Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The map suggests that Lebanon has significant geographic advantages in this region: a lengthy coastline on the Mediterranean Sea; a well-situated capital, Beirut, on its shoreline; oil terminals along its coast; and a major capital (Syria’s Damascus) in its hinterland. The scale of Figure 6-14 cannot reveal yet another asset: the fertile, agriculturally productive Bekaa Valley in the eastern interior. Nevertheless, if Lebanon is well endowed from a physical-geographic perspective, its chaotic cultural geography and fragile geopolitical circumstances are problematic. As a result, the country has gone back and forth between good times and bad. Lebanon (population 6 million) is sometimes aptly described as a “garden without a fence” because of its vulnerability to outside interference (especially from neighboring Syria), its latest burden being the more than one million refugees it has taken in from Syria’s civil war. This means that in mid-2016 no less than one in five persons in Lebanon was a refugee. With its economy facing severe challenges and so many external powers and influences involved in its affairs, Lebanon is unlikely to achieve stability and significant progress in the foreseeable future." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 259]