The
Australian 7th Division, with
British and
Free French forces, supported by the
Royal Australian Air Force,
Royal Australian Navy,
Royal Navy and
Royal Air Force, fought for
Jezzine against
Vichy French forces in 1941. Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) was born in 1888 in Jezzine. He emigrated to
Mexico when he was 14 years old to avoid being
conscripted into the
Army of the
Ottoman Empire. After moving to
Mexico City, Julián established a
dry goods store—La Estrella de Oriente (The Star of the Orient). One of his sons,
Carlos Slim Helú, born on 28 January 1940 in Mexico City, inherited his father's business talent and ultimately became the richest man in the world in 2007.
Modern era Following the
1982 invasion of Lebanon, Jezzine became part of the Israeli ‘security zone’. On 9 April 1985
Sana'a Mehaidli—a member of the
Syrian Social Nationalist Party—blew herself up next to an Israeli convoy in Jezzine killing 2 Israeli soldiers and inuring ten more. She may have been the first
female suicide bomberaccording to researchers. On 6 June 1992, two members of the
South Lebanon Army (SLA) were killed by a roadside bomb near Jezzine. On 24 August 1995, fighting in Jezzine between the SLA and
Hezbollah resulted in two Hezbollah fighters being killed. The following day, an
IDF patrol in the area killed three more Hezbollah men. Technically, Jezzine was not part of the
security zone, but the town was the base for a
South Lebanon Army (SLA) unit calling itself the 20th Battalion. The Israeli backed unit controlled five neighboring villages. In the spring of 1997,
Hezbollah launched a five-month campaign attempting to cut off the SLA in Jezzine from the
IDF and the other SLA forces further south. On 18 June, two SLA soldiers and an officer, as well as one civilian, were killed by a roadside bomb. In the aftermath, the
IDF detained a number of youths in the town, and SLA commander-in-chief
Antoine Lahad visited and made threats of “unspecified violence” if attacks continued. The following month, 17 July, the Israeli head of Northern Command—Major General
Amiram Levin—visited the town in an attempt to bolster SLA morale. On 18 August, a roadside bomb killed two teenage children of a local SLA commander who had been previously killed four years earlier. The SLA responded with indiscriminate shelling of
Sidon which killed seven civilians and wounded thirty-five. Earlier the same month, local notables, backed by
Dory Chamoun, called on the government to move the
Lebanese army into Jezzine, but without success. On 29 November, two SLA members were killed by a roadside bomb outside Jezzine. In October 1998, it was reported that the population of Jezzine had fallen from 50,000 to around 3,000. On 1 June 1999, the
South Lebanon Army began dismantling its TV station and headquarters in Jezzine. In the following two weeks they withdrew from the town and thirty six surrounding villages. Retreating SLA members and their families commandeered empty houses in
Marjayun,
Ibl al-Saqi and
Kawkaba in the Indian
UNIFIL zone. At the time, it was estimated that the SLA had only four hundred men. ==Demographics==