Christian Lebanon This is Me

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1. 1. Device

   www.aramaic-dem.org/English/Jo - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/6/2007   Last Visited: 1/26/2008

   With the dust settling in Lebanon and the players, old and new, trying to stake their territories in the increasingly confined space of this tormented nation, the emerging picture is one of a country headed towards a major confrontation whose outcome is predictably coupled to the outcome of the gathering clash between the West and the Islamic fundamentalist movement. In other words, Lebanon's fate and the outcome of its eternal crisis, the "La Question d'Orient" of the 19th and early 20th centuries, has witnessed a significant shift in the underlying paradigms of its potential solution in our present time: Western policy-makers no longer couple a resolution of the Lebanese problem to a resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict (as the dinosaur Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon continues to blather or as the Syrian tyranny of the Assads continues to wish for), but it has become tied to the ultimate victory of the West over Islamic fundamentalism in the War on Terror. Indeed, one can argue that the Israeli-Arab conflict itself is no longer the centerpiece of US and Western policy towards the Middle East because it too is now subsumed under the War on Terror and the defeat of Islamic radicalism. Although the US continues to insist on protecting "our friend" Israel, it is safe to assume that Israel's security comes now second to the safety of the West, as shown by, for example, the momentous shift in European public opinion and policy against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians, a harbinger of the decline of Israel's safety as the top priority for the West, coupled with the growing Moslem populations of Europe and the dictates they impose on policy in terms of accommodation and fear of domestic unrest.
   
   But as for the impact of that shift on Lebanon, and if history is any guide and the assets of both sides evaluated for their chances of success, the outcome of that clash are predictably a victory of the West and the ushering of a period of long stability for Lebanon under Western custodianship, though the battle ahead to get there remains long, painful, and arduous.
   
   Lebanon has always been a microcosm of the world. The recent 1975-1990 Lebanese War was in many respects the precursor of the War on Terror since many of its elements were tied to a resurgent Arab Nationalism couched in Islam - a departure for the failure of post-WWII secular Arab Nationalism (Nasserism): Not only did the Moslems of Lebanon side with the Palestinian insurgency - led by Yasser Arafat's PLO - against the Lebanese State and allowed the abandonment of the Lebanese South from State sovereignty to the benefit of the PLO, and later to Hezbollah, but the Moslems of Lebanon in the early 1970s challenged the very foundations of the Lebanese Constitution and the Lebanese State as shaped in the early part of the 20th century as a compromise between the West and the East, between Islam and Christianity, between modernity and tradition, between pan-Arab nationalism and homegrown Lebanese nationalism, all encompassed in the so-called "National Pact" of 1943.
   ...
   This writer witnessed demonstrations in Beirut calling for abolishing the subject matter of "Civic Studies" from the final Secondary School examination (which taught high school students the inner workings of the Lebanese Constitution and the political process in Lebanon, etc ... which the demand was for abolishing the learning of foreign languages in Lebanese schools), the teaching of the Islamic religion in public schools and even in private Christian schools, the emergence of political parties that were ostensibly religious in design and ideology, such as the Amal Shiite movement of Moussa Al-Sadr under the guise of "dispossession and alienation" (of which, incidentally, the Lebanese Shiites still claim to be victims, even though they have become the most affluent and most politically powerful community thanks to a wealthy Lebanese Shiite expatriate community in Africa and an influx of funds from Iran).
   ...
   These and other cultural and political challenges to the status quo by the Moslems of Lebanon, long before there was any direct Syrian intervention in the country, were the very first signs of the rise in Islamic fundamentalism and a challenge to the secular Arabism of the mid 20th century. The West at the time refused to see the Lebanese War under that angle, as the Lebanese Christians tried to convince a liberal left-leaning Western press that theirs was the cause - not of a Lebanon dominated by Christians, not of a conservatively religious Christian Lebanon, and certainly not of a Christian dictatorship oppressing the Moslems of Lebanon as many in the West perceived the conflict in the late 1960s and early 1970s - but the cause of the defense of a secular Lebanon against Islamic resurgence. Evidently, the Christians of Lebanon ultimately failed in the war itself because they failed in the media war. The outcome of the defeat, whose consequences we witness in the crises of today's Lebanon, was the Syrian occupation sanctioned by the West for 3 decades, the Taef Agreement which weakened the power of the Christian President of Lebanon to the benefit of the Sunni Prime Minister and the Shiite Speaker of Parliament (who now have taken the titles of "President" of the cabinet, and "President" of Parliament", respectively, to further underline the equality between the three posts and to underscore this as a victory of the Moslems over the Christians), and a general change of Lebanon from a prosperous liberal free-market oriented democratic country in which the Christians set the tone between the 1920s and the 1970s, to a Syrianized economically devastated pseudo-dictatorship police State in which the Moslems set the tone from the 1970s to this date. All one needs to do is compare and contrast Lebanon's wellbeing (economically and otherwise) during the period 1920-1970 to its wellbeing during the 1970 - 2006 period to see the devastation caused by the victorious challenge of the Islamo-Arabs to the Lebanese construct which, as far as the Christians viewed it, was a fair and equitable compromise for a diverse society as that of Lebanon's.
   
   History never fails. Since time immemorial, all international and regional conflicts had tentacles and repercussions on the Lebanese scene. Looking at the history of Lebanon from the early 1800s to the present time, one can see three cycles of history recurring with extraordinary identity. For complex reasons that have to do with the relationship between religion and governance, as well as the internal social-political structure of historical Lebanon and its political culture, Lebanon's modern history is characterized by alternating periods of stability-prosperity and instability-decline that seem to closely parallel an alternation of which the two constituent communities of the country - the Christians and the Moslems - appears to be setting the tone, which in turn seems to reflect whether the West or the Moslem East has the ascendancy of power on the world stage.
   
   The first cycle began after the Egyptian invasion of the 1820s and 1830s (itself coming on the footsteps of the debacle of the West, represented by the evacuation of Napoleon's French forces from Egypt). Lebanon was thrown into a 20-year period of civil unrest in which the leaders of the country - at the time Prince Bashir Shehab II and the Feudal families - allied themselves with the Egyptian occupiers against their own people. With increasing European thrust in penetrating the weak flanks of the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon was pulled into several centrifugal directions and civil unrest (including pogroms of Christians and Jews by Moslems), and political instability set in between the 1840s and the 1860s. In 1861, the West, at the time represented by the five European Powers: France, England, Prussia (Germany), Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, intervened directly to stabilize Lebanon, the Ottomans being too occupied with their own internal reforms and several other more dangerous secessions from the Empire. A complicated settlement was reached in which Mount Lebanon - which is the central mountains of Lebanon without the peripheral Bekaa Valley or the cities of the coast (Beirut, Sidon, Tyre and Tripoli) - to satisfy all the protagonists. Mount Lebanon was granted autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman troops were evacuated, though the country still reported to Istanbul through a Governor General (Mutasarrif) who was to be a Catholic Christian (concession to the Christian community and to the European powers), but an Ottoman subject (Concession to Istanbul and the Moslem community). From the 1860s to 1914, Lebanon experienced stability, though with moderate prosperity, and was relatively isolated from the ongoing tremors of the continued Ottoman decline and the European convulsions caused by the coalescence of the European city-states into the modern countries we now know (Germany, Italy, and others). In sum, a Western intervention (Europe) against an Islamo-Arab (Turkish Ottoman-Egyptian) occupation led Lebanon to stability and prosperity.
   
   The second cycle begins in 1914 with the beginning of WWI hostilities. No sooner was the war declared against the Ottoman Empire allied with Germany that Istanbul abolished the autonomous status of the Lebanese Mutasarifiyah and brutally re-occupied Lebanon, ushering 4 years of famine, executions of Lebanese nationalists - both Christians and Moslems - forced conscription and general devastation that led to one of the greatest waves of emigration to the Americas (Almost a third of the Lebanese population emigrated, and another third perished to disease and famine). When the Ottomans were defeated in 1918, modern Lebanon was born out of the Paris Peace Conference of 191

2. 2. Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - Nasrallah and the three Lebanons

   www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_E - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/3/2006   Last Visited: 8/3/2006

   friend, from "Christian Lebanon", said Hezbollah was not the "Party of God" as its name means in Arabic, but rather "The Party of the Devil".
   
   Still, there are many crossovers in Lebanon, according to a recent poll by the Beirut Center for Research and Information to test the country's pulse on the war in Lebanon.
   ...
   True, other parts of Lebanon have been destroyed in the latest war, but the areas to suffer the most are the Shi'ite districts, in al-Dahiyyieh and south Lebanon.
   ...
   Christian Lebanon This the third Lebanon. It is the Lebanon that was once dominant, from the post-Ottoman era until the end of the civil war in 1990. This is the Lebanon that has preserved the sophistication and democracy of Lebanon. It opposed Muslim hegemony in the 1950s and 1960s, refusing to make Lebanon a revolutionary nation inspired by the rebelliousness, socialism and anti-Westernism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
   ...
   When Aoun allied himself to Nasrallah - sending shock waves throughout Christian Lebanon - many said this was political suicide and would ruin him within the Maronite community.
   ...
   It would end his dreams at becoming president of Lebanon, they said.
   
   Aoun, however, understood that Lebanon had changed, knowing perfectly well that Christian support alone was no longer enough to secure a seat for him at the Baabda presidential palace.
   ...
   Israel is trying to turn the tables in Lebanon against the Shi'ites. It wants the Christians to suffer from the Israeli war, and blame Nasrallah for having dragged Lebanon into this confrontation. That is why it has landed bombs in Christian Lebanon.
   ...
   The anti-Hezbollah factions from Christian and Sunni Lebanon say Nasrallah does not have the right to dictate the fate of Lebanon as a country destined to be at war with Israel.
   ...
   They say Nasrallah is a creation of Iran and Syria, fighting their proxy war with Israel through Lebanon at the expense of the Lebanese.

3. 3. Politik

   www.aramaic-dem.org/English/po - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/23/1980   Last Visited: 10/28/2007

   Three issues are decisively at stake today: the survival of the state of Lebanon as a free, independent and sovereign state; the survival of the society of Lebanon as a free, open and pluralist society; and the survival of the Christian community of Lebanon a free and secure, enjoying complete mastery over its own values and destiny. How to avert these three dangers is precisely what is meant by the term "the Lebanese Cause".
   
   If the political independence of Lebanon should be overwhelmed or undermined, if its free society should be altered so as to conform to the pattern of the other societies of the Middle East, and if its Christian community should cease to be master of itself and its destiny, as it has been in the past, a major transformation in the balance of forces in the Middle East Wold result.
   
   This fate is not inevitable; it can still be warded off. The first requirement towards that end is a full knowledge of the facts of the case. So far as the will and the views of the Christian community of Lebanon are concerned, the present document, which is intended to be an historic one, can meet this requirement.
   
   Lebanon cannot save itself by itself. It needs help from outside. When have nations in great peril in modern times saved themselves without the aid of their friends? The destruction of the free, open and genuinely pluralist society of Lebanon, and the disappearance of the only remaining free Christian community in the Middle East, while the rest of the world is merely looking on, are not simple events: they are world events.
   
   Not only moral, human and spiritual values are at stake, but precisely because this is the case, other factors of a material and concrete nature are involved. The mountains of Lebanon are, physically speaking, the most strategically impregnable part of the Middle East; whoever gets firmly entrenched in them can significantly help in defending the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor can the peoples of America and the West find more reliable and lasting friends in the Middle East than the people of Lebanon. Moreover, there are some who affect to seek in the Middle East and who think they have found a substitute for the free and open society of Lebanon so far as affording facilities for international finance, commerce and communication and for free exchange of ideas is concerned. Given the realities of the Middle East, there can never be an adequate substitute for Lebanon. Again, it is not in the best interests of Middle Eastern, and indeed world, stability for tire peace loving Lebanese, who are passionately attached to their freedoms and land, to get radicalized, There are enough disaffected and embittered people around to add to them now tire Lebanese. And there is absolutely, no need for that. Finally, care should be taken lest the tide of world subversion engulf Lebanon and lest Lebanon become a permanent base for international terrorism.
   
   Consequently, the arguments to be urged are not only sentimental and moral, but of 'the most practical arid hardheaded order. The truth imposes itself once it is known.
   
   The Lebanese Front is composed of Christian leaders who assumed, arid continue to assume, great responsibilities in their life. Its forces withstood a formidable onslaught of strangers and mercenaries upon Lebanon. The aim of this assault has been to overrun arid subjugate Lebanon. But tire Lebanese Front arid tile heroic Forces of Resistance associated with it continue to control the larger part of Christian Lebanon. The Front, therefore, can claim that it speaks in tire name of the Christians of Lebanon.
   ...
   No one responsibly concerned for the great events unfolding in the Middle East today can afford now to ignore the convictions of the Christians of Lebanon, as authoritatively expounded in this document, about their freedoms arid the destiny and place of their own country.
   ...
   At this moment of decision in the history of Lebanon and the Middle East, the Lebanese Front wishes to make clear, before the people of Lebanon, before world public opinion, and for history, its fundamental positions and objectives.
   ...
   The Lebanese Front is also fully conscious of the value of this heritage at once to Lebanon, to the Middle East and to the world. Only in the light of this value in which the Front believes and to which it firmly clings can its fundamental positions be understood. The Front is most anxious to preserve the customs, values and freedoms of Lebanon's way of life, and to serve as a bulwark against all perils besetting it today. Its faith in Lebanon and its unique values, and its absolute determination to defend them, explain all the positions of the Front. The Front is fully aware of the fact that Lebanon is entrusted with a treasure than which nothing is more precious or holy, and it refuses to permit any particle of this trust to fritter away.
   
   The Lebanese Front also knows that it speaks in the name of an overwhelming majority of the people of Lebanon, although it recognizes that part of this majority is not in a position to express its opinion freely.
   ...
   The Lebanon we want to build is what has been unique and constant about Lebanon down the ages; a Lebanon that refuses to be absorbed by any other entity or to be qualified by anything other than itself; a state, therefore, independent, sovereign and free.
   
   We oppose any attempt at dissolving Lebanon in its environment or in something other than itself, a dissolution that will cause its distinctive characteristics to disappear.
   ...
   The rule governing these relations shall be the common interests, culturally, economically and politically, between Lebanon and the other states, be they Arab, Middle Eastern or other.
   
   We shall not build up the free, sovereign and independent Lebanon we want alone, but all its children, both here in Lebanon and abroad all over the world, will also participate with us in this process, together we shall all be responsible for its defense, the orientation of its policy and the organization of its administration.
   
   The Lebanese Front believes in the necessity of reconsidering the structural formula which has determined the politics of Lebanon since 1943, with a view to modifying it in such a way as to prevent any friction or clash between the members of the same Lebanese family.
   
   This reconsideration might issue in an alteration of the structural formula into some kind of decentralization or federation or confederation within a comprehensive framework of a single unified Lebanon. Such has been the trend of the modern constitutional systems throughout the world. The aim of the alteration is to ensure that no disaster like the many disasters which befell Lebanon since 1840 will recur in the future. The new formula will be agreed upon among the Lebanese themselves in a climate devoid of compulsion or intimidation, whether arising from within or without.
   
   In the determination of the principles of its existence, Lebanon will be guided by the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially with respect to the fundamental rights and freedoms of man.
   
   III
   
   Religious Freedoms
   
   Lebanon's principal concern is to ensure individual and group freedoms for all its children and institutions.
   
   Owing to the fact that the first fundamental problem of the Middle East, as indeed of all Asia and Africa, nay even of more than
   
   Asia and Africa, is the problem of minorities; and owing to the fact that the fundamental minorities in the Middle East are religious minorities; for these two reasons Lebanon is compelled, having regard to its composition and history, to pay special attention to its religious communities with a view to ensuring their freedoms.
   
   Our aim is that Lebanon enjoy the clear distinction of being the only country in the Middle East in which the problem of minorities has received its complete resolution.
   
   There shall not be in the Lebanon we propose to build up any discrimination or inequity against any one of its communities.
   
   The Lebanon which has revolted against the perennial problem of minorities in the Middle East shall not permit this problem to lift up its head in it.
   
   The Christian society in Lebanon occupies a special position owing to the fact that it has been free and has enjoyed a continuous history down the centuries. For this reason the Lebanon we want to build up is anxious that the Christians in it remain in fact free, secure and masters of themselves and of their own values and destiny, exactly as Christians are in any country in the world where they are in fact free, secure and masters of themselves and of their own values and destiny. Lebanon considers this charge as one of its most sacred trusts.
   
   The Christians of Lebanon do not want more for themselves than they want for others, but at the same time, they do not accept less for themselves than others want for themselves.
   
   The freedom of the Christians in Lebanon is not to be confined to a particular section of Lebanon only, but it must extend to every Christian and every Christian society in all Lebanon.
   
   The freedom and security of the Christians in Lebanon, and their mastery over themselves, their values and their destiny, do not depend on any demographic consideration or any political orientation.
   
   Most certainly the Lebanese Front does not understand by the Christian