the street on which the church stood. A policeman asked the driver not to use that route. An altercation followed; some accounts reported to the Embassy stated the driver threatened the policeman and was disarmed. The vehicle then departed.

This incident — documented in paragraphs 1 of this cable, filed before noon on April 14, 1975 — does not appear in the standard historical account of April 13.

9:30 AM — Second incident

Approximately ninety minutes later, the cable records, a second vehicle arrived at the same location. The Embassy’s account states it carried four armed individuals who opened fire on bystanders, fatally wounding three, before departing. The cable cites no motive; it records what was reported.

This incident — also documented in this cable, which was on file at the State Department before noon on April 14, 1975 — does not appear in the standard historical account of April 13. The subsequent event, at 11:00 AM, does.

11:00 AM — The bus

About ninety minutes after that, a bus carrying Palestinian passengers entered Ain el-Rummaneh. The passengers were traveling from the Shatila refugee camp in southwest Beirut to the Tel Zaartar refugee camp in the northeast — a route that, on this particular Sunday morning, took them through a neighborhood where Palestinian gunmen had just killed three men ninety minutes earlier.

The U.S. Embassy specifically noted in this cable that the bus’s presence “may have been accidental” — that the passengers may not have known they were driving through a violent situation. But the Kataeb opened fire. Twenty-six people aboard were killed.

This is the event that almost every account of April 13, 1975 treats as the sole incident of the day, and as the unprovoked act that started the Lebanese Civil War.

Destruction of Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp, Beirut, 1976
Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp, northeast Beirut, 1976 — the bus’s destination on April 13, 1975. Sixteen months after the events described in this cable, the camp was besieged by Maronite militias and overrun on August 12, 1976. Estimates of those killed range from 1,500 to 2,000. Jean-Jacques Kurz / ICRC Archives (AV-Archives-V-P-LB-D-00003-18), 1976. Public domain.

That evening — further incidents documented in this cable

As the day continued, the Embassy recorded additional incidents. Approximately fifteen rockets were fired from the Borj al Barajneh camp toward Haret Hreik, a residential area of Beirut; the cable notes the apparent target was a party office within that neighborhood. A commercial property was destroyed. A factory near the morning’s location was burning.

These events are recorded in this cable, filed before noon on April 14, 1975. They do not appear in the standard accounts of April 13. The bus attack — also documented in this cable — does.

The night of April 13 — a city fractures

By nightfall, gunfire was reported across a dozen neighborhoods. Barricades went up. Two men opened fire on a Kataeb office near Beirut’s commercial center and were killed by guards. Fighting spread to within blocks of the Holiday Inn hotel in downtown Beirut — a building that would itself become a military fortress within months.

The Lebanese Army, the cable notes, appeared to be standing down. An unconfirmed report reaching the Embassy stated that Army units near the fighting had been ordered not to intervene.

The political response

According to this cable, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat spent the night of April 13 in contact with Arab governments — directly and through their ambassadors in Beirut — requesting diplomatic pressure on the Lebanese government regarding the bus attack. The cable records that these contacts focused on what they described as Kataeb “culprits.”

The cable’s use of quotation marks around that word is standard Embassy practice when attributing claims without endorsing them. The cable’s own paragraphs 1 and 2 contain the Embassy’s documentation of the two incidents that preceded the event these diplomatic contacts were referencing.

Simultaneously, the cable records, Kamal Jumblatt — leader of the coalition of Lebanese leftist parties allied with the PLO — called for the removal of Kataeb ministers from the Lebanese cabinet. The cable notes this without characterizing the motive; the timing is part of the documentary record.

The ambassador’s verdict

G. McMurtrie Godley, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon
G. McMurtrie Godley, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, 1974–1976. He had previously overseen CIA operations in the Congo and Laos. U.S. Department of State. Public domain.

Ambassador Godley’s cable, dispatched at the highest urgency level before noon on April 14, closes with a sentence of striking pessimism:

“To this moment, the elements of a ‘Lebanese solution’ to the crisis are not apparent.”

Lebanon had always managed its crises through negotiation among its community leaders — a system of managed compromise that kept the country’s contradictions contained. Godley was signaling, within hours of the first shots, that this system had broken down.

He was right. The war lasted fifteen years.