In the early 1970s, when Lebanon began its slide into the abyss in which it finds itself today, the situation and the circumstances were pretty much the same as they are today:
It all begins with a strong central state, a prosperous economy based on tourism, services, and trade. Since 1918 (defeat and withdrawal of the Turkish occupation, and declaration of the independent state of Lebanon), then 1943 (when the French mandatory power withdrew and Lebanon became truly independent), the country was ruled by a consensus between the various religious constituent communities to divide power acccording to a secular Constitution backed by an unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" known as the National Pact. From a long and terrifying period (400 years) under the Turkish occupation whose barbarity climaxed during WWI, mandatory France (1918-1943) helped the Lebanese create institutions, write a constitution and define the rules of power and governance.
One of the pillars of the National Pact was the allocation of the executive, legislative and judiciary powers between the top three religious communities: the president would be a Christian Maronite Catholic, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim, and so on and so forth down the hierarchy of power positions in the state. Lebanon at the time recognized 17 different religious communities (today they are 18, after one was added in 1989 in the Taef Agreement). Parliamentary seats, judges and other administrative positions were allocated on a pro-rata basis to the communities depending on their relative numbers.
A second pillar of the National Pact was to assign to the State of Lebanon a de facto neutrality (not a legally recognized one as the Swiss model) which stated that the Christians abandoned their ties and appeal to Europe (France and the Vatican primarily) while the Muslims abandoned their ties and appeal to the Arab-Muslim world (primarily Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran). With each side rejecting centrifugal parameters of identity (regional and international ties), it was hoped that a convergence would ensue toward a national identity that overwhelmed sectarian identities.
As long as the communities and their leaders abided by the secular constitution that instructed the machinery of governance, and by the National Pact that dictated the ethos of the country, the system functioned very well. The country prospered, the economy boomed, Lebanon's banks were second to none serving as intermediaries between east and west (the Soviet Union's Narodni Bank had only two international branches, one in London and another in Beirut). The Lebanese were well-educated and could easily do business with anyone in the world. There were no forbiddens, despite the Cold War. The Lebanese disapora poured investments and money from the nascent oil-rich Arab countries in the Gulf who hired multi-lingual Lebanese educators, engineers and administrators to build their own infrastructure and administrations. The diaspora in the western hemisphere (Europe, North and Souith America) funneled know-how and investments, as well as liberal social norms such that it was not surprising to see conservatism and liberalism coexisting in the same streets and the same neighborhoods of Beirut.
But, as is often the case in historical dynamics, success breeds seeds of failure, liberalism attracts and tolerates hostile actors, dangerous totalitarian neighbors (Syria, Israel) become envious and covetous, regional conflicts spill over (Israel-Palestine), and if the communities and their leadership fail to remain committed to the founding ideas and documents, paradise is lost.
No sooner had the French left the country (1946) than dissent began among the Muslim communities. The creation of Israel (1947) south of the border was the cancer that would metastasize into all kinds of consequences: The expulsion of millions of indigenous Palestinians from their ancestral lands (1948-1949) who ended up in open tolerant Lebanon over the next decade or two; Arab anger at the implant of a foreign colonial entity in their midst metamorphosed into a surging Arab nationalism that, in Lebanon, questioned the implied neutrality of the country (Egypt's Nasser in 1952-1958); the Palestinian refugees woke up to the reality of their fate and began organizing into military groups (PLO 1965).
Obviously, the siren song of Arab nationalism and the Palestinian Cause resonated mainly inside Lebanon's Muslim communities, prompting the wary Christians to remind their fellow countrymen of the commitment to neutrality. In fact, Lebanon's neutrality was a "positive" neutrality whereby the country would still assist the Palestinian refugees by defending their cause in political instances and in the media, but without falling into violence and military confrontations. The Lebanese press was powerful and had publications in many languages. Given the small size of the country and its inborn weakness, the Lebanese Christians felt they could better serve Palestine with words rather than armies.
Alas, it didn't work. Arab countries surrounding Lebanon became more hostile because Lebanon did not join in the wars of 1967 and 1973 between Arabs and Israelis. Lebanon's Muslims used the Palestinian cause as a pretext to challenge the National Pact and the constitution. They demonized their own national army because it wouldn't fight Israel. They covered, backed - and ultimately used - the Palestinian liberation militias to attack the army and the country's institutions. Revolutionary regimes in Egypt, Syria, Libya and others poured money and mercenaries into Lebanon with the stated goal of liberating Palestine, but only from Lebanon and not from their own borders. Gradually, through external Arab pressure (the 1969 Cairo Accord forced Lebanon to cede its southern territory south of the Litani River to Yasser Arafat's PLO) and internal military threats by the Palestinian and other militias, Lebanon was forced to become the only open Arab war front against Israel. By 1974, Syria had signed a truce with Israel. By 1978, Egypt had made peace with Israel in the Camp David Accords. The Arabs made peace with Israel, except tiny half-Christian Lebanon. And its was Lebanon's partial identity as a Christian country that was the drive behind the Muslim Arabs cornering the country into this deadly juggernaut. They couldn't vanquish the Jews of Israel, so they channeled their hatred onto the Christians of Lebanon. As a Christian country, Lebanon had to prove its "Arab" identity far more than any other Muslim Arab country around. And fighting Israel was the proof.
As if to give no respite to Lebanon and its Christians, once the Palestinians themselves made peace with Israel (Oslo 1993), it was the turn of the Shiite Muslims of Lebanon, bolstered by the viagra of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran to take up the mantle of "liberating Palestine", again only from Lebanon. Not from Syria, not from Jordan, not from Egypt. Beginning in the 1980s, the Iranian militia of Hezbollah undertook to assassinate Lebanon as a country and is now causing its destruction by fighting wars Hezbollah knows cannot be won under the present circumstances. Lebanon is in a coma: It has no president, it has a non-functioning parliament, a caretaker ghost government, an economy in shambles, a third of the population on the roads as refugees from the barbarity of Jewish Israel, all because of Hezbollah's Shiite Muslim fanaticism and its obediance to the regime in Tehran.
As Lebanon is again in the same vortex of violence since the late 1960s, and for exactly the same reasons and the same dynamics - with slightly different actors - I ask my readers not to blame the Christians for however they choose to salvage their country and ultimately defend themsevles. Consider the brief history presented above and decide for yourselves whether the Christians are to blame. During the period 1970-1990, the west by and large blamed the Christians of Lebanon for every ill of the region: They were deemed isolationists and fanatic racist Christians even though, truth be told, they were fighting - alone - a variegated coalition of Arab nationalists, Sunni Muslim fanatics, sectarian Druze barbarians, Palestinian guerillas, Communist idealists from around the globe (Japan, Italy, Germany), the Syrian Baath occupation army of the Assad regime, Iranian Shiite militias....And all they wanted was to restore the liberal, open, multi-cultural, multi-religious Lebanon they had founded.
At this junction, the Christians are playing it safe. They hate fanatic Muslim Hezbollah and have been gently advising it for decades not to take Lebanon into the path of war. They hate Israel and its savagery and Jewish fanaticism and what it is doing to the Palestinian civilian population. Lebanon's Christians are the only rational community in this cesspool of violence. They do not have weapons and do not want war, regional or civil. They are helping their fellow Shiite countrymen refugees by housing and feeding them, even as they despise their political allegiance to Iran. They have welcomed 2 million Syrian refugees fleeing the barbarity of the Assad regime. They continue to beg all sides, Arabs, Iranians, Israelis, Europeans and Americans to find a solution to the mess created by hyperarmed fanatic Muslims and fanatic Jews.
What does the future hold for Lebanon and its Christians - the last free Christians in the entire east? Extinction? They've seen it with the Christians of Palestine, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Take up weapons and fall into a repeat of 1975? Perhaps if threatened in their existence. But there is a world out there. There is an international community. There still are leaders of goodwill. There are charters for the protection of unarmed populations facing the savagery of their neighbors. But in the past few decades, the hope instilled in the post-WWII era has been corroded and has lost any value. Double standards, driven by interests and fanaticism, are the rule. Principles and norms no long prevail. The custodians of the international order who used to use tough love early on are today missing in action, expressing their condemnations and concerns on social media instead of in the real world, on the ground.
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