Peloni: Highly recommended article. Wurmser explains that the Lebanese national pact has betrayed the Christian-Druze homeland which was formed more than 300 years ago, and their future, and that of the Levant in general, will likely get worse before it can get better. Read and share widely.
Battle of Ayn Dera in 1711 shows way to avoid domination by Syria, Turkey
David Wurmser | The Editors | Jan 13, 2025
There is a spurt of great optimism on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States, and even Israel, that the Lebanese government, now that it has installed Joseph Aoun as its president, will finally leverage Israel’s devastating victory over Hizballah to assert Lebanon’s sovereignty.
In this optimistic view, the Lebanese government will uphold the November ceasefire between Hizballah and Israel. It will do so by executing both U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, a 2006 measure under which Hizballah was to be removed from south of the Litani River, and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, a 2005 measure under which all armed factions are to be disarmed and the monopoly of power be returned to the Lebanese government. Moreover, for the first time in five decades, powerful regional forces seem held at bay; the PLO is weakened and Iran and Hizballah are laid waste. Lebanon is back in Lebanese hands. And indeed, the optimists assert, the speech Aoun gave upon assuming office contained language that lends substance to this promise: “The era of Hizballah is over; We will disarm all of them.”
Mark me down as highly skeptical of that view. And not only because of the jadedness and curmudgeonly essence that can come with an analyst’s age and experience, but because of the underlying reality. Lebanon likely is far from out of the woods, far from adequately executing its obligations under the ceasefire plan, and certainly far from emerging as a calm state at peace with Israel.
The problem is because Lebanon’s instability arises not from the external array of forces, but from the foundations of the Lebanese state, which are then leveraged by external forces.
The quote that never was
Let’s start, first, with the most obvious. President Aoun was reported to have said that line about how “The era of Hizballah is over; We will disarm all of them.” He was even praised for it by President Trump’s incoming national security adviser. The problem is he did not say that, not in the text of the speech or as it was delivered in Arabic. He actually said:
“My mandate begins today, and I pledge to serve all Lebanese, wherever they are, as the first servant of the country, upholding the national pact and practicing the full powers of the presidency as an impartial mediator between institutions … Interference in the judiciary is forbidden, and there will be no immunity for criminals or corrupt individuals. There is no place for mafias, drug trafficking, or money laundering in Lebanon.”
He raised this in the context of the judiciary, not the military. Regarding the disbanding of the Hizballah militia as a military force, he was careful in his words and suggested it would be subsumed into the state rather than outright eliminated. Such an integration of Hizballah into the Lebanese Armed Forces is one of Israel’s greatest fears, because it could put Israel into a war not with a militia but with a sovereign country on its own border. Aoun said:
“The Lebanese state – I repeat the Lebanese state – will get rid of the Israeli occupation … My era will include the discussion of our defensive strategy to enable the Lebanese state to get rid of the Israeli occupation and to retaliate against its aggression.”
The structure that cannot reform
Words in the Middle East mean only so much. Some might therefore dismiss as inconsequential this episode of “the quote that never was.” Yet it reflects something significant and far deeper. The Lebanese state — the “National Pact” to which Aoun refers — cannot develop into what the optimists hope it will, because its structure is not aligned with the only form of Lebanon that potentially justifies its existence as an independent state, let alone one at peace with Israel.
Understanding why requires dipping into the history of Lebanon. There’s a popular misconception that Lebanon exists only as a result of a colonial gift to a Christian community by the French at the end of World War I. Actually, Lebanon has an older and more defined reason to exist than almost any other state in the region but Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. The colonial definition of Lebanon established at the end of World War I unwittingly and out of the best intentions to the Lebanese Christians undermined that essence.
Lebanon embodies the result of a major event: the Battle of Ayn Dera in 1711, where the powerful Chehab clan converted to Christianity from Sunni Islam, aligned with the powerful Khazen Maronite clan, and unified the remaining non-Greek Orthodox Christians into a powerful force, all aligned with half of the Druze under the Jumblatt, Talhuq, Imad and Abd al-Malik clans. This Maronite-Druze coalition won against their premier enemy — the Ottoman empire and its governors of Sidon and Damascus — and expelled the Ottoman proxies, the Arslan, Alam al-Din, and Sawaf Druze clans from Mount Lebanon to the east in what today is the area of Jebel Druze/Suweida in Syria. The key enemy around which the Lebanese state was formed in 1711 was the Ottoman threat from Damascus and the area of Sidon. Ousting the Turks was a Christian and Druze project. The Shiites were not even a factor, although they too held as their nemesis the Ottoman specter, of which the Sunni Arabs was a mere instrument.
Aoun’s remarks are a reminder of the problem with the present Lebanese structure. The military and its government are fundamentally anchored to the National Pact. That National Pact is a concept of a multi-confessional equilibrium among four communities, rather than the idea of Lebanon as established as a result of the battle of Ayn Dara in 1711 around a Maronite-Druze core. This multi-confessional concept divorced Lebanon from its only reason for existence: to be a homeland for a Christian state aligned with the Druze ally. Lebanon as constructed embodies the multi-confessionalism, rather than the alliance of the 1711 Battle of Ayn Dera and its results.
At first, this was a moot point: the Maronites and the Druze were a strong majority, and thus dominated the state. But the Greek Orthodox were never fully on board with the idea, and over the 20th century, the Sunni populations grew, largely through immigration, as did the Shiite, to the point at which the Christians were no longer the majority. The multi-confessional equilibrium thus shifted from being a cover for Maronite dominance to being a genuinely rickety, artificial coalition of forces that could not manage to overpower each other. Any attempt by any faction to overpower the other resulted in a breakdown of the equilibrium, a collapse of civic order, and violent conflict.
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