Arab Revolution


 * Not to be confused with the subsequent 1986–89 Arab Revolutionary Wars, or the 2011–19 Arab Winter, also known as the Arab Civil War.

The Arab Revolution (Arabic: الثورة العربية ath-thawrah al-‘arabīyah) took place on 10 February 1986, and was the spark which ignited the Arab Revolutionary War the following day. It began in Beirut, Lebanon in the morning of 10 February, when senior members and associates of the Lebanese Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, who had won the Lebanese parliamentary election by a landslide the previous day, were prevented from forming a government by the incumbent Lebanese government and subjected mass repression which included thousands of arrests and hundreds of executions. The Lebanese Regional Branch immediately called upon its militants and supporters to mobilise, and Beirut as well as many other Lebanese cities were engulfed by mass unrest and demonstrations within the hour. By the end of the day, the unrest had spread to virtually every other major Arab city outside the Ba'athist United Arab Republic, unrest which was similarly repressed by the local authorities.

The following day, 11 February 1986, the United Arab Republic declared war on three of the sovereign Arab states where unrest was occurring, namely Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia; this is considered the start of the resulting war.